Spiderman Stitch Halloween

Since this is my last Halloween in Yakage, I figured I'd have two costumes this year. Spidey was an obvious decision. I realized one crucial aspect of Americana my students hadn't been taught about yet, superheroes. The Stitch costume comes with a story.

Stitch came to Yakage this week via Mary Childs, who got it from a Japanese guy in Tokyo. Mary is a friend of Kate's from her semester in Dehli, where they were two of twelve on their program, including a girl from Wesleyan. Mary graduated from Washington & Lee last year, and has a Watson Fellowship now to travel around the world for a year painting people's faces. She was in Brazil in July, came to Tokyo about August 15th, and got to Yakage a week ago to stay with Kate. We put her on a train tonight to Kyoto, and she's heading to Shanghai at the end of the week.

Here's the crazy part. Before all those other places, Mary grew up in Richmond. She went to St. Catherine's K-12 the year behind us. A year ago, she dated Andrew Barr. In our game of "Do you know.." the first night we met last week, we had sort of stunning success.. first she told me about Andrew (I'd mentioned I'd gone to Tuckahoe and had you guys at Freeman). Then I told her my one St. Cat's connection, Mary Depasquale-- My first girlfriend, who Owen and I met at summer camp on the James when I was in 6th grade and she was in 5th, whose dad, Paul, made the Arthur Ashe statue and the Braves Indian at the Diamond. Turns out Mary and Mary were good friends, and grew up together in the same class at St. Cat's for 12 years. Then as we were cutting onions and peppers to make spaghetti at Kate's house one night, we realized we had both gone to St. Mary's Episcopal church. She sung in the choir, maybe even with Greeley. I asked if she knew Mrs. Erb, Esther's mom, who taught singing at St. Cat's, and Kate said O yeah, actually Esther is one of her best friends. So a few Facebook messages later, I get a message from Esther (in Vienna) saying she hears I met her best friend from Richmond, in Yakage.

Tiny place, this planet. How do you guys like me as Peter Parker?