I got an EM from one of my cousins the other day. James and I have never actually met, although I have met his sister.
James is in the Air Force. As a hobby, he flies R/C helicopters, and competes in R/C events.
The EM he sent me told of being at an R/C event recently, where he noticed a big tour bus (of the type that I drive…entertainer coach) pull up
He and the driver started talking, and discovered that the driver is an old friend of mine!! I’ve known Mitch for years
Now, I find it bizarre (and pretty cool <G>) that an old friend would happen to run into my cousin and actually find a common connection!
So… let’s hear some other “small world” stories!!
Mom always said there’d be days like this…she just never said there’d be so MANY of them!!!
I used to use a local BBS called Tampa Connection. I struck up a conversation with a guy named Brent. Turns out, Brent went to the same HS I did in Ft. Lauderdale (he was 2 years behind me). We were now attending the same college. He knew a lot of the same people I did (my collges has over 30,000 students). He was living a few buildings away from me in the same apartment complex. It just totally freaked me out that out of all the people in Tampa who used that BBS, I would end up talking to someone who was so close to me in so many ways! We finally met face to face not long after that, and it was he who introduced me to The Weenie Head (another version of Shitboy). I haven’t forgiven him for that one yet.
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.–Coleridge
One summer when doing the Eurail europe tour, I met a group of women (two americans, one finnish) who were looking for the youth hostel. Since I knew french, was going in the same direction, and had a map, we went together. The next day the finnish lady ditched her friends for the day and went with me to the Louvre. Then in the evening we parted ways, she to go on with her friends to germany, and I for Holland.
A week later I ran into the same three people walking down the street in Inverness (scotland). I always regretted not visiting that finnish lady in her hometown. She seemed to take an instant liking to me (and me to her), and that doesn’t happen very often.
La franchise ne consiste pas à dire tout ce que l’on pense, mais à penser tout ce que l’on dit.
H. de Livry
When I worked for *A Major Airline in Dallas[\i] we used to tease a colleague of mine about knowing someone every where we went. She’d been with the company several years, and had worked in various departments. As a result, anytime we were near people from other departments she always knew at least one person. Once we were on a business trip looking for assembler programmers in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. That evening I went to meet her and and my boss in a bar. I found my boss at a table, and asked “Where’s Cindy?” and he said “Oh, she bumped into somebody she knew, and she’s up at the bar talking to them”! We NEVER forgave her for that one! I still tease her about it to this day. This was seven or eight years ago.
My wife had been living in Tampa for several years and did volunteer work for the local community radio station (WMNF – great station, I miss it now that we have moved). Every year they host a huge ash called Tropicla Heat Wave, multiple bands/venues, thousands of revelers, frolicing in the streets, good time had by all who can remember (and many who can’t), etc. So, she gets last-minute free tickets to the show from her volunteer work. I can’t go; our best friends are unavailable; so she goes solo. Ten minutes after she arrives she runs into her cousin, whom she has not seen in 8 years. He had just recently moved to tampa for graduate school and