So it was a gay polyandrous wedding…
…and there’s the possibility of another frat-boy sexual harrassment case.
I went to a meeting of foreign wives in Japan (we were all married to Japanese men) and at the end of the weekend, as we were all hanging around waiting for taxis to arrive and take us to the station, I got chatting with a couple of other British women who I’d not had time to talk to. It turned out that we were all from the midlands in England. We were swapping family photos and one woman commented that my husband looked like her husband. It was true, they did look very similar, but her surname was different from mine and we were from completely different areas of the country. I went home and told my father in law - turns out HIS father was originally of that surname and from that village! So the two husbands were probably cousins as far as we could work out. (My father’s father changed his name to his wife’s name when he married.)
Another woman had been listening to our conversation and butted in to say she also was from the midlands. Since then we have become very close friends indeed. Her and my life has intertwined in all kinds of ways -we are both married to Japanese men; we were married on the same day; we went to the same college though five years apart; we lived in the same college dorm; our home towns in England are only a bus ride apart, though we live the length of Japan apart; my best friend sold her house to her best friend (in England, but not in either of our home towns!) The biggest one was that when I called her to tell her I was pregnant she said she was too, and our boys are only a couple of weeks apart. We agreed not to talk about names so that we’d feel free to name our kids what we wanted without undue influence but ended up sharing the second character in each of their names.
When my son was born, my parents came out to visit us, and my friend got a letter from her English friend, containing my name and address, which she’d been given by her Dad, who was house-sitting for his neighbours who were visiting their daughter in Japan who’d also just had a baby. So her best friend’s Dad lives next door to my mum and dad.
I’ve got two, and one of them is SDMB related.
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One of my two best friends in high school moved to Colorado and he and I lost touch. About 15 years later, I was in the lobby of the Sari Pacific hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia when his parents walked in. They were doing an around-the-world trip.
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The first Houdope that I attended, I met Ringo. We were yakking about growing up in Houston, and it turns out that he is the younger brother of the first girl I ever kissed, lo these many years ago.
The last time my family went to Disney World we were sitting in the airport getting ready to head back to cold snowy Ohio and we hear “Are you a fill in very uncommon last name here?” My dad gives the guy a look and then the guy continues “You are Gary’s brother right?” Turns out the guy knew my uncle and some how figured out that he and my dad were brothers (they do not look alike at all). He was on a business trip and was flying home on the same plane we were.
I ran into a high school acquaintance, from London, Ontario (Canada) in a small side-street cafe in Istanbul.
My boss, who lives in Tokyo but was born and raised in Toronto, was best friends growing up with a woman who was in the same Naval Reserve unit as I. On weekend exercises, she was the one female officer I could count on to come along (whenever there were female students, there had to be a female officer), so we were frequently the only two officers there.
A co-worker of mine finished her university degree at a small but well-known Nova Scotia university. Going down a flight of stairs in a club in Tokyo, we ran into one of her ex-boyfriend’s room-mates from when they lived in Halifax.
When I was wee, my family went off to Disneyworld for vacation. We were doing the usual tourist thing, and hopped into line for one of the rides – I don’t remember which one, as I was basically knee high to a grasshopper at the time. It turns out that an older couple ahead of us were actually one of my father’s patients.
Half the country away and we get into line for the same ride…!
Oh – one incident that happened recently. 
I went to my class reunion as a sort of spur-of-the-moment thing. I hit all the usual lectures and panels and whatnot that they do at reunions. And someone came up to my interpreter while I was talking to an old dormmate, and started asking them questions about ASL. This isn’t unusual (but the funny thing is, they so rarely ask me, they prefer to ask my interpreter. :dubious: )
So I wandered back after I was done talking to my dormmate, and said hi. Asked the guy if he was from my uni, and the guy said that he was just keeping an actual alumni friend of his company. We chatted a bit, and it turns out that he has family in Seattle, so of course I asked where. His brother lives about 5 minutes away from me, and likes haunting a certain coffee house. My interpreter had trouble spelling it as it’s a very unusual name, but I jumped in and said “<Coffee house!>”, and he said, “Yeah, that one!”
I had to laugh at the coincidence. Of all the places to run into someone pert near local to me…
Just this morning I processed a file for a new client of my company. Who just happens to have been my geometry professor back in college.
Small world indeed.
Here’s another. A couple of years ago my dad and I were sitting up and watching a program about Gulf War I. As would be expected, the program included interviews with a number of retired commanders from that campaign – one of whom was the father of my best friend from third grade.
Not quite amazing as others but here goes:
A friend of mine and I go to Toronto (from NY). Party all around town and wind up in some small club. Look at people in the next booth and there’s a girl we bullshit with all the time at our local health club. She was in TO for a wedding.
I said it wasn’t amazing. 
I forgot another band one. Back in post #31, I related how I came to be in my band. Well, after we booked the snake but before I met the rest of the members, I found myself standing in line with one other guy to buy a ticket to see Alice Cooper in Chiliwack. I got chatting with him and mentioned that I’d be escorting the snake for this great tribute band that was playing the night after Alice’s concert. Yep, he already knew all about it.
He was our bass player.
No way. I went to school with John Smith too!
Go figure.