It's a REALLY small world

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I was just saying in another thread how small the world is today (what with the internet, etc) and it reminded me of one of the weird “small world” that happened to me recently.

I was out in Ottawa taking my Masters and was using e-mail to keep in touch with friends back home. One of my buddies had the e-mail mkbates@_______ (for Mark Kent Bates). So we happily exchanged e-mails for the fall semester. What I didn’t know was that he only had that e-mail for the fall sememster (got it because of a class he was taking)

In any case I returned to Ottawa for the winter semester and continued to e-mail him at the same address. Didn’t get any replies right away, but didn’t really think anything of it (thought he must have been busy, etc).

Now this is the small world part of it. My parents went over to my mother’s cousin’s house for dinner. Her son (my mother’s cousin’s son that is - yeesh talk about complicated) and his girlfriend were over for dinner as well. During the dinner convesation, my mother mentioned I was out in Ottawa going to school. The son’s girlfriend (whose name was Mary Kay Bates - email - mkbates@_____) then said that she had been getting these strange e-mails from this guy out in Ottawa and she had no idea who he was. That’s right - I was sending e-mails to her thinking I was sending them to my buddy and she just happpened to having dinner with my parents that night.

Like I said it’s a REALLY small world.

Anyone else have any good small world stories?

2

I’ve told this before, but here goes:

I met this girl (i.e., woman younger than me) name Tric (pron. “trish”) at a bar in Arlington, VA. We hit it off, and were talking for a couple of hours.

The topic got to orthodontics. We had both had braces, and were discussing the many pains of them. I mentioned how I had moved here before my orthodontist had removed my last two bands. After a couple of years I went to a local orthodontist to have them removed. He said he didn’t see why not, but that he needed to confer with my hometown doctor anyway, so I gave him that info. He called back and said I could go ahead and have them removed because my old doctor had died in a small plane crash.

Tric said that was strange, because her orthodontist had also died in a small plane crash. Then together we said, “Dr. Christiansen!” It turns out that we went to the same orthodontist for years in my hometown of Grand Jct., CO, 1600 miles from where we met. (She lived in Moab, UT, and came to GJ for her appointments.)

She’s about 8 years younger than me, so I probably wouldn’t have noticed a 10-13 year-old girl at my appointments. But it is possible that we did have appointments the same day.

What would Brian Boitano do / If he was here right now /
He’d make a plan and he’d follow through / That’s what Brian Boitano would do.

3

I was born and raised in a small nothing of a town in SE Texas. There was a population of probably 30,000 when I lived there. Fast forward to 1989 or so, to a bus stop in Albany CA. Start chatting with the guy in line behind me. Come to find out, he’s three years older than me and went to the same elementary school I did! Of course, I don’t remember him, but still.

Fast forward again, to 1994. I’ve been flown out to nowhereville Montana (Garryowen, population 1, if you must know), to research/write a collectibles catalog for my pal Chris and his crazed buddy, Putt. Putt’s wife Jill is EXACTLY my age and was born and raised in the same SE Texas town I was. No, I didn’t know her either, but these two incidents have given me every reason to believe:

a) it’s not just a small world, it’s a frighteningly minuscule, infinitesimal world;

– or –

b) I’m the center of the universe. :wink:

StoryTyler
“Not everybody does it, but everybody should.”

4

I have one.
My first of university here, I was put in rez(the same one I am in right now, as per my choice). I did not know my roommate before move-in day, not what she looked like, where she was from, nadda. So we moved in, and got along great(I love her to pieces, I miss a roommate).
Now, I have taken pictures of most of my floormates, and Kimmy was no exception, and when I went home for the first time last year( Thanksgiving weekend) I took my pics to show my friends from home. My friend Jenni from home was looking at the pics while we were all having a coffee and smokes when she looked at the one of Kimmy and practically screamed. I looked at her “what? what’s wrong?” She looked at me smiling and asked if Kimmy had a brother, I said yes but couldn’t remember his name(I’d only met him once by then) Jenni then asked if he was called Gumby(a nickname) I said could be…Jenni ran to the phone nearly knocking people down to call her bother.
She asked her brother if Gumby had a sister named Kim, he said yes and they confirmed the last name but her brother didn’t believe it.

