Monday morning I was at a job hunter’s session. There was a woman there whom looked very familiar to me. Everytime I looked at her, the name “Nancy” popped into my head. However, she introduced herself as “Rebecca.”
After the group broke up, I went over to her and had the following conversation:
Me: I know this may sound odd, but every time I look at you I think the name “Nancy.”
Her: You know, that’s my mother’s name.
Me: Nancy what?
Her: Nancy Last Name
Me: :eek:, followed by about ten seconds of silence. Finally I said “Oh my God. You’re Babby Becca.”
Her: What do you mean?
When I was 18 - 20 Nancy and her husband lived on the same block as me and my then-husband did, and were best friends. I used to sit for Rebecca and gave her the nickname “Baby Becca.”
Rebecca called her mother, and we got updated. Her husband died about five years ago, but she is doing fine.
Nancy has two children, one just graduated college and one in her sophomore year.
A friend of mine met a somewhat younger fellow at a party some years ago, they got somewhat loaded together, went back to her place … next morning over breakfast and hangovers, they got to talking about this and that - turn’s out he used to be a kid she baby-sat when she was a teen herself years ago.
I never did find out if this was true, but about 15 years ago my then-GF was getting a kidney transplant. The transplant doctor was Dr. Fairweather. My parents said he looked really familiar. He looked just like the Dr. Fairweather that delivered my brother, 40 years before and a thousand miles away.
A couple of years ago, I attended our kennel club’s annual fund raising dinner. I am not active in the club and went with my wife, who is on the executive.
We were seated at a table with six people, none of whom I knew. There was much dog talk but periodically a conversation would stray into non cainine territory. I was talking to someone about my casual interest in mineralogy and gold prospecting.
All of a sudden, a woman at our table whom I had not chatted with, says: “You are into rocks? My Stepfather was into rocks. Did you ever know Doug Hunter?”
I grew up in southern Ontario and now live on the east coast. My Father died in 1970 and my Mom re-married in about 1975. Her new husband, Doug Hunter, adopted me.
Mom died in 1979 and less than a year later, Mr Hunter married a woman named Shelagh and less than a year after that, he died. I went to their wedding but never knew what happened to his new wife.
The lady at the dinner is Shelagh’s daughter. We see each other once in a while and joke that we are brother and sister.
This isn’t nearly as cool as the other stories, but with the magic of Google, I was looking up names of people I knew in my distant past. One of the more unusual names showed up on a state employee site and included an email address. So I decided to write as non-stalkerish note as I could manage and and hit “Send.”
I heard back yesterday. The guy had been a classmate all through elementary school. He took me to our 8th grade graduation dance. After that, we went to different high schools and I never saw him again. Anyway, it’s 43 years later and he remembers me also. Unlike me, he stayed in the same general area where we went to school. I’m hoping we can meet for lunch or something - we’ve got a lot of years to catch up on!
I started college at age 32. First day of a music class, we pass around the sign-in sheet; the young man ahead of me passes it back and I see he’s got an unusual last name, same as my 4th grade teacher who didn’t come back from Easter break as she delivered a premature son who was very ill. Our class made cards for her and the new baby, wishing her and him to ‘get well soon’.
I was campaigning for Obama in 2008 in Easton PA and when I returned the brochures to the headquarters, I noticed the names of the two volunteers who’d signed in just ahead of me–I raced upstairs to ask two middleaged men if one of them were a guy who 'd gone to the same bunglaow colony with me 45 years ago, and then to ask the other guy if he had edited a book about a relatively obscure author (which I’d written). Turns out both said “Yes” and that they were good friends from Brooklyn and had driven to Easton PA together.
What do you mean?