Ah. I had a momentary flash of something like one of those giant paper dragons they use at Chinese New Years celebrations. Only, a chicken.
A restaurant makes much more sense.
When I was 10 my family took a vacation to California - we were living in New Jersey at the time.
While at Disney Land, a woman walks up to me and says “You must be a (my real, and not that common, last name)!” My Mom and Dad walked up - turned out the woman who ID’d me was one of my Dad’s many California cousins. She didn’t know we were going west, and as a Californian she hardly ever went to Disney.
The odds were very slim that we’d be at Disney the same time, and if I didn’t resemble my Dad so strongly, she’d have walked right by us. Somehow she didn’t spot TypoEmperor but she saw me.
It IS a small world after all! 
A couple of months back I was looking for a new job and applied for one which turned out to be via an agency, so I had to call in and register. The woman interviewing me had the original version of my surname (my father had to change his name slightly on joining the royal navy) so I jokingly asked where her husband was from. Turned out he was from the same small town in the west of Ireland as my father. Then, things got stranger. Her maiden name was the same as my maternal grandmother. From the same west of Ireland town. So i’m related to her husband through my paternal great-grandparents and to her through my maternal grandparents… I think… It all got very confusing trying to sort it out… but then it turned out she went to school with one of my cousins as well, and another one was her tutor at university.
And I didn’t get the job…
Back in college, I decided to live in my fraternity house senior year. The guy who lived in the room next door was a junior whom I had known since his freshman year, but not well. The college is in Illinois, but I was from Massachusetts and he was from PA or something. But one day he happened to mention that his mother had grown up in New Jersey.
“hey - my mom’s from New Jersey too. What town?” <town name>
“no way! my mom’s from that town too. what high school?” <school name>
“weird! what year did she graduate?” <year>
“hmmm… that’s about the year my mom would have graduated…”
so we got on the phones to our mothers. turns out they had been friends in high school almost thirty years earlier. They totally remembered each other. Freaky!
Maybe she didn’t want to be accused of nepotism. 
I live 500+ miles from my hometown. I’m waiting for a late bus one day, wearing an old sweatshirt with my town’s name on it. I hear “Are you from Hometown?” I thought to myself…“that’s odd, nobody here can correctly pronounce Hometown”… and said I was from near there, but was on the local swim team, hence the sweatshirt. Turns out he was from the same town, but we went to different schools and he is a little older than me. He lives 4 over and 1 up in my building…500+ miles and 3 states away.
I don’t want to rain on anyone’s stories because they are good stories but don’t you think the premise almost contradicts itself? If it was really a small world, we wouldn’t be so damned impressed when, in one day out of 1000, we run into a person that knows one of the countless people that we have already knew from somewhere else. That seems like a pretty big world to me.
I’ve got 2.
1- After High School I moved from Sacramento CA to Choteau MT, a heck of a move. That summer I got a job pumping gas. A guy came though with CA plates, so I struck up a conversation. Turns out he was the neighbor of one of my best freinds at the time.
2- I’m in Montana again, visiting my mother while I’m still in High School. I’m telling her all about my friends, and mention one named Lydia. “****?”, asks my mother, stating her last name. I’m agog. Turns out my mother and my father had gotten her parents together, shortly before she was born… when I told her, she thought it was pretty cool. Until her mother told her not to hang out with me, as I was goign to be a raging alcoholic axe murderer…
Good times.
Over ten years ago, I lived in an apartment complex, and when I went in to renew my lease, they handed me the lease of Kevin S—, instead of my own for Kyle S—. It’s an uncommon last name, and I’d never really lived anywhere that someone with the same wasn’t a relative.
We met and chatted a few times, and figured out we’re probably cousins a couple of times removed – our grandfathers’ histories would indicate they were cousins, but both were dead, alas, so no way to verify. He moved away a year or so later, so no more lease mixups.
I moved into my condo over a year ago. First time to the new library to pick up some books I’d requested – and they hand me the books reserved by Kevin S—. I’d accidentally moved into the same condo subdivision he’d moved to.
I’m not sure if this is a “small world” anecdote or not, but it was weird. And will only be appreciated by St. Louisians:
My aunt’s family in Seattle went on vacation a few years back to Hawaii. When I visited them, she told me they’d met the nicest couple who’d rented the unit next door to theirs – and who assured her that the St. Louis relatives would know of them and their two ice cream stands…
“You ran into Ted & Dottie Drew!!!” I exclaimed. Yep. I actually mentioned it when he asked me how my order was at the Chippewa store some time later: “Oh, yes, the S—s! How’re they doing?” Weird. But I got a free concrete.
I was at a weding in Texas and me and this guy recognized each other from high school (in New England). Apparently he was dating the grooms, my fraternity bothers sister.
I have a stack of 'em!
The year I was eighteen I lived with some friends. We used to go to pick up another mutual friend who lived in a sort of boarding house. I’d often see a guy playing guitar on the porch. Two years later, I met my hubby. He took me to meet the people he used to live with. That’s right, he was the guitar guy. He’d also dated my friend’s sister.
A year later we moved to Edmonton from Surrey. We lived in a small apartment building and within two weeks discovered that folks in three other suites all knew my husband from his hometown, Abbotsford BC. In that apartment I found a letter opener behind the fridge. It was from a tiny town in Montana; Kalispell. It’s my grandmother’s birthplace.
A few years after that, I was sitting in a bar with my hubby and in walked my friend Dennis, whom I know through my friends Mike and Kathy. He said hi to me and then to my husband. Turns out that they went to Cadets together, more than twenty years prior.
Speaking of bars, we were sitting in another one when I found out that my husband’s friend Cheryl was my friend at camp in the early Seventies.
