Alphabetic fate: Possessing the good fortune to have the important events of ones life enhanced by alphabetical order.

It sounds odd, I know. Alphabetic fate was first brought to my attention shortly before my graduate school graduation. I should start before then, though, in graduate school, also known as library school.

Like many others, I worked full time and took classes at night and on Saturdays. I had a hefty commute so that on the days I had school, I’d leave home around 7am and return just before 11pm. It was doable if only for a semester at a time, and on occasion, it had the unfortunate effect of making me cry. I was kept afloat by my friends and family, and the new friends I made in school.

It was hard to become involved in the school community with the schedule I kept, but I made some most excellent friends sitting in the back of the classroom. As friends tend to share common likes and dislikes, I had an excellent chance of meeting people who also dreaded sitting anywhere other than the last row, and I did. Two of my best library school friends happened to sit beside me in the last row.  I’m not which class we were in when I met Friend A as we had a few together, but we share a similar sense of humor and a fast friendship was formed while snarking in the back of the class.

While sitting in the last row,  not too far from the end of the semester, Friend A and I realized we were going to graduate together. And then it dawned on us that they’d do the whole ceremony in alphabetical order. Oh, I know. This coming as such a revelation doesn’t say much for our intelligence. But it was less the fact of graduation by alphabetical order that excited us, and more that our last names are alphabetically aligned. We would get to walk together. In a decently sized graduate program as a night student, an alphabetic alliance working to keep us together at graduation made us happy to know one another all over again. Alphabetic fate was born.

And now, every so often I find my life being alphabetically aligned, through fate.