My best friend from high school’s mom was my mom’s chemistry partner back when they were in high school together. . .a fact that neither of them realized until my friend and I had known each other for years.
I met my fiance through a friend of mine. We hadn’t talked for about three years. She IMd me one day to ask if I’d drive her to her work to help her file disability. We got on really well, and she asked me to go to a LARP that she was a part of. I’d never LARPed before, but I said I’d go. I met my fiance there; he was the ST. He lives about 40 miles away from my town.
At the same time, I was in a short-lived job at a telemarketing place right by my house. I started striking up a friendship with one of the other people there, a girl that I will call Mary, right before I started going to game. We got along fairly well. She turned out to be part of the same LARP (again, in a town 40 miles away). Also, she was the last person that my fiance had…relations with before me. Not long before I met them (I found this out from him). And it was not a pretty situation. That was one friendship that never quite came to fruition…
Arrived in Hong Kong, was going up the Mid-levels escalator, bumped into an old friend from university in Australia who had also just moved to HK after spending a year in St Louis in the US. Had lost track of him - no idea where he had been.
It’s not quite as striking, but… I met Jim for the first time around eighth grade, when we were both enrolled in a summer theater clowning course in Cheney, a town about half an hour away from where I lived at the time. Then I ran into him in Chicago, at the O’Hare airport. We were on the same people mover. And then I showed up for the first day of high school, in a city many miles from where I first met him and last saw him, and discovered that he lived near me, went to the same school, and was in the same band.
I’m worried that I’m supposed to marry him or something. I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled when I’m in London next month.
This is pretty mild, but since it happened just this afternoon, I’ll post it.
I was in my car and I had a CD in the player: one of the “Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968” disks. On the return part of the journey, I turned the disk off halfway through “Time Won’t Let Me” by the Outsiders and switched to the radio. I started hitting the preset buttons, then had to give all my attention to avoiding another car that was weaving in and out of its lane.
A minute or so later, the other driver made a left turn (of sorts), and I was able to register the music again.
“That’s funny; I thought I turned the disk off.”
Turned out K-Earth was also playing “TWLM”! I count that unlikely based on the tendency of oldies stations in LA to mostly stick to the majors (Beatles, Stones, Zep, and only the most overplayed songs of theirs, at that), and shy away from anything that hasn’t been in a movie soundtrack.
Cheney Wash.? My best friend’s sister used to live there and I’ve actually been there myself!
One more…
Back in '83, our good friends Marson and Izzy were killed in a fire. I attended her funeral, but not his and promptly forgot which cemetary he was buried in.
Forward nineteen years. Kid, the Younger is having a candle lighting ceremony at the cemetary with Cadets. It’s raining, and as we walk beside him down the long driveway, I stop for a moment under a tree. Looking down, I happen to notice the name on the closest headstone. I was standing on Marson.
How about this one: A man is climbing a Colorado mountain with a friend when he gets hit by lightning. So they decide to take off their gear and wait out the storm. He gets hit by lightning again!
And it knocks him down a 300 foot fall.
When they retrieve his body, they determine that the cause of death was the second lightning strike. The 300 foot fall was just sort of thrown in for good measure.
A couple years ago, I worked at the Rite Aid the next town over. Over the course of 9 months, I met:
My fourth grade teacher.
My best friend from when I was around 7. She’d lived across the street from me, and then moved up to the town the Rite Aid was located in. I barely recognized her; if it weren’t for her sister calling her by her name, I probably wouldn’t have.
Another girl who lived in the neighborhood around the same time. We were in the same first grade class, and she’d occasionally play with me if her friends weren’t available. She came in for ice cream with a bunch of her friends. I said hi, she kind of “Um, yeah, that’s nice”-d me, and that was that.
Also, there was a guy who came in sometimes who I thought was kinda cute, though I hardly said 5 words to him. The school year starts, and guess who’s in my focus area? No happy ending, as I was still to shy to talk to him and it turned out he wasn’t that much my type anyways, but a neat coincidence. Now, if I could only find that absolutely beautiful guy who came in to Sears (my last job) with his dad a couple months ago…
Oops, forgot to add some stuff that actually is coincidental. Like meeting my aunt in an Oregon (or maybe it was Northern Cali, I forget) rest stop - my mom and sister and I were headed up to Washington, my aunt (who’s my mom’s sister, by the way, although they don’t really talk nowadays) was coming back from the Ashland Shakespeare Fest.
Arrgh! How could I have brought up Marson and Izzy without mentioning the ultimate Freaky Story!? This one tops 'em all. (At least all of mine!)
At the time of the fire, we were living in Surrey, in an apartment on 72nd, just off King George. M&I lived on the ground floor and we were on the third, almost directly above them. The main entrance was quite a way over, so Mr zoogirl and I would often cut through their place and go straight up the elevator right beside them. The odd, and nice, thing about the place was that it had working fireplaces in each suite.
Mr zoogirl had gone that weekend to visit his brother up in Vernon. That’s about four or five hundred miles east of Surrey. I’d seen M&I that evening around 7:00 and they’d asked my to come down, but I was somewhat pregnant and begged off. About 2:00 am, or so, Mr zoogirl started to get a bad feeling - bad enought to make him jump in the car and head for home. He got there shortly after 6:oo. Seeing a light in M&I’s place, he went over and tried the door. And promptly burned his hand. Looking in, he realized that he could see fire on the carpet. His first thought was that a spark had jumped from the fireplace, so he tried to break the glass door, but it wouldn’t give.
The next thing I know, he’s leaning on the buzzer and yelling “Get out now!” I was kinda groggy and my first thought was “Oh crap, drunk again!” I let go of the intercom button, but pressed it again in time to hear him yell “FIRE!”
