Well, two of my friends were in the same primary school and secondary school together, and were friends, but I never knew that till recently. I was about to introduce them to each other when one of them pipped up, ‘Yah, we are like old friends. Knew him since 7 years old’ and I went OMGBBQ!
The strangest thing is I were in the same schools as them too and knew one of the guy since his secondary school days, but was never aware that these two were friends. Even stranger still, I knew many other people in that same class too, but they don’t seem to be in same group.
…
Then another day at university, two friends and me were just cruising from one lecture theater to another when I came by a friend. I said ‘hi!’ and was puzzled when my two friends also said ‘hi’ at the same time.
It turned out that we all know each other. That friend of mine was:
in the same platoon as my first friend during mandatory military service
I have this happen a lot, but the two biggest stories are:
Many years ago, when I was in college, I was taken to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show by some friends and my BF at the time. There was a guy there who was dressed interestingly in a black cloak. He & my BF bid against each other on me in the Virgin auction.
Fast forward 5 years or so. I am relating this story to my ex-husband, get to the part about the cloak - and realize HE was the guy in the cloak. He remembered the situation, and still owned the cloak, which is why I had made the connection.
Where we grew up came up as a topic at work. One of my (young) coworkers mentioned that she’d grown up in the same town I used to live in. I said something about my mom still living there. She mentioned the name of the street - it was the same street where my mother & I used to live. She mentioned her parent’s names - I called my mother. We had bought our house from her parents, before she was born. In fact, they sold the house because they were trying to have a second child (my coworker) and needed a bigger house.
My (now) husband and I seem to have followed one another across Canada separated by a couple years in some cases, months in others.
He lived on the same street in Edmonton in the 80’s 3 years after I moved.
His college roommate: I bought products from the roommate’s store and knew his whole family.
His grandparents likely knew my grandparents way back in the early 1900’s. They lived in the same neighbourhood and went to the same church.
We ran into an old co-worker of his who was my private school roommate’s younger sister.
His son took music lessons from my first boyfriend in grade two (that only came up when a first name was mentioned and I said I only knew of one “xxx”). I went to primary school 100 miles from where his son took music lessons.
His cousin (200 mi. away) is my mother’s cat’s vet.
The list goes on and on. It wouldn’t be so remarkable maybe if we hadn’t been in entirely different occupations and 7 years apart in age. We didn’t meet until I was almost 50.
Yeah, happens all the time to me but I have a lot of friends from ‘scenes’ consisting of dozens to hundreds of people, so it’s not that surprising really.
I have twice now weirded out people for knowing someone they thought I shouldn’t know. In both cases, I was aware that I knew these people knew each other and thought I had mentioned it, but I hadn’t.
#1
A guy in my cohort in school told me he’d been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bangladesh. I asked him if he knew L., who had been in Peace Corps with me in Bulgaria, but had previously been a Volunteer in Bangladesh. (PC Bangladesh was evacuated due to threats of violence, the program was shut down, and the volunteers there had been reassigned to other programs all over the world.) He did! I swear I thought I messed L. on Facebook to let her know that I had met this guy who knew her, but I guess I didn’t. When my classmate commented on a Facebook item of mine months later, she saw it and sent me an alarmed message, asking me how I knew this guy she’d known in Bangladesh.
#2
I met an American girl on the Macedonia/Albania border while we were both waiting for a bus to Tirana. We ended up chatting and had a lot in common (she’d been in Peace Corps Mongolia and I was still a volunteer at the time, but was close to finishing my service). So we hit it off and spent a few days traveling together. Now we’re Facebook friends. Same dealio - she commented on something I wrote on Facebook, and…one of my classmates, who was also a PCV in Mongolia at the same time as her, saw it and was startled to see that I knew her. I could have SWORN that when I met him and found out that he’d served in Mongolia that I had mentioned that I knew someone who had also been a volunteer there, but I fail.
(About 10% of the people in my graduate program are returned PCVs. I’m not like, seeking them out. They’re just there.)
I friended two disparate people on my Facebook, one I’ve known for about 15 years from a Usenet group about the cartoon show Animaniacs (back when it was still on the air, during the Clinton administration - many of the Usenet gang keep in touch via IRC (what can I say, we’re old school) and the like, he and I have developed into very good friends) and one from a vexillology group I’m on (you’re Dopers, I don’t think I have to define vexillology ) - as time went on, one of them sent me a FB message saying “Hey, how in the heck do you know [the other one]?”, turns out both of them went to college or something together and are good friends. They both live in the same city (population a million or so, so I didn’t find it odd that I have two friends from there).
