Yes, like when I found out that someone I met on a message board was my boss's neighbor. goaskalice
That was pretty crazy!
My favorite was when I was on vacation in NYC with my family and I literally ran into a guy I had performed with 6 months before back home in CA. We just both happened to be in Times Square at the same time walking different directions.
My childhood close friend and my former colleague (and friend) both have children at the same very small, specialized, private preschool in a city to which my childhood friend moved at age 18 and my former colleague last year.
I figured this out because both were fans of the school on FB.
Post by firedancer10288 on Jun 16, 2014 21:55:53 GMT -5
This is one of my favorite small world stories, but it doesn't involve me. One of my friends grew up in New England. She went away to college for 4 years and then moved back home and started working. At some point she decided that she wanted to go back to school to be a teacher. One of her neighbors was from Maryland and recommended she check out Towson. She ends up moving here and gets her masters. One weekend she and her friends take a trip to the beach where she meets the guy that eventually becomes her husband. He is the nephew of the neighbor!
My own story isn't as cute..I went to a very small college in VA, about 200 miles from my hometown (where I still live). Most people here have never heard of it or confuse it with another more well known school in the same town. One day i went to pick up my daughter from school early and I was wearing a jacket with my college logo on it. DDs teacher stopped me to ask if I went there. Turns out her father in law is the beloved sports director that recently retired after 35 years at my school. She has a pretty unique last name, but it never would have occurrd to me that they are related.
I've never posted on ML before (usually on MMM), but I have to share in this thread.
When H and I started dating, I told my mom his name and she couldn't place why his last name was familiar. She mentioned it to my grandma, and then it all clicked...H's grandpa was my grandpa's AA sponsor. Who knew our families were joined together by an intense love for alcohol?
I've been swimming during the summer with these two ladies for years. I didn't know their names, mostly just a hey, how are you, it must be summer again. I never see them anywhere or any other time of the year. About 6 years ago I was in Omaha to visit family and watch the Olympic swimming trials, the session let out and there were thousands of people in the lobby and lo and behold my summer time swim friends from Seattle.
Not a great small world story but who sees people from Seattle in Omaha?
Post by marshmallowhands on Jun 16, 2014 22:14:28 GMT -5
My college roommate (randomly assigned) was someone who was in my class in 3rd grade who moved away. When we got our room assignments, my boyfriend at the time was like, "wait a minute, I know her! Our moms are friends." Weird...
When we first moved to NYC from Russia my mom knew that she had a cousin she hadn't seen since she was 5 (we're from St Petersburg cousin is from Kiev) living somewhere in the states. Our first week here a Russian woman came up to her at the park and asked for a light for her cigarette. Turned out to be the distant cousin.
Post by discogranny on Jun 16, 2014 23:51:06 GMT -5
My old assistant was bitching about this girl named Jamie who she was hosting a baby shower with. The mom to be was having twins and a thing one, thing two theme. A girl on the Nest was bitching about a girl who shared a name with my assistant, whom she was hosting a thing one/two shower with.
A couple of weeks went by and I realized they were both bitching about each other to me. At the time I hadn't met anyone from the Nest in real life, so it kind of weirded me out.
Friend and I were taking a bus from her mom's house in La Jolla to my aunt's in Manhattan Beach. We missed the connection in Torrance (I think it was) and ended up walking "the Strand" to Manhattan Beach. In about Venice or Redondo some surfer dude came running up and grabbed my butt. Turned out to be a classmate of mine from Central California several hours north and inland.
XH was in boot camp for the Navy, went to a bar and sat down next to a guy that turned out to be his step-dad's nephew from Kansas, whom he'd never met or even knew existed.
XH's aunt was visiting St. Petersburg and ran into a former neighbor from California.
DH's mom grew up in Maryland outside DC, worked for the government her entire career and retired to a small town near Daytona Beach, FL. Her husband joined a baseball team and one day while they were playing, she was talking to the wife of a teammate. It turned out they were also from Maryland. Same town. They went to the same schools since elementary school. And shared the same best friend since second grade. Yet in 50 years they'd never met until their husbands started playing baseball together after retirement. DH actually shopped for a car at her husband's lot and used to cut through it every day when walking to his bff's house. The two women are still very close friends, and still don't go visit their joint bff at the same time. It's been 50 years of two circles not quite colliding.
In college I went to hang out at my friends apartment and in walks a friend if hers, a girl I went to sleep away camp with when I was 12. I had no idea she went to my school!
Also, a girl in my sorority was in my bunk at the same sleep away camp.
I hadn't kept in touch with either of them since camp.
Before and shortly after my birth, my parent lived in The Netherlands. There, they became friends with three couples, one of them being Dutch.
My mother used to make fries for these friends' kids and nephews. I have baby pictures with these children playing with me or patting my head.
35 years later I talk with the Dutch husband of a friend I met in Brussels (we're both lawyers). I knew his hometown was the town my parents lived in.
I mention the street they lived on and he asks me if my mom's name (she died when I was 14) was "X". I tell him yes and he confirms that he ate her fries and saw a new born baby in her arms when he was 4 or 5: me
H and I went to Mexico for our honeymoon and met a couple who lived just down the road from us. A year later we took one of those "Baby 101" classes when I was pregnant and they were in the same class!
Post by periwinkle on Jun 17, 2014 11:55:50 GMT -5
These are great! I just remembered one of my own.
I was in Ocean City, MD for senior week and one night ran into a guy at the bus stop. He asked if I was going to "X" University since I had on their sweatshirt. I said yes and we joked that maybe we'd run into each other. Fast forward to my first few weeks at college, I become friends with a group in my dorm and we go up to hang out in the one guy's room. I walk in and meet his roommate, it was the guy from the bus stop! We ended up becoming (and still are) close friends.
Post by sapphireblue on Jun 17, 2014 12:43:53 GMT -5
My freshman year of college, I became really good friends with a girl who lived just down the hall from me (this was in New Jersey). I was from the Boston area, she was from the NYC area. It turned out that her grandmother was from MA and her grandmother was a bridesmaid in my grandmother's wedding!