I was in Seattle visiting friends last week. After visiting the Space Needle, I posted it on FB. The next day, I saw that an acquaintance of ours from Florida happened to be on the Space Needle at about the same time and I didn’t even know he was on vacation. We might have walked right past each other. Good thing we didn’t encounter each other, though, as it would probably have interfered with him proposing to his now fiance.
Have any of you ever been in a distant place and unexepectedly run into someone you knew from home?
I haven’t but I know my parent have a few times. The first time they took a vacation down to Florida they bumped into a bunch of people. Turns out (for whatever reason) a lot of people from our city vacation in that city in FLA. It was a total coincidence that my parents went to that city.
Also, one of my customers was in California one day and happened to be wearing a shirt with my store’s logo on and got stopped by another person that shopped at our store (we’re in Wisconsin). Small world.
I bumped into my best friend’s older sister on the Metro in Paris when I was an exchange student when I was 14. Neither of us knew the other was in France, which made it seem even more like an impossible moment. She was likely the only person I had ever met that happened to be in in Paris, so the odds that i would cross paths with someone I knew were very remote.
I am infamous for this. I seem to know somebody everywhere I go. Its actually a bit annoying, as I’m quite an introvert, and prefer privacy. Its about eight years since it’s happened, mostly because I haven’t traveled a lot since Celtling was born. But it has happened in Toronto, Texas, San Diego, New York, Dublin and Paris. There are probably some I’m skipping.
The weirdest one was here at home though. I ran into someone I met on a ski slope in the Arapaho Basin, (Colorado) and who is actually from Norway, here in Washington, DC.
I think it’s an occupational hazard of being an Army brat. Between that and growing up near Washington DC, there is always some connection springing up.
Ran into a HS classmate of mine in Barcelona, back when I was in college there (he was in college in the opposite direction from our HS).
Same classmate and I were in NYC at the same time but didn’t happen to take the same subway at the same time.
After a spectacular fall while skiing (Dad damnit, I’m not ready for those slopes yet), I got helped up by… my cousin. Damnit. Of all the guys who could have seen me go head over kettle, it had to be my cousin!
Running into former coworkers in airports isn’t even something worth mentioning to the family; bunch of airport warriors, I even know two married couples who hooked up because they were in different projects but took the same planes, started chatting aaaaaand…
While in college, I went home for Easter. Said hi to my parents, took my suitcase to my room, opened it. My brother arrives from the street, breathless, tornadoes into my room and says “wherewereyoulastThursdayat345?” “dafuck, where are your manners and how am I supposed to know where the hell was I on Thursday at 3:45?” “ok, hello, and where were you on Thursday at 3:45?”
Turned out that on Thursday at 3:45 I was taking money from an ATM on the crossing of two of Barcelona’s biggest and most easily recognizable streets (Passeig de Gràcia with Aragón) and his classmates, who were there on a class trip, had been kittycorner and thought they recognized me but didn’t want to start yelling in the middle of Barcelona… Bro hadn’t gone because, since our grandparents lived in Barcelona, he already knew every place they were visiting and had in fact given pointers.
At the end of a Vegas trip, I arrived at the gate for my flight to find one of my regular customers, waiting for the same flight. It would’ve been a bigger coincidence if we’d run into each other somewhere on the strip or something…
I was vacationing in southern France, and had a free day in Grenoble. I decided to go on a day trip to ski on a nearby glacier. So there I was, at the head of the kids’ slope, about to go down for the first time. And I heard a familiar voice behind me. It was a guy who had, several years earlier, been my best friend. On a goddamn glacier in France, of all places.
My mom and dad ran into a local on the steps of some museum in Italy. I was in Brazil and someone was showing pictures of their time in the USA and my boat was in the background of a beach picture.
Walked into a Statbucks a rainy day in C London and ended up talking to a schoolfriend from Karachi. Annnnd she had grown up to be easy on the eyes, so double win.
I often wonder what are the actual odds of a such an event? You would think it would be 1/<whatever the world population at that time is> but, with someone of your own age, and socio economic backgrounds, would not be that unlikely, that you end up in the same place at the same time.
We moved from Scotland to Northern Ireland in 1965. Then we moved from Northern Ireland to Canada in 1968. In the early 70s we were on a family vacation in Disney World, Florida. We ran into our neighbours from Scotland!
I was on business in Taiwan in 2000. I had supper with a guy who lives about a kilometer from me, and whose wife was my daughter’s kindergarten teacher.
Ran into a someone we worked with back in NH on a mini-bus to a trailhead in New Zealand. Met a family that lived down the street from me where I grew up at a mountain top hotel in Switzerland.
It’s happened to me, and I hate it. I apparently have some degree/form of face blindness. People seem to always recognize me, while I have no clue who the fuck they are. Even if they handle it gracefully, I’m still embarrased.
The worst are the ones who are incredulous; “oh come on, surely you remember me, I haven’t changed all that much!” Then it turns out she was a barista at a Starbucks I went to a few dozen times fifteen years prior. And she still remembers my drink order.
For years I attended Interlochen Arts Camp every summer. I met wonderful talented people from around the world, but rarely saw any of them again.
I was in London in the early fall several years ago and was thrilled to get hooked up with some tickets to a Philharmonic concert. As I settled myself into my seat, I glanced at the person seated to my right and in spite of the 40 years that had intervened, she and I immediately recognized one another as having been roommates at Interlochen in the summer of 1970.
Around Y2K I was visiting a friend and his wife in Houghton, Michigan. Shortly after my arrival, they introduced me to a friend of theirs, who turned out to be someone I knew from 10 years prior, when we lived on the same floor of a college dorm in North Dakota.
In 2004 I was motorcycling in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. When I stopped at a scenic view area, another motorcyclist who happened to be there struck up a conversation. He turned out to be a fellow I knew from grad school in Wisconsin and hadn’t seen for about five years.
I had a friend in university who was my wind band conductor. So we had both lived in Montreal while he was studying and conducting there. He then moved back to Vancouver (this was in 2007), where he had lived before.
I knew that he was in Vancouver. What he didn’t know was that I was going to be visiting Vancouver for a camp for a week. I thought it would be neat if I ran into him there, but I realized that Vancouver is a pretty big city, and it wasn’t too likely that I’d come across any one specific person there.
On my very first afternoon in Vancouver, you’ll never guess who I ran into. Since my conductor friend didn’t know I was in Vancouver, our chance encounter was more of a surprise for him than it was for me.
I took a class in college that had an associated trip to France my senior year. I was standing by myself on a subway platform in Paris when I hear from behind me “Hey… did you go to (my high school)?”
Guy had barely seen my face and recognized me. And he hadn’t even been in my class in high school; his older brother had!
Of course when I first heard that I was sure I was going to end up in an assortment of garbage bags though.