The firefighters said it was a darn good thing Mr zoogirl didn’t break the glass. The pressure would have knocked him across the parking lot. Apparently, Izzy had fallen asleep with a cigeratte and the fumes from the smoldering upholstery had knocked them out before the fire got them.
In October, 1978 went to Carowinds in NC with junior high friends.
Sometime in the fall of 1978 my husband (who is 12 years older) went to Carowinds with his then-wife.
Last weekend we were looking through old packs of photos (I somehow never get around to putting them in albums) that I hadn’t seen in several years. We were just flipping through them when one caught my eye: standing at a concession behind my friends and me was my husband and his wife! I don’t remember getting the picture taken but it looks like we just got off a water ride and just decided to pose and there were several people in the background.
I was 15 and he was 27 and didn’t know each other at all. We always joked that perhaps we were at Busch Gardens at the same time (he didn’t remember the month he went) but never guessed it to be true. We didn’t meet until 1982 when I went off to college in the other part of the state and he got divorced and returned to his home town which is where the college is located.
A couple of years ago, my aunt’s family threw a surprise party for her 50th birthday in Elkhart, three hours away. My hubby and I stopped at a McDonald’s in Kokomo to potty, and when I looked at the people getting out of the car next to us, it was my mom, her husband Ron (who is black - it matters, it really does!), another aunt and her boyfriend Joe!! We all live in Indianapolis, but hadn’t coordinated times or anything. My mom’s husband decided to ride with us so he could smoke in the car.
Well, we arrived at the party well before they did. Apparently Joe had decided to take the “quick route” through town. (Just like a man!! )
There was a freaking KKK rally downtown that day! And they had driven straight through it!
This is very lame when viewing Zoe’s and jjim’s remarkable stories.
I was out garage sale-ing one day and stopped by this 100 year old work-in-progress farmhouse that had a sale on.
Ended up buying tons of stuff because the woman (who was at work and had her mom run it for her) has a son a year older than mine and has really nice stuff.
The mom and I chit chat for the better part of an hour ( this is the sticks, not much else to do.) and she is a really nice lady. I have have to pay for my purchases with a check, something I’ve never done. But hey, we live about 2 miles down the road and if it bounces, feel free to come over and throw a brick through the window
Mean while…a friend of mine who lives west of me ( who is from Buffalo) always asks me if I know Paige. Paige was one of her best childhood friends. Paige use to be a Ms. Georgia or something. Paige is very poised and pretty. Paige lives on my street. Paige now lives in Hooterville, just like we do. Imagine that.
Then I start my son at his pre school. When the other women there see my street name, they all ask, " Do you know Paige." A mom from last year. A popular mom from last year.
I tell them no and do not, completely do not put two and two together than my friend’s Paige and the Pre School Page is connected. I’m dense like that.
Then, of all places, I am at a sex toy party and strike up a conversation with this woman (tall, poised, pretty. Your basic nightmare) and we find out we live on the same street…and she lives in the money pit of an old farm house…and HEY! I went to your garage sale last year…your mom is really nice…yes…I paid by check, why do you ask…oh your mom thought I was real nice…Holy Shit…Do you know ( my Friend.)?
One of my brothers has a birthday on April 14th, another brother’s birthday is on July 14th, and my sister’s birthday is September 14th. Not as earth shattering as the previous posts, though.
Reading all these, you’d have to think that the met-someone-I-knew-from-years-ago-in-a-remote-place thing is not actually all that unlikely - and thus probably doesn’t belong in this thread any more! Just a thought.
A couple months before my current housemate moved in, a friend of mine stored a bunch of stuff in my basement “for a little while.” A long series of inconvenient events prevented him from collecting it for quite a bit longer than originally expected.
Shortly after she moved in, my housemate started attending Emily Carr, where she was obliged to share a locker with a total stranger. They became pals, and for lack of anything better to talk about, my housemate eventually shared her gripes about having strange people’s stuff occupying space that might better be taken up with her stuff. Later, her new friend explained that she was living out of a suitcase, because all of her and her boyfriend’s stuff was in storage in the basement at a friend’s place, and they were having a hard time finding a suitable place together. Other little things, like the freaky little man who lived in the house, began to sound oddly familiar.
Yes, the strange girl you’ve just arbitrarily been assigned to share a locker with at a huge design college that you’re both attending for the first time is already well-used to having your personal items around-- nearly everything you possess is in her basement.
About an hour ago I was at my local bar after work, having a beer and unwinding. The bartender showed me a dollar bill that had these stamps all over it and said, “Have you seen wheresgeorge.com?”
I’d never heard of it, and I traded one of my bills for that one so I could come check it out. I came home and started browsing SDMB, only to find:
These two events, referring to a site I’d never heard of, happened maybe half an hour apart.
By the way, there’s a thread from a while back that’s related to this topic:
My Grandmother and her sister are one set of four sets of twin siblings - eeek for my poor Great Grandmother!
My best friend and I went to the same college and lived in the same dorm, though five years apart, married Japanese men on the same day, had baby boys with similar names (we did not consult each other beforehand!) three weeks apart, and now both have younger boys too. We met in Japan both just about to get pregnant with our first babies. When we had them, my parents came out to visit me, and HER friend in Britain wrote her a letter telling her that her Dad was housesitting for neighbours who were off visiting their daughter in Japan who just had a baby, and enclosing my address! Her good friend lives in my good friend’s ex-house (they sold it to my friend’s friends). We only noticed this because of looking through photo albums. Almost every year we discover something else freaky about each other that is linked in our past before we ever met each other.
)