A few years ago Ellen and I were visiting San Antonio, Texas and naturally we visited the Alamo. While waiting in line to buy tickets for the IMAX Theater we met a guy from near Chicago. We, of course, as all travelers do mentioned that, "hey, we are practically neighbors", we are from Madison, Wi. The guy went on to say he now lived in San Antonio but his two daughters, who were off shopping at the time, were visiting from Chicago.

We finally bought our tickets and went our own ways to our seats which were no where near where the guy and his daughters were sitting. Our seats were very close to the screen which required that we almost had to lay our heads back to see it. As we sat waiting for the show to begin we noticed that there were a number of seats up higher in the theater that were empty and about that time an anouncement was made that the people who had reserved the empty seats weren't going to show up because their tour bus had broken down and if anyone wanted to change to those seats they could.

After a mad scramble we finally spotted two vacant seats and wouldn't you know it they were right next to the guy we met earlier and his daughters who we had not met previously. Ellen was sitting next to one of the girls and I whispered to her, "let's have a little fun". As Ellen introduced herself to the two girls I said, "I'll bet I can guess where you're from". They gave me that kind of "duh" look and about that time their dad decided to play along. He said, "hey girls, this should be fun, let him guess". So I said, "You look like a couple midwestern girls, maybe from Illinois". The girls perked up at that and said, "yea, that's right". So I pushed it a little more and all the time their dad is sitting behind them grinning from ear to ear. I said, "Ellen, don't you think they look like they might be from St. Charles?" Ellen agreed and by then the girls were looking amazed. They asked how we knew and then asked where we were from. Ellen told them we were from Madison, WI.

About that time the guy sitting in front of us stood up and turned around and said, "I'm from Madison too". This guy was Wilton Shinall, who we hadn't seen since retiring from Mother Mutual. He was visiting San Antonio with his mom, dad and sister after being in Las Vegas for a CUNA Mutual meeting.

Imagine the chain of events that had to happen for Wilton to be sitting right in front of us in an IMAX Theater in San Antonio, Texas. It is a small world.