Four conservatives in a parking lot

Early this year I blogged about the bizarre experience of running into four conservatives in Marin in the aisle of the local craft store.  Well, I did it again today, this time with four conservatives in the dojo parking lot.  I discovered through Facebook that one of my martial arts friends is, in fact, a conservative — or, as she more gracefully and accurately says, “an independent who is fiscally conservative and socially responsible.”  We were quite excited to discover kindred spirits (being a non-liberal in Marin is very isolating), and started gabbling away in the parking lot about politics and the pressure of emotion-laden attacks from Marin liberals.

As we were talking, another guy walked up and I said to my friend, based on statements he’d dropped in the past, “I think he’s one of us.”  I was right.  And as we were talking, his sparring partner walked up and turned out to be another one of us.  As to this last guy, I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t recognize him, since he’d attended the last get-together of Marin conservatives that I’d attended.  My only excuse is that I tend to recognize people situationally.  Had I seen him again at a second party, I would have recognized him from the first party.  In the dojo parking lot, though, he just looked familiar — which made sense, since I’d seen him at the dojo before.

It turned out the two guys knew about each other’s politics but my friend was just giddy with the delight of finding that she’s not alone.  I suspect that, as the days turn into months, I’m going to find more and more people who, although they didn’t realize it before, are also kindred spirits.