Six Degrees

For as long as I can remember I've had a passionate love affair with words. I am, in fact, a third generation word lover. My grandfather and father were both English professors at Midwestern universities. From childhood I've adored good stories peppered with words that just take your breath away. Those words that are so great and so significant that you remember exactly who or what you attribute learning that word to. Some that come to mind are:

paroxysm: My father once used this expression to describe someone we both knew. Not sure who, specifically. We've each known a few fit-prone people in our time.
necrotizing fasciitis: The clinical term for "flesh-eating bacteria." Learned this one when my husband contracted it in Nov 2001.
ubiquitous: Learned from the same doctor that introduced necrotizing fasciitis to my vocabulary. The bacteria that causes it is ubiquitous. I had to ask him what that meant. Now I know.
misogyny: A woman who sat across from me when I was temping in a Greenwich insurance company's claims department in the late 80s. I distinctly remember a discussion about how there was no equivalent word in the English language for hatred of men.
quixotic: This one was a Reader's Digest word, recently used in a post by Josh Friedman. Good word.
comeuppance: One of the great romantic classics, Wuthering Heights
serendipity: This was a 7th grade vocabulary word that I learned in Language Arts. I was going to school in Ohio whilst my father was looking for a job in Florida.

Serendipitously enough, I was reading a post from Rob over at Adventures In Storytelling about one of his current projects. Being the alumnus of a university in Ohio, the state where Rob is from, I was intrigued by his travels East for the filming of This Won't Hurt A Bit, a family comedy short. When I discovered that he met with one of his actors in a Starbucks in Danbury, I offered to PA on the film. As coincidence would have it, Danbury is my current city of residence. Rob's subsequent search for a shooting location has let Fade to Blue Productions and the cast and crew of This Won't Hurt A Bit to my home for a weekend in May. Serendipity.

I truly believe that every decision we make and every action we take is for a reason. I also believe that we are separated from every person in this nation, nay world, by only six degrees. Not just Kevin Bacon!

It truly is a small world, this world of film, and I love it so.