At the memorial service for my mother last week, in addition to the family, my friends, and my brother’s friends:

• One of my old babysitters.
• That babysitter’s brother, who, I’ve heard over the years, is as awesome as we thought he would be.
• My former-future-mother-in-law and substitute teacher — she had a son in my class and one in Amy’s, her daughter was in my brother’s class, and it was impossible to not love every last one of them. B-A, the matriarch, played softball with Mom.
• Jenn R., who is now Jenn R-M. — she was the other Jenny in my class through grammar school and one of my closest friends forEVER. She has a gorgeous daughter and another little one on the way in December, and she looked WONDERFUL. (Her mom also played softball with my mom.)
• Erika H., whom I met in junior high. We were very close, even after I moved — she came to visit me in Pleasanton and looks much the same, but older and skinnier.
• The first boy I had a mad crush on. I consider it a personal, though completely pointless, victory that he invited me to call him anytime.
• My old PE teacher from MUHS, who, I think, coached Mom’s basketball team.
• Chuck and Laura B., whose son threw rocks at me at one of my birthday parties. He later became a police officer and literally shot himself in the foot.

It was amazing to see everyone, and more amazing to recognize some of them on sight after so long. This was helpful, actually — a lot of people didn’t recognize me, and my family was…well, the ones who were most active in greeting people and directing them to the photo area seemed disinclined to let them know I was even there.

Regardless…

Today, I went out to run an errand and stopped at World Market to begin restocking the wine rack. As I was checking out, I looked hard at the woman behind the counter and should have been more shocked when I read her nametag.

“You look a lot like an Emily I went to school with,” I said.

“Where did you go to school?” she asked.

“Vermont.”

She seemed to start recognizing me at this point and asked me what town.

“Middlebury, but I moved freshman year,” I said. “Class of 95. You used to call me Jingy.”

OMG. Em Dayton looks like a more grown-up version of herself…the self I knew when I was 14, anyway. We talked a little bit about who from the old crowd is where and I shared the sad news behind some of that knowledge for me. We’ll get together soon and catch up, I hope — she was one of the crazy-funniest chicks I knew back then.

I quit, y’all. This whole “Jen’s life is one big circle” thing is getting a LITTLE OUT OF HAND.