Okay, this doesn’t get close to Shayna’s but I thought of another one. Last year, whilst travelling in Italy, I ran into a girl I knew in Israel TWICE in two days. There I was, standing at a random streetcorner in Rome, and I hear “Kyla! Kyla!” I look up and standing on the other side of the street is this girl. The next day, I ran into her again, but that was at the Vatican, so I wasn’t too surprised, it being a natural for tourists. When I got back to Israel, I told that to this guy and he told me that during that same vacation, he’d been in France and ran into a couple girls from our school in the Louvre.
~Harborina
“This is my sandbox. I’m not allowed to go in the deep end. That’s where I saw the leprechauns.”
<hijack> i was having a conversation about how small the world is. i mentioned how it seems to get smaller every year.
an old man who was eavesdropping interrupted me and in a condecending tone explained to me that the world was in not getting smaller. that it is in fact, the same size that it has always been.</hijack>
In the late 80’s, I met a guy at a party in Georgetown, Ind. We started talking and it turned out we marched in the same protest march on July 4, 1978, in Washington, D.C. (a march to protest the Carter Administration’s decision to spray paraquat on marijuana. Peanut Jimmy reserves all his compassion for the third world, apparently.)
In 1978, this dude was living out west and I was living in N. Carolina.
My manager came into my office to find out what classes I was taking (I work full time and take 3 classes a semester, kill me.) I tell him I’m taking a Shakespeare in Film course. Turns out he got his M.A. at the school I’m going too, and that the professor of said course was his advisor. I told the professor the first night of class, and he was very excited. That was 6 weeks ago.
Last week, the kid sitting next to me is flipping through the suggested reading that is on reserve for our class. The professor comes over and starts talking about the reading, and how “This one was written by my friend who is a professor at MIT.” My ears perk up, and I look at the author’s name. He’s my mom’s cousin. (first cousin, once removed…) I am fairly close to his mother, my great-aunt. He’s good friends with my professor. I get all excited and squeek “I think I’m related to him!” I explained the whole thing, but I think everyone in the class thinks I’m a nut-case. Feh.
After graduating from HS in Alexandria, VA and going off to college in Hartford, CT, my parents moved to another house in Alexandria.
Talking with one of my college classmates later that year, I find that her uncle and aunt were the previous owners of that house, and sold it to my folks.
I went to a one-room school for the first 4 grades, with the same teacher each year. This woman was from River Falls Wisconson and she was practically my second mother. Many years later I met and married my wife in Connecticut. We were visiting my in-laws in Minnesota, where my wife is from, and went to visit my wife’s godmother, who lived in River Falls, Wisconson. While we were there I asked if she had ever heard of my teacher. She said they played cards together every week and were best friends.
Not a terribly exciting tale of small-worldness, but one nonetheless:
In May 1998, just having completed some field work in southern Italy, I was standing in line at the Rome (Fumicino? spelled wrong, but anyway…) Airport getting ready to check in my bag-full-o’-rocks and get my boarding pass. My advisor and I strike up a conversation with an old couple standing behind us: they’ve noticed our terribly rock-laden bags and they mention that they have a passing interest in geology because their daughter got her degree in geology. Where did she get her degree, we ask. Their reply: some small school in west Texas you’ve probably never heard of… which turned out to be the school I recieved my MS in geology from, except she was there about 10 years earlier. They tell me her name; we part ways.
End small world story part I; begin part II.
Now that I’m back employed at my former school, I relate the tale to my friend and former (MS) advisor. After all, it’s not often that you run into someone who’s heard of this school in this state, much less in Europe. When I mention her name, he smiles: “She was the love of my life for several months.”