I spent the first 21 years of my life in Chicago or its suburbs. Eventually, I worked for IBM in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, near Raleigh.

For one of the projects I was involved in, I attended a conference in San Francisco. One evening a group of us, including some marketing folks that worked in Washington, DC, went to dinner. As part of a larger conversation, one of the marketeers said “When I was growing up in Chicago….” Of course, I wanted to know where.

It turns out he was one year older than me and he lived one city block away when I lived on Central Park Avenue on the South side of Chicago! Neither one of us remembered crossing paths, but we went to different grammar schools.