I went to school with the wife of one of my pastors. She recognized me fifteen years later when I walked into the church for a mom’s and kids group.
I ran into the girl I watched Welcome To My Nightmare with in '75 at an Alice Cooper concert last year.
The bass player in my band went to school and played hockey with my cousin in the late Sixties and early Seventies. I just met him last year and he happened to mention living in that neighbourhood just last month, so we did the “Do you know Suchandsuch?” thing. Turned up the cousin.
My friend Wendy brought her friend into our workplace a while back to introduce to me - too late. It was Nichole that I’ve known for years at church.
I went to a Doper dinner a couple of years ago and discovered that one guy’s family was from the same little town in Saskachewan as my dad. I went home after the dinner to find that I had an email from a fellow on the Geneology.com board, looking for info on his family from the same town. Since the Doper still had family there, I hooked 'em up!
And finally, one that might not meet quite the same criteria, but it’s weird anyway. May of '05 I got a knock at the door of the zoo. It was a guy wanting to rent a snake. I told him that he’d have to ask the boss about pricing and that of course the snake would need an escort from the zoo, but that we’d probably be able to help him. THEN he said that it was for his Alice Cooper tribute band, which was going to be performing up at the Central Brewpub in October. I grabbed him and hauled him into the back of the zoo. Blaring out of the CD player was Alice’s “Sickthings”. He stopped in his tracks and said “That’s the song I want the snake for!” Then he looked at my tapes and CD’s - every single AC album. Needless to say, he was a little surprised! Now I’m an actress in the stageshow and we just played our anniversery gig at Central on Saturday night!
Let’s see…
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The woman in the apartment under mine, in a medium-sized college town in North Carolina was from the same small town in Ohio that I was.
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I started a thread at one of the Dope-related boards* about where people had lived during their lifetime. One of the posters saw my list of towns, and realized that we had lived in the same small town in Kentucky. After further private communication, it turned out that we actually knew each other IRL, as we were high school classmates.
*not saying which one - sorry.
I live in a city of four million souls. One time I rang up the RTA (DMV for the 'merkins) to change my address on my driver’s licence. The woman who answered the phone was my next door neighbour.
I agree. I’ve lived in 7 different states. Attended 4 different grade schools, went to high school in Southern CA, started college in Colorado and finished it in Ohio. I’m out on buisness trips almost every month all over the US. I have never run into anyone I knew. It isn’t that small.
It’s too small for me. I just got my (sorta) neighbor to leave after a half-hour’s polite listening to her woes. She’s the mother of my neighbor, somehow they’ve cooked up a scam with section 8 in the mom’s name but the daughter is living there instead, and she was going on about being investigated and wanting me to lie in case any authorities ask me.
The small part is…neighbor moves in a few months ago, we don’t know each other so I don’t feel so obligated to lie for her. Except, turns out the mother dated my cousin for nearly a decade and they’re still friends. And the neighbor (daughter) has a roomate, who’s the granddaughter of my Godparents; I use to change that child’s diapers twenty years ago. And the mother being investigated just happened to mention that her brother works with me, turns out he’s my boss.
Yeah, guess with that many potential people I know being pissed off at me if I don’t play nice, I’m stuck.
I now live in Minneapolis. A couple of my college friends live here, as well. My husband is good friends with another couple who reminded me of my friends, so at long last I decided to host a dinner with all 6 of us. Over dinner, we found out that (with the exception of my husband):
- We all went to the same small, private university in Iowa.
- We all went to the Journalism school, and had largely the same professors. Three of us had the same advisor.
- The women had joined the same sorority, didn’t like it but stayed in it.
- The men had joined the same fraternity, and deactivated their junior years.
All of this was 8 years apart, but still, it was cool.
There have also been two times when I’ve been on the same flight as, and in an assigned seat in the same row as, dear friends from high school. In both cases we were flying back to Seattle; me from Iowa, and them from Chicago and Maine, respectively. Hooray for layovers in Denver!
My last boyfriend and I were born in the same town in California, in the same hospital, 2 weeks apart. 
Neither of us grew up there, because both of our fathers were in the military at the time (at DLI): we met 30+ years later and 3000 miles away.
I used to think it was a small world, but it turns out I just have big feet.
My mom and her sisters decided to go visit a cousin, who was recently diagnosed with cancer. So he goes to visit his mother in her nursing home, and tells her “Jane Smith and Sue Jones are coming to visit on Friday!” A woman sitting at the next table turns and says “I know Jane and Sue!” She then named their parents. It turns out that she is related distantly to my mom also! So they changed plans and the entire gang met up on Friday.
Also, my sister, mom and I were walking through the lobby of our hotel in Waikiki when my sister suddenly stops and goes “Jake!?!? What are you doing here?” It was a friend from college. Turns out his ship was in Pearl Harbor, and in the hotel bar were two other guys she knew from college.
Many years ago when I was a student I shared a house with a friend of mine and her boyfriend. The household split up and we went our separate ways and I had no contact with the boyfriend again. Lots of years later l moved out of the city into very small rural town nearly a hundred kilometres from Melbourne.
Not long after I moved I was sitting on an interview panel and had to read through a stack of applications and recognised a name on the application. It was the boyfriend (he had a very distinctive name). He lives in the same town as I do and just a couple of kilometres down the same road I live in.
Maybe it’s small towns.
For several years my parents lived in a very little town even more one-horse than where I live. It had a population of maybe 300 people in a baby boom year.
The folks did a trip to far north Queensland and stopped in a caravan park near the Cape York Peninsula, about 3500 kilometres from home.
The people in the caravan next door were from the same town.