As happens in a lot of my stories, a simple errand turned into something more.

I was back home in North Carolina the other week and stopped by the Verizon store in Mayodan to get a new screen protector put on my phone. The young fella helping me was new, and before long we struck up a conversation like folks in small towns tend to do.

Turns out his name was Jon. Newly married. Recent graduate of Rockingham Community College with a degree in fine arts.

Now a few nights earlier I’d been talking with my cousin Odessa about her son Robbie. Like any proud mama, she pulled out her phone and showed me some of Robbie’s artwork. Beautiful stuff. Detailed comic-style drawings that honestly looked professional to me. Odessa told me Robbie had just graduated from RCC in fine arts too and was figuring out his next educational steps.

So standing there at Verizon while Jon worked on my screen protector, I asked him if he happened to know Robbie.

His face lit up immediately.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “That guy is talented.”

Jon told me they’d talked in class but somehow never exchanged numbers before graduation. I told him I’d make sure Robbie got his contact information, which I later passed along through Odessa.

It’s funny how often the world gets a little smaller when people take the time to talk.

That wasn’t the only conversation like that I had recently.

Just yesterday I was visiting a job site for one of our longtime customers at a commercial laundry. Over the years I’d mostly dealt with Mrs. Wallace, who always struck me as one of those genuinely kind and steady people. Sweet spirit. Calm nature. The kind of person you remember even after brief interactions.

This time Mr. Wallace was there in the shop. After checking on my crew, he and I stood around talking about business, entrepreneurship, and the roller coaster that comes with both.

Eventually we landed where most business owners do these days—trying to find and keep good employees. We laughed about interviewing folks who seemed excited about the opportunity, only to disappear completely afterward. Apparently “ghosting” doesn’t just happen in dating anymore.

At one point I asked Mr. Wallace if he knew a friend of mine who shared his last name.
He smiled and said, “No, I don’t think so… but we’re all connected anyway. We all came from the same seeds years ago on Mother Earth.”

Now that’s not exactly the kind of sentence you expect to hear standing in a commercial laundry talking about employees and payroll.

But the more we talked, the more I understood what he meant. He spoke about appreciating people more and wishing the news spent as much time talking about what’s right in the world as it does what’s wrong.

Standing there in that commercial laundry, I realized neither conversation had anything to do with phones or payroll.

They were both about people.

About taking a few extra minutes to ask another question.

About discovering we aren’t nearly as far apart as we sometimes imagine.

Maybe Mr. Wallace was right.

Maybe we’ve always been connected.

Sometimes we just forget to talk long enough to remember it.

At least, that’s how I remember it.

As Best As I Remember It.