Turns out my friend Jenni’s brother Steven and my roomies brother Jay(Gumby) had been roomates for 3 years while here at Western.
And Kimmy was from Pickering, and I had lived in the same city for 2 years-she worked at a diner close to the street I lived on.
that’s my story :slight_smile:

I am a fire whose flames lick and spit at the boundless sky forever desiring wonderous consummation
-me

5

Here’s one: (100% True)
The summer after completing college, I went on a camping trip about 500 miles from home. During the camp-week, the group swapped childhood and high-school stories; I told stories about high school high-jinx and about my best friend in high school. We drifted apart after hgih school graduation and had lost track of each other. Later that week, we went into town for dinner and I literally bumped into the guy I had been telling everyone about just days before.

My fate keeps getting in the way of my destiny.

6

I grew up in Arizona, and moved here to Virginia a few years ago with my husband. My senior year of high school, fall semester, I went to live with my dad in Florida.

At my husband’s new job, he works with a guy who moved here with his wife from Tennessee. She went to the same high school that I did in Florida.

–
“it’s all real”
“I KNEW IT!!!”
O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com

7

Okay, my turn. Aside from a few people who seem to move in and out of my life like Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield, I have the following collection of coincidences from the past few months:

I was born and brought up in a small city (W)(30,000) in upstate New York, a county seat, with a second county nearby of even smaller population; its county seat (L) is only 3,000. Just across the county line on the road to L is a village © of 800 people. Just west of my home town is are two villages (B and D) of a few hundred people with a central school covering a couple of townships west of my hometown. About 40 miles south is a village M of about 1000.

In 1997 some close friends moved to this area, and settled in a hamlet of 100 people. We came to visit, fell in love with the area, and moved here in 1998. I found this job in June of 1999.

Okay, the following list of coincidences:

  1. The matriarch of the family we came to visit is from D. She attended the central school in B, as did her older brothers and sister. Nothing odd about that.
  2. Her next door neighbors, whom we had never met until after the move, are from M.
  3. Our next-door-but-one neighbors, whom we had never met before the move, are from C.
    That’s about 20 people total out of the 100 in our little hamlet from our little rural area in New York.
  4. Shortly before leaving my job in New York, I had done a survey analysis for the L government. The CEO of the town was a Mr. B.
  5. When I got this job, I was introduced around. One of the engineers on staff was Mr. B’s son.
  6. The lady coordinating workshops our firm conducts is from B, as is her husband. They attended school with the older siblings of the lady in 1.
  7. When I had car troubles, I caught a ride with a staffer who was born and brought up in this area, in a little village about 10 miles from where I live.
  8. I received e-mail from Dewaholic, who was curious about me posting from Raleigh since she had lived here before moving to upstate New York. It turns out she had worked for the same firm.
  9. When Dewaholic has her formal wedding this coming fall, one of her bridesmaids will be the staffer who had been giving me rides to work.
  10. Last month, she and I collaborated on preparing a map for a client. The map was of Montana. StoryTyler, can you guess one of the communities we had to flag?
8

This one happened to me just recently:

I graduated from a high school in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1991. A girl I had dated for a while moved to another school in 1990. I hadn’t spoken to her since then.

Now, I’m in Lubbock, Texas, about 300 miles away. About two weeks ago, I got a message on my answering machine from her. She’s been married for five years, and has been living in Lubbock for the past two years and happened across my name in the phone book! What are the odds that we’d both move 300 miles away from home and end up in the same city? (All told, my high school graduating class had 63 students.)

Anyway, I’ve only spoken to her a little, and emailed her twice. We’re hoping to meet up soon and do a catch-up thing.

It really is a small world.

9

In high school, the pastor of my family’s church in Arkansas was a California native who had relatives in Arkansas and had decided to see what it was like. While he seemed to enjoy living there, his wife, who was of Japanese ancestry, was much more comfortable in California, so after a few years they moved back. While he was very much a mentor to me at the time and I still consider him a great influence on my life, we didn’t stay in touch at all.

Seventeen years later, I’m attending a trade show in San Francisco. As I get to the bottom of one of the escalators in the North Hall of Moscone the day before the show opened, I’m stopped by a reporter from one of the local news stations, who wants to ask me some standard meaningless questions about the show on camera. I answer the questions, never expecting that they’d end up using them – fifty thousand people to choose from and they broadcast my mug? Don’t think so.

Second day of the show (two days later), I’m immersed in a conversation with a potential customer toward the back of our booth, when one of my boothmates comes up and says that there’s a guy who wants to talk to me and mentions the pastor’s name. Turns out he’d seen me on the tube (I had no idea they’d used the clip of me), despite rarely watching that station’s news broadcasts, had recognized me in time to make a note of the company name, and had come down to the show to find me.

