Just so you know, this story is not about coffee. It’s about the random human connections that brighten our days and keep us going.

The backstory: I took Michael to see a doctor a few weeks ago; we finished up around lunchtime, and he asked if I could take him to a local diner. We ordered an egg salad platter to share (one scoop each of egg salad, potato salad and coleslaw – Michael’s idea, not mine). I commented to several people later in the day that I thought it was funny that my 5th grade son orders like a 60-year-old woman, and that all he needed to go with it was a black coffee.

That afternoon, Michael had an appointment for physical therapy. He and I were chatting about our lunch with one of the employees and the woman she was working on at the next table from where Michael was. We started talking about his 60-year-old taste in diner food, and the patient suggested that Sanka might be a better beverage choice. This evolved into a discussion about Sanka (which, if you don’t know, is a brand of instant decaf coffee, and in the dark ages of the late 1900s, was the only decaf available. It was also a favorite of the 60 and up set). We wondered if it was still around.

So yesterday, we returned to physical therapy for another appointment. And we found out that yes, Sanka is still being made. Because the patient we had been chatting with found an individual packet somewhere, brought it to physical therapy to give to someone to pass it along to Michael and me (which was really confusing to the person who hadn’t been privy to our original conversation and had no idea why a patient was giving a packet of decaf coffee to pass along to another patient — a 10-year-old boy).

At any rate, I had a good laugh with the employee who had been there when we’d been talking about it. And I was astounded that this other patient had remembered our conversation, and thought to bring this little packet with her to her next physical therapy appointment.

These are the random connections with people that make me smile – the Sanka Connections. We can choose to exist in the little bubbles of our own lives, or we can choose to cultivate the experiences that we have with the many people around us, however frivolous they may seem at the time. It’s usually worth it.