Ay my college graduation, my mother noticed that my father was talking to someone she thought was a stranger. She sent my now-husband over to get him. My father introduced him to his partner at work, Roy. Somehow, my father had worked right next to Roy for years, and in all that time, neither one ever mentioned which college their daughter went to, that their daughter was graduating that year or that they were taking the same day off for their daughter’s graduation.
Another coincidence was discovered after my daughter’s wedding. My family was putting photos all over Facebook and I got a message from one of my grade school classmates. He woke up and couldn’t figure out why photos of my son-in-law’s wedding were all over Facebook - turns out he works with my SIL and had met my daughter many times but of course had no idea she was my daughter.
My nephew died suddenly about four years ago. I posted about it on Facebook and then was surprised to see that a friend of mine had also posted about it. It turned out that he is my nephew’s wife’s uncle. He had missed their wedding because he was working out of town. So we had spent ten years not knowing we had that connection.
From this week and related to this message board…
There is a thread about number 1 songs for this year. I don’t know any of the songs (except an old Christmas song). One is by one of my wife’s favorite artists.
I said something like “I want to know what you think of a song” There was nothing else about the song or the context. I had to get the computer, find the thread, etc.
While I was looking up the song we had a different conversation on an unrelated topic and I did a reference to a song from the 80s, which fit that topic,
She starts singing a song I didn’t know.
By this time I got the computer out, and found the thread. I give the artist and title of the 2021 song…
She says that is the song she was just singing.
The recent song was Easy on Me by Adele.
I had said “Take it Easy on Me” referring to the song by the Little River Band.
Stones and Beatles were partying together all the time, and would have been up to the minute on each other’s current projects. Sort of like Tolkien and Lewis.
What really gives me pause is the introduction of the phrase “Don’t panic” in 1979—
September 1979: My Cleveland homies, the band Pere Ubu, release in the UK their 3rd studio album, New Picnic Time. The second song on the album is “49 Guitars & One Girl,” which prominently includes the lyrics: “Don’t panic! Don’t… don’t panic!”
October 1979: Douglas Adams publishes the first UK edition of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, from whence the phrase “Don’t panic” becomes famous to the world.
If you’re British, you can’t read this post without thinking of the late '60s to late '70s sitcom Dad’s Army (an affectionate nickname for the wartime Home Guard). It’s a catchphrase that no British person could avoid - even today episodes are regularly screened - so Douglas Adams grew up with it.
Pere Ubu? - harder to explain.
j
ETA - I always presumed, without even thinking, that this was what Douglas Adams was referencing.
I liked The Wallflowers song “One Headlight” when it first came out. I was on a long road trip for some reason, and the song came up on the radio. While most of the lyrics of the song were understandable to me, I couldn’t understand one part “…with the Sun up ahead at the (unrecognized word) bridge…”. This was pre-internet so it took some work to learn song lyrics. Was the unrecognized word “Caroline” or “cantiline” (like cantilever), or something else? As soon as that phrase came up on the radio, I saw a sign on the highway showing “County Line Bridge”.
I have two half-brothers. They’re a good bit older than me, and we never lived together, so I never really knew them. I can only remember meeting them once, and I must have been about five years old. This was back in Texas.
Decades later, I moved to Bend, a smallish town in central Oregon. I lived there for about 4 years. About a year after I moved away, I got a message from one of my brothers- he’d been searching on the family name, and had come across my website. It turns out, he lives in Bend, where he runs a construction company. I even remember pulling up next to one of his trucks at a stoplight and commenting on the name, because the particular spelling of our last name is somewhat unique.
We’ve kept in touch, and despite having never grown up together, we’re fairly similar.
My friend and his partner decided to start a new life in Sydney. They came home to the UK to get married.
At the wedding I was very surprised to run into an old work colleague who I thought I’d never see again. She was an Australian who had worked with us in London for a year. My friend and his wife work in a completely different industry but befriended her somehow and she’d travelled to be a part of the wedding.
Ah, thanks. I surmised they may have derived it from a common source, like biblical scholars surmised the existence of a “Q Gospel” from comparing the known ones.
Pere Ubu, like the proverbial prophet without honor in his own country, were ignored in America but celebrated in Europe. Their two biggest fan countries were Belgium and Italy. When touring Europe, they must have spent plenty of time in the UK, which would suffice to explain the reference. They even released their 3rd album with that “Don’t panic” lyric in the UK, on the Rough Trade label, because American record companies weren’t interested. Back in Cleveland I bought an import of it.
I was skiing with the family in Winter Park, and signing the kids up for lessons. The man doing the sign ups noted my (somewhat unusual) last name and asked if I was from Minnesota. Since I lived in Kansas City, MO I said “no”. Thought about it a bit, and said that however I was originally from there.
My oldest brother ran sound for a bluegrass band in Minnesota 40+ years before, and the ski instructor had been the band leader (this guy, actually, and right around the time of that article).
Wait, this reminds me. Dated a girl for a while, starting in middle school and continuing in high school, on and off. She was going kind of crazy when I first met her, as her mom and dad were going through a divorce. Not an easy thing for a kid at any age.
What made it worse was that her mom was dating someone who was also getting divorced. Then, their ex started dating…my gf’s dad. So basically, two couples swapped partners. This completely mortified her.
And now I’ve been watching a couple of episodes of Better Off Ted on Hulu on Sunday nights. Tonight’s episode featured plot lines about Ted and Veronica’s fathers. I’m not sure if it was specifically meant to be a Father’s Day episode, but it was coincidentally up next in my queue today, Father’s Day.
And that reminded me of this thread, so I had to revive it to post this.
Sitting in a hotel bar in a Swiss mountain village I learned that my bartender had a daughter who waited tables at a hotel near where I live in Calgary.
