And he keeps cropping up in the weirdest places!

Waaay back in 1993 (or maybe early '94) my fabulous current issues and geography teacher, Mr. Kelly, had a student teacher named Aaron Doering. All of the girls in the senior class were flipping out for the hotness of him. I didn't find him all that delicious, but whatever. Many girls in my class figured he was fair game because though he was a teacher, our very own Mr. Kelly had married a student (as the rumor went) so clearly it was possible and, some girls thought, quite likely. But, when he was done we sent him off to the island of Lost Student Teachers. Please note: I have *never* seen a student teacher again after their student teaching experience. Not when I was a student, not in the time I've been a teacher. With one exception: see below.

So I graduate in 1994 and head off to college, Mr. Doering promptly forgotten. Until I run into him walking down the hallway of Mankato State University in the fall of 1994 when I'm there for a speech tournament. I'll admit it, I squealed. Whatever. We chatted a bit, blah blah, and I went to my round and he went on his way. I figured that was the last time I'd see Mr. Doering.

Four years later, in the fall of 1998, I'm student teaching in Rochester, MN at Century High School. I'm walking down the hallway when who should I run into? You got it--Aaron Doering! He teaches there--social studies, of course. So we do a few jokes about how things come full circle, he was a student teacher in my school, now I'm a student teacher in his, yadda yadda. I leave student teaching and, again, figured that was the last time I'd see Mr. Doering.

Can you believe there's another paragraph to this post? It's ten years later...October 20, 2008, and I walked in the door from yoga and flipped on the news. I go to the kitchen during a commercial to get some water and I hear "I'm Doctor Aaron Doering" coming from my television. 'What?' I ask myself. Surely I heard this wrong. Aaron Doering teaches high school social studies in Rochester, MN. This guy on my tv is all up in the Arctic talking about how the world is his classroom and I'm all "DUDE" this is too much.

Of all the people in my life who have come and gone....through the towns I've lived and the places I've been, I'm more stymied than anything else at the consistent recurrence of Aaron Doering in my radar. Seriously--Fergus Falls, Mankato, Rochester, and now the Twin Cities. I know it's a small world, but this is getting a little crazy. It's a good thing he's a well educated, balanced individual and not some crazed psychopath.

Extrapolation to the Extreme

I do this. I extrapolate. To the extreme.

Let me give you not one, but two examples of this.

Example the First.
I'm at my grandma's grave a few weeks ago, watering flowers, generally cleaning up the joint. Since I'm obsessed with graves and graveyards, I walk around the entire cemetary. It's outside the town proper of Clearwater, MN, which doesn't have much of a proper anyway. So, the cemetary is rugged to say the least. I'm walking around in my sandals and the weeds are all around, bugs are bad.
But, I'm a Minnesota girl and this is something I'm used to and aware of. Bugs are a part of my life, as are wooded areas. The normalcy ends here.

Instead of being an average girl and getting back into my car and driving home after paying my respects to my grandma, I start thinking of deer ticks and lyme disease. I imagine that if a tick got on me and bit me that I wouldn't see it. Then I'd get lyme disease and die. So I'm thinking, all the way home, that I need to get into a shower immediately so that I don't die.

Two problems with this.
1. If I was bitten I was bitten, and no amount of showering an hour after the fact would change that.
2. Lyme disease, while it's unpleasant as hell, doesn't kill people. It's incurable, but not fatal.

My dad says this is extrapolation to the extreme.


Example the Second.

When I crawled into bed last night after the Chuck Klosterman reading I started thinking about the weird girl named Jen that I ran into that I apparently know and made a great impact on, such that she was legitimately offended that I didn't remember her. Then I thought about all of the components that had to fall into place so that she and I would meet in that exact place at the exact time that Klosterman was signing my book. It's mindboggling, if you think about it.

Again, normal thoughts. Most people would say "Dude, far out" and move on.

Not this girl.

I extrapolate it out to say, "what if I had been meant to die at that precise moment? Or any moment?" Fate will direct circumstances exactly as it did to put Jen and I together in line when it designs my death, and I'll be none the wiser for it until it happens. So, basically, my death will be orchestrated around me, and I'll be a significant participant in having all of the elements work together to lead to my demise.

To the extreme.

Chuckus Kostermanus Interruptus

Tonight I went to hear Chuck Klosterman read and answer inane questions from young twenty-something groupies. He was hilarious, I nearly peed my pants about ten times. He was really polite about answering questions, some of which were good, most of which were so dumb I twitched.

After about a dozen questions the Barnes and Noble lady steps in and says "One more question." In front of me sitting on the floor (I was leaned up against a shelf) is this young girl, probably 20 (shit, when did I start referring to a twenty year old as a "young girl"??) and her hand shoots up in the air. He calls on her and she says, "Can I have your address?" There's a twitter throughout the audience, and Klosterman is clearly caught off guard.

He says "What, like my email address or like, my mailing address."

"Your mailing address."

"Why?"

"So I can send you letters."

The audience is mystified by this. He says, "Well, uh, you can have my work address, yeah," and he looks out at the crowd and back at her, "yeah, I don't want to be a jerk or anything. Buy a book and bring it to me and when I sign it I'll put my address in there."

What I love about this man is that he's all "Sure, but you'll be buying my book. Nothing's for free, honey." Good lesson for her to learn.


So THEN, of course I'm in line to get my copy of Killing Yourself to Live signed. I'm innocently standing there and then all of a sudden my life blurs into a wild druggie adhd manic freakout. Someone says my name (it may have been Chuck or my friend Erica) at the moment that I hand my books to the Barnes and Noble chick. The girl who has been standing behind Erica and I says "Kelly Flanigan???" And I said, "Uh, yeah." And I turn and look at her and I recognize her but I have NO IDEA where from. Like zero. I don't know if I went to high school with her or college with her or competed against her in speech or had her as a student or ran into her at some other time. What I remember is her hair, and I remember her crying. She had this bushy bushy hair and she cut it short and it was so much cuter short, and I have no idea what the crying was about. She says, "Do you remember me?" And I'm not in the mood to lie. I said "I remember you, but I have no idea what your name is." So she decides to make a huge production about the fact that I don't remember her. She refuses to tell me how we know eachother. She said something about "like the most important person to her in high school" but it might not have been that. As I said, a blur.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Chuck has my books and is signing away probably wondering who the hell I am that I can't take five seconds out of my conversation to say hello and thank him for signing my book. I'm all "Hold up, I'm missing my moment here!!" and then things blur out a little more except I remember thanking Chuck for his reading and for the signings and telling him I'm a big fan and he was just laughing at me and then I walked away.

Strange girl that I know finally tells me her name, after completely screwing up my moment with Chuck Klosterman, and I still don't have the first damn clue about who she is.