Small World

I AM big, said Gloria Swanson to Cecil B. DeMille in Sunset Blvd., it’s pictures that got smaller. Einstein would have agreed, all things being relative. The older I get the smaller the universe seems even though the Big Bang Theory says it is expanding. I don’t mean THAT universe, I mean my universe. We all have one, constantly adding and subtracting at once as eulogies close doors and others open with new friends appearing in cameo roles who become top bananas in this feature film since they saw the same plays, read the same books, even went to the same school and were there when I was there at the  …. But who knew? ….until 65 years later when they dropped a name I also knew and our circles joined. It’s enough to make me wonder if there are really only 37 people in the world or maybe 73 and sooner or later I’ll meet them all as the separation drops a few degrees. Take last month for example when Peggy mentioned her crush on Benedict Cumberbatch and Caroline said her sister-in-law in the U.K. is a friend of B.C’s mother. Now that’s a batch of cumber if I ever heard one. Of course when you live in a small town like L.A. these things happen all the time. Who knows who was riding that elevator with me yesterday? If we’d had a power failure I would have found out; maybe even discovered the girl who sat in front of me in 6^th grade and she might have been acquainted with Gloria Swanson or even Einstein though, more likely, Albert Brooks, whose real name is Albert Einstein since his father, the comedian, Parkyakarkas, had never heard of that other Albert Einstein and by the way the latest news is that the universe is not expanding after all. I’m glad to hear that in case I take the wrong spaceship and end up in someone else’s realm where I’d have to make new friends and BTW, as we now say, Gloria was right, pictures have gotten smaller. How did she know that about I-Pods and Selfies? She’s ready for her close-up now, Mr. DeMille.