We missed hooking up that trip, as he came down with a nasty flu the next day, but we did get together and spend a long morning catching up on one of my subsequent trips to SF.

10

In teenage years I lived in the midwest and had a very, very dear friend, whose parents I was also close to. Just prior to graduation, friend and family moved away and out of touch. Fast forward some six or seven years - I had since moved to the southwest and had been working for a company there for a couple of years. One day I walked in to find a new temp sorting papers at a desk - it was long-lost mother of long-lost dear friend. I was floored.

The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go.

11

I have two, one for me, one for my husband:

I went to University of Maryland and was friends with a guy there…he dated a couple of my friends, we went to same parties, etc. When I graduated, I moved out to Salt Lake City. This was a spur of the moment thing…I decided to go and left three days later, didn’t really tell too many people, etc.
Two years later, I was at happy hour and in walks the guy I knew in college. Turns out, he and his friend had gone skiing, were on their way home, and had a delay in their flight. They just came to the bar to kill time (it was fairly close to the airport). My friends from SLC, my friend from MD, and his friends all went drinking & dancing before they had to leave.

My husband’s story is better, though. He comes from a town in Australia that is fairly small (not like Sydney or Melbourne, but not exactly a bushtown). He had been in the US a few years and was going to a party with some friends somewhere in rural VA. They couldn’t find the party, but they found a local watering hole and went in. One of the few people in there was a girl he knew from his hometown in Oz. She was travelling with some friends by car and they also had happened upon this little bar. Now, that’s pretty small-worldish.

12

Okay, so I’m sitting at a bus stop in Jerusalem, and this girl turns to me and says, in English, “Don’t you go to UC Santa Cruz?” I’m completely floored, and I don’t even recognize her. Turns out she had gone to UCSC and we’d been in a Anthropology class together, although I’d never have known her in a million years. Very weird.

~Harborina

“This is my sandbox. I’m not allowed to go in the deep end. That’s where I saw the leprechauns.”

13

Okay this isn’t really interesting, but…
I went to a Catholic school for my freshmen year of H.S. in Kentucky and then the next year we moved to Colorado. My sophomore year, I’m in jazz class (in Colo.) and this kid who heard I went to that particular school in KY says “You know my brother right?” Now I didn’t know who he was, but he told me how his brother was living out there and true enough, I knew who he was talking about. I thought that to be weird.

It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.

“The idea of a walk-in closet sounds frightening. If I’m ever sittin’ at home and a closet walks in, I’m gettin’ outta there.” ~George Carlin

14

I was working at a bank, and in doing so, I saw many of the same people every day. I would chat with them as I did their banking, and got to know some of them pretty well. One day last summer I was talking to one of my regular clients, and she asked me what my new surname would be when I got married. (My maiden name was a fairly common Italian name, and my new name is Jackson.) I told her and made a comment that at least with my new name, people would be able to pronounce it. That got us started on the topic of my maiden name, and how I hated having to correct people on the pronunciation. That was funny, she said, because her aunt and uncle have that name too. I told her that that was funny, because I had never met anyone else with my last name, even though it was fairly common. She asked me where my family lived, and I told her that I wasn’t really sure where that side lived because my parents split up when I was very young, and my father’s side never kept in touch. I told her what I did know, which was my paternal grandparents first names. Her jaw dropped, and she said “Holy shit, that’s my aunt and uncle! We’re cousins!”
The weirdest part is that I had seen this girl just about every day for 2 years, and this subject never came up until I was two months away from changing my name and moving 200 miles away.
That day I gave her my home phone number, and told her to call me, so we could talk at length. That night, as soon as I walked in the door, my paternal grandmother called me. I hadn’t spoken to her in over 20 years. Since then I have met many members of my family, including my father. I also found out that I have two half-brothers, and I’m going to meet them in about 2 weeks.
Wish me luck!
Rose

I told you not to be stupid, you moron.

15

i was at a castle in france in '97 when the group i was with ran into another. we asked where they were from, and it turns out it was a small town only fifteen minutes away from our city.

then about a year later, i found out that my boyfriend (at the time) was one of the people in that other group.

“If anybody wants a sheep, that is proof that he exists.”