The people that write me the most on Facebook are a husband and wife couple. I knew both of them growing up very well but they didn’t know each other at all. She grew up about 50 miles away from my home town and didn’t go to the same schools or anything like that. They didn’t meet until they were in their 20’s.
I spent a semester in Japan my junior year of college. I ended up getting to know a few Navy guys who were stationed there. One of them was from Chicago; on a whim, not expecting anything, I asked if he knew a friend from my home university. And whad’ya know, he did! Always fun to travel over 6,000 miles to meet someone in a city of 12 million who knew someone from a city of three million.
Fun fact: Cross-ocean Google Maps directions now include instructions to kayak for thousands of miles.
I looked at my wife’s sister’s Facebook profile and saw that one of my work colleagues was listed as her friend. The next day I asked the colleague how she knew my sister-in-law, and it turned out they were at university together.
Early 80s, I worked at Macy*s, Houston Galleria. Electronics, Rugs, Beds, and Cookware. Met a cool guy working there also who had a musical streak (as do I), so we became ‘work buddies.’ Went cruising some clubs together a few times, had fun.
He married a Green Card Seeker and ended up moving to Boston area. I moved to Denver area.
Late 90s, I had moved again and took a vacation to Oakland to visit with some old friends. Took a day to go sight see by myself, ended up at Pier something in a Russian/American shop. From another isle I hear, “Name? Name, Lastname? from Houston?” Look thru the displays to the other isle and it was old ‘work buddy.’ He was visiting one of my friend’s friends in the Bay area.
So …, we all got together for a little dinner party. And drank way too much.
15 years ago, I was looking for an apartment. I spy a “For Rent” sign, squeal to a stop, and get out to check out the place. It’s a string of four concrete-block crapola apartments behind a house. Looks cheap, but clean. It is not patently obvious which door is the rental manager, so I bang on the first door and figure a resident can point me to the owner. Cute, tall, charming, funny guy answers and it turns out he’s a resident. Manager not home, but CTCFG asks for my number and says he’ll give it to the manager.
1.5 years later, I’m standing in line at the 7-11 when CTCFG starts chatting me up in line, clearly not recognizing me. A few minutes later, he asks for my number again. I refuse. “But why?” he queried. “Because I gave you my number like a year ago and you never called me.” Snerks and snickers emanate from the cashier and everyone standing around listing to me shoot this guy down in the 7-11. He follows me out to my car, proceeds to convince me to let him drink a beer with me in my car before I had to skedaddle off to some other place. Before I wander off, however, he gives me his card and asks me to call him. I never do.
Flash forward 12.5 years later and I’m on a business trip in Texas. I check into the hotel room and fire up my laptop to check my email. Can’t connect to internets. Call help desk. Tech support guy cannot help me and gives me a ticket number in case I need to call back the next night from my hotel. Then I ask for his name so if I call back, I can talk to the same tech and not have to explain the problem all over again.
It was the same guy.
We ended up dating for a little more than a year, including him moving five hours away from where he was living to live a block away from me. I had to dump him though because he turned out to be a creep. This story would be so much more awesome if it ended with “and then I buried him in the backyard.”
Yes, I found out that a friend I knew all through school starting in kindergarten, is Facebook friends with a friend of mine from summer camp. Turns out they went to college together.
I was reading comments to a status update by a former co-worker and saw a response from someone with the same name as someone I went to college with in another state who had an unusual name. I emailed him to ask, and he replied “how many [insert unusual name here]s do you think there are?”
Turns out that he’s the best friend of my former co-worker’s former boyfriend and they’re all still friends. That was weird.
My wife’s ex-boyfriend turned out to be a good friend of my brother. They knew (and still know) each other quite independently of either me or my wife. None of us (my wife, my brother, her ex, me) knew this for quite a while. Lots of understandable reasons for that, mostly having to do with geography. It was a bit of a surprise when we all figured it out.
) - as time went on, one of them sent me a FB message saying “Hey, how in the heck do you know [the other one]?”, turns out both of them went to college or something together and are good friends. They both live in the same city (population a million or so, so I didn’t find it odd that I have two friends from there).