Interesting Ways You Have Met People Who Later Became Friends

In My Humble Opinion
1

In a conversation today, I remembered the day I first met RaShell.

I had moved from NYC to Berlin a few years earlier and was not yet writing for the magazine that would let me get into screenings at the Berlin FilmFest. That was a few years later. I had read in the Berlin newspaper that the new Spielberg film was going to be screened and, although it was pretty much sold out due to the heavy press, they announced there were “limited tickets” available for the premiere showing that night. Tickets were to go on sale at 3:00 PM.
Not wanting to miss the film, I arrived at about 11:45 AM and stood alone at the empty box office, book in hand to read while I waited, and a bottle of water and a couple of candy bars in my backpack.
I hadn’t been there five minutes when I see a black woman coming out of the subway exit, about 100 yards away, walking quickly in my direction.
First of all, you don’t see a whole lot of black women in Berlin - secondly, she was walking at a good clip and zeroing in my direction.
She got about 50 yards away and I could hear her yell, “Ain’t nobody but a New Yorker beating me to be first in this line!”

Sure enough, RaShell was a New York City Girl who had moved to Berlin almost the same time as I had. Although we had never met before - Berlin is a big city - we hit if off immediately. By the time the box office opened, we were fast friends and kept in touch for quite a few years later.

By the way…when the box office finally opened, there was a huge line almost around the block. I bought four tickets (the maximum allowed), RaShell bought four, and the guy behind her ordered four and was told “only two left.” Talk about limited ticket sale! All the rest of the tickets were for the following day. And in case anyone is wondering, the movie title was very appropriate for this story: Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

So - anyone else have any interesting stories of how they first met someone who later became a good friend?

2

Part-time job pumping gas at a full service station. Pretty woman pulls in for a fillup. In doing my walk around cleaning glass and lenses, I spot on the plate three letters in a diagonal. “Miss what do the letters SMA stand for”? She smiles and says “Sado-Masochism Assocition” Want to join? Dated her for a long time.

Her father was a Justice of the peace. SMA was for the States Magestrate Asso.

3

I met my husband online. :slight_smile:

-IRC, BBSs back in the early 90s when you actually had to have some knowledge of how to get to that stuff. Some other guys in my computer class wanted to talk to me outside of class and some had BBSs set up and they taught me how to use MOOs and telnet. So I’d log in and low and behold I became friends with their friends, and my (future) husband happened to run in that group. We started dating when I was a senior in HS and he was a freshman in college - and we’re still together 13 years later and 6.5 yrs of marriage. I still keep in touch with quite a few of those people as well.

-MMOs (Everquest, World of Warcraft), but I guess that doesn’t seem so interesting nowadays. Hubby was away on an internship, and when he came back he was talking about this cool game everyone was playing - Everquest. We were both in our last years of college (he: masters, me: senior). He signed up for an account and played a bit, and I’d take a spin with his toons too and we quickly found how much we enjoyed the game, plus we were playing with people we’d eventually meet when we moved. I didn’t get my account until a week or 2 before graduation so I knew I wouldn’t get sucked in and fail my final semester of college.

Hubby had started his job after graduation and moved away a couple of months before the wedding. We used EQ to keep in touch (we both HATE talking on the phone), and to keep building relationships with our friends. Eight years later, some of these people are my best and closest friends.

As far as WoW goes, same deal, bunches of people we’ve worked with have played the game and have come and gone from our lives. Definitely a soap opera!

4

The weirdest way I met someone was by having a nervous breakdown while watching a college production of Eve Ensler’s Floating Rhoda. To make a long story short, the themes were pretty disturbing on a personal level, I quietly left the theater, and locked myself in one of the single-person dorm bathrooms, where I found myself rather unexpectedly bawling for about 15 minutes straight. I tried to stifle it, but people heard – the producers and ushers of the play heard, some of the (not on stage) actors heard, and they were all waiting outside the bathroom door to apologize to me for not having issued some kind of warning about the play’s content. I was mortified. This was not my favorite day.

But later at the cast party, one of those girls took me upstairs to talk about the incident-- and we talked for hours – and we found we had a lot in common, and we became dear friends. So something very good came out of it.

5

Gotcha beat - met my husband in 1991 when he was SysOp of a local BBS. 16 years together, 15 married.

And though it’s far more pathetic than interesting, I don’t have any friends I met after college who I DIDN’T meet, one way or another, through the computer.

6

Hopelessly average and mundane, I’ve met most of my friends through work, school, neighborhood activities, FOAF, etc.

About the only moderately interesting story was how I met my best friend. Way back when, she was the girlfriend of a fella in my larger circle. I’d heard other people mention her, enough to where I had an idea of who she was even though we hadn’t met.

Around this time, I had this annoying habit of smacking the foolishness out of people. It was a joke thing among my friends and I, someone would say something idiotic and I’d give them the c’mere gesture over and over, until they thought I had something personal to say and they’d lean in to hear me and I’d sorta smack them in the forehead and say something witty like “There ya go, you were stuck on stupid for a second, fixed now!”

I was 19, this was hilarious somehow.

So one day, this girl, that was kind of new to her boyfriend’s group of friends, was hanging around with us. I can’t for the life of me remember what she said, but it was inane. I’d been doing the “c’mere; smack!” thing for a while, so everyone knew about it and it was a big joke and everyone would pull back and I wasn’t actually smacking anyone, right? So she says something dumb, I wave her to come closer and popped her right in the forehead, causing her to fall backwards and onto the floor. First time we’d actually met, I knock her to the ground in public, and instead of helping her back up sympathetically, the rest of the group is laughing hysterically.

Somehow she forgave me, I felt bloody awful and spent the rest of the evening apologizing to her, we’ve been friends for almost twenty years now. Every few years she’ll bring out that story to embarrass me, too. :smiley:

7

I guess I’ll be the third to be married as the result of a BBS. :smiley:

I’d been BBSing since '93, and in '95, one of my good BBS friends introduced a girl he’d started dating (someone he’d met on a different board) to me. He thought we had some stuff in common and that we’d get along well. Heh heh heh. So a couple of months later, they’d broken up, but we remained good friends, became best friends, and were dating a year later. And we’ve been married a bit over 9 years now. :slight_smile:

The other really random meeting I had was back in October of 2004. My wife and I went up to Vegas with some other folks to celebrate a friend’s birthday. We were enjoying some drinks at Quark’s Bar at the Las Vegas Hilton when the manager came along and asked us and a couple by themselves to relocate because they were closing down that section of the bar. We all moved together, and then the manager brought all of us free alcohol for being so cooperative.

About five hours later, after much laughter, drunkenness, picture-taking and email-address exchanging, we all went our separate ways. I started emailing one half of the couple, and we ended up having a LOT in common in terms of our various philosophies in life. Although quite a bit has changed in her life since that random meeting, we’ve remained very close friends, and because I know of no better gift to a person than to introduce them to the Dope, you all know her as Nytewatchyr. :slight_smile:

8

Best friends for life! Through thick and thin… to the point where my soulmate told me out of the blue that the person who’s approval he most wanted was Asimovian’s. :slight_smile: