Helen FieldsScience Writer

Last week I reported on some strange rocks from South Australia that may preserve the oldest animal fossils. Or may not. Ok, nobody knows. But they look kind of like animals. Read about it here.

I like that the function of the journal article was basically to throw the idea out there, see if any other geologists come across anything interesting. There’s plenty of rock of the right age exposed on the planet; you just have to tell geologists to look for it, and other samples of these animals (or whatever they are) could turn up.

In the I know everybody category, the lead author’s name sounded vaguely familiar. Before I called him I looked at his website, and indeed – he went to Carleton College at roughly the same time as me. We have four friends in common on Facebook. Fifteen years ago, I might even have been able to pick him out of a lineup. Today, his name just sounded vaguely familiar.

At the crochet coral reef workshop, I hung around with the beginners – I did, technically, already know how to crochet, but I really only knew how to crochet continuously in one direction. So, if I wanted to make spirals, I was fine, but it seemed useful to learn some other skills, and also to learn what the different stitches were called. Also, the friend I brought with me (MJ) was a beginner.

So the beginners were chatting, and I said I was writing a blog post for the Smithsonian, and one of them said, oh, I work at the Smithsonian. Turns out she’s a VIARC volunteer – they’re the ones who answer questions at the information desk. And I said, oh, my mom does that at the Freer and Sackler, and she said, I think I’ve met your mom, she works with my sister-in-law, Sandy. Who I know.

Then the sign-up for the mailing list came around, and the last name on it was someone I knew a little in high school – I was good friends with her little brother. It’s a fairly unusual name. I wandered around the yarn store until I found someone who looked vaguely familiar, asked, and indeed, it was her. She didn’t remember me at all.

(I don’t really know everybody, but I like to pretend I do. Read about it.)

I’ve often said that I run into people at every event I go to – except baseball games. Well, that was a lie, it turns out. Saturday night I went to see the Bethesda Big Train, a team in a summer league for college students. Revels was performing, and they’d given us a bunch of free tickets. Before the game, I was waiting with some other Revels folks to sing the national anthem when I saw Alan Mairson standing a few feet away. Alan and I both left jobs at National Geographic in November, 2008. He now writes the blog Society Matters and is the bat boy/girl coordinator for the Big Train. Ok, and he also has a day job.

Photographic proof:

(I don’t really know everybody, but I like to pretend I do. Read about it.)

Every year I march in the Takoma Park Fourth of July parade with a group from the Washington Revels. We dress all in white, carry [fake] flower garlands and dragon heads and hobby horses and a giant shrub, and sing songs about spring and summer and stuff. It’s great fun. Part of the fun is being in a small town parade – the streets are lined with people in lawn chairs, and marching groups include local daycares, a dog training school, and a lady on a horse. We won third prize for costumes. The parade starts near the co-op grocery store and ends in front of my elementary school.

So, naturally, a lot of the fun is seeing people I know along the way. As we were walking to our line-up spot in the morning, my friends asked for a prediction of how many people I’d see that I know. I figured it would be in the 20s. We couldn’t decide if I was allowed to count every kid who was with the adults I saw, so instead I counted family groups. My total: 21. Some of those are individuals, but most are between two and four people, so I figure I came out in the 40s at the very least.

I realize there’s nothing at all remarkable about this if you actually live in a small town. But I live in Washington, D.C., which is allegedly a big city. It’s a nice surprise here to see people you know. Well, ok, by the fourth go-round on this parade, it is in no way a surprise to see people I know. But it’s still nice.

(I don’t really know everybody, but I like to pretend I do. Read about it.)

photo: me, 2007

Today I got an e-mail from a friend, with the subject “You know EVERYONE!”:

There’s one person at [place of work] who I like. Guess who it is?
[Person I know]. She says hi

(I don’t really know everybody, but I like to pretend I do. Read about it.)

This afternoon I was driving to have dinner with my family for Father’s Day. I wanted to turn right, but some teenagers were in the crosswalk. A black Prius had come from the other direction on the same road as me and was waiting to turn across the same crosswalk. That car got there first, so I was willing to let it go first when the pedestrians were gone. As it went by I saw the handicapped tag, and then I saw the driver. Hey, it’s Felipe! I went to elementary school (and middle school and high school) with his daughter and visited him and his wife in Mali in 2005. Ooooold friends. Driving on the same street as me.

I know everybody. Ok, not really everybody. But for years, friends who go places with me have known that we will probably run into someone I know. It doesn’t matter where – festival, concert, national park, whatever. I don’t know if I know an abnormally large number of people, or if the people I know all have the exact same taste in events, or if I have unusual recall for familiar faces, or what. But I do know that my world gets brightened pretty regularly by running into people who I’m happy to see. (Fortunately, I also like most of the people I know.)

So my friend and neighbor Sheila suggested I blog about this. I’m skeptical – I mean, how interesting can it be? It also seems kind of self-aggrandizing. Omg, I’m so awesome! I know everybody! But the truth is, I might actually know everybody. And Sheila claims to really like these stories and to think they are worth blogging about. Also, almost every time we go to a restaurant or bar in the neighborhood, which is often, I see someone I know. So, here you go, Sheila.

This is actually a subset of the “I know everybody” genre of story – in which two other people discover that they both know me.

Earlier today, my friend MJ wrote to me on google chat:

We’re in [her employer]’s knitting club right now, and [she forgot to type the name, but it was Heather] said “I have a friend who’s knitting a stegosaurus”

I said “that must be Helen Fields”

Of course it was me. I know MJ professionally and Heather through Washington Revels. They both knew I was knitting a stegosaurus because I can’t help bragging on facebook about all my cool new knitting projects. (Stegosaurus pattern here.)

To make the world even smaller, I would like to point out that I knew both Heather and MJ’s significant others before I (or they) knew Heather or MJ. Heather’s husband went to high school with my brother; I was friends with MJ’s boyfriend in high school.

Update, 7/29: Here’s that stegosaurus.