But I Wouldn’t Want to Paint It

Speaking of Vanderbilt, as I did yesterday, I did a short real estate-related interview with a fellow alum not long ago. Someone I’ve interviewed before occasionally, and calls me back because he’s fairly sure I’m not out to bushwhack him in print. (And where do people who read even a teaspoon’s worth of real estate industry’s trade press ever get that idea anyway?)

Before I spoke with him, I scanned his bio at his company web site, and learned that he too had gone to VU. Hadn’t known that. I brought it up at the end of the interview, and he seemed pleased to hear it. “Class of ’83,” I said, and he answered, “Really? Me too.”

We reviewed the places we’d lived on campus, and it turned out we lived in the same building, called Lupton, as freshmen. Except I was on the fifth floor, “Lupton 5,” it was called, while he was on the seventh. I never knew him then, though it’s likely we knew people in common—the school’s large but not vast like, say, UT. He probably also probably saw my collegiate byline, but immediately forgot it, as most people do with most bylines.

Small world? Naah, the world’s still pretty big. But my niche is small.