16

Something Tom of tomndebb posted on a thread once raised the antennae for my husband and me, and so I initiated my first-ever IM with Tom (this was last summer, I think). Turns out that Tom had gone to school with a friend of my hubby’s, and, IIRC, was present at the wedding of that friend at which my husband was the master of ceremonies. All this back in the 1970s, in Michigan.

-Melin

17

Four years ago, I was in New York City with my then-girlfriend - first time she had been. We saw Phantom (I know, I know, but she had never seen it and wanted to) and after the show, we strolled along Times Square and turned down 41st Street… just enjoying the evening and sort of looking for a place to have a drink.

We find a likely-looking restaurant, duck in, and ask the maitre d’ if we can have a table. He explains that they’re expecting a private party and have no tables… we’re turning to leabe when he does a double-take and says, “Rick?”

I had worked with the guy years and years ago, doing dinner theater, of all things, in Woodbridge Virginia! He had decided to move to New York to seek his fortune in the theater world, so of course he was working in a restaurant. :slight_smile:

Anyway, we got a table.

  • Rick
18

I went to Poland one summer for eight weeks and the whole time I was there I felt like I was going to see someone I knew. For the last three weeks of my trip I was camping out in Southern Poland by this town called Katowizie (sp?) where they’ve got this mountain called Gievant, the sleeping giant. Well I never did meet anyone I knew but I did do a lot of hiking.

Oh, one of my ex-girlfriends inwittingly slept with her third cousin. They met again later at a family reunion. I’ll bet that was funny. Anyway, she joined the other team later, but man can she play pool.

This is MPSIMS right?

19

Two events.
There is an acquaintance I met here in Albuquerque soon after I moved here a couple of years ago. His name is Jeff and I used to see him at a local breakfast restaurant or when I would go see his band play. We were talking one day about where we had lived in the past. As is turns out he had lived in Athens, GA during the same years I was in school there (he’s about 13 yrs. older). His girlfriend and bandmate at the time had also lived there with him.
It gets better. During another discussion we found out that he had been a counselor at a camp I had attended at Western Carolina University. It was a large camp and he had been a counselor for the older boys. Interesting how our paths keep crossing.

Another instance involved my backpacking trips through Europe. A friend of mine who had attended Duke was traveling with me. During our two week, 8 country whirlwind, we ran into 2 of his friends in 3 different cities and an acquaintance of mine from college while entering a bar in Prague. (My guess is that this probably happens a lot to college kids traveling across Europe - too damn many of them).

I am large,
I contradict myself,
I contain multitudes.
~Walt Whitman

20

I was on vacation at Club Med in Martinique and met 2 girls there; Jodi and Hunter. They were both from Miami, but neither knew each other before the trip. Jodi and I really hit it off and kept in touch after the trip. But as time wore on, it became less and less frequent until it had been about 5 or 6 months since we’d had any contact. Hunter and I did not keep in touch, but she’d be impossible to forget, seeing as how she was Hunter Reno, one time supermodel and niece of Janet Reno (although this was long before she became “famous”).

The following year I went on vacation to Club Med in Guadalupe. While there I met a guy from Paris, France named Gerard, whose nickname was Gigi and we had a little holiday fling.

I had to change planes in Miami for my trip home to St. Louis, and while I was sitting in my seat waiting for the plane to take off, I hear someone say, “Jill?” Well, who should be sitting across the aisle from me but Hunter! What a coincidence that we’d met on my trip to Club Med the year before and were on the same plane, right across from each other, after my trip to Club Med a year later.

When I got home and checked my mail, lo and behold, after 6 months of not hearing from her, there was a letter in my mailbox from Jodi. So I called her up and said, you’ll never guess where I just walked in the door from and who was on my plane. All this contact between the 3 of us in the same day and we hadn’t spoken in 6 moths to a year - what a small world. Well it gets even smaller. While telling her about my trip and the guy from Paris I’d met, she said, “His name wasn’t Gigi by any chance, was it?” What are the odds of that?

Well it turns out that Jodi had met Gigi on one of the Bahama islands a year before she met me, and had had a fling with him herself!

So here’s a girl from Miami meeting a guy from Paris in the Bahamas and having a fling. Then a girl from St. Louis meets the girl from Miami in Martinique a year later. And then the girl from St. Louis meets the same guy from Paris in Guadalupe a year after that, and has a fling of her own with him. So 3 people from 3 different cities, thousands of miles apart, meet in 3 different places, thousands more miles apart, none of which are the places any of us were from, and we all know each other, ahem, intimately. Now that’s <font size=1>small</font>.

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” - Anne Frank