You Never Can Tell

I know I live in a small place. Slovenia is a country only slightly bigger than the city where I came from, and a friend recently told me that according to a recent news article, everyone in the country is 1.6 handshakes away from almost anyone else and only 2.2 away from the President. When you mention someone here you are often asked their first and last name, people scan their memories to figure out whether they know who you are talking about. It's possible, wholly possible that they know each other. So I know I shouldn't be surprised by what happened the other day.

As I was idling in the summer house in Croatia, I happened upon a stack of newspapers and magazines and pulled out an interesting looking woman's gossip magazine. Staring back at me from the cover was the paparazzi wedding photo of a girl I'd met only a few weeks ago. A girl I pissed off at a party.... a girl I din't know was an actress... let alone a famous paparazzi'd midlevel celebrity. Now I am not going to get into the boring details, but long story short, once upon a time this midlevel celebrity spent hours preparing some food and once upon another time I spent about 10 seconds accidentally dropping half of said beautiful preparations onto the ground. Celeb was unhappy, I was embarassed, and she didnt speak to me for the rest of the party. I was fine with it, OK alright, you win some you lose some. But as I stared at the cover of the magazine the embarassment came rushing back. Not only had I slighted the Slovenian equivalent of a, say, Sienna Miller or something, but with that slight went my chances of joining the ranks of Slovenia's glitterati. The community's too small, word would get out too fast. I'd be known as The Spiller and banished forever!

No sooner had I told that story to Dr. Fil (who fortunately didn't shun me), then we were out on the town in Ljubljana, enjoying the nightlife, and meeting people. By some lucky stroke, we ended up at Opera Bar where they were celebrating their third anniversary with cake, booze, and a live performance by popular Slovene singer, Alenka Godec (whose music I'd just been introduced to that day). I was fortunate enough to take a photo with her (and another Alenka :)) and minutes later we met up, (by coincidence)again in the ladies room where we said another brief hello and smiled. With that brief exchange, the door to the big time just cracked back open. I don't wanna jump the gun, but next time I see Alenka I'm gonna wave like an old friend and see where it takes me. I think I'm almost ready for my closeup...


(Thanks to Alenka U. & Alenka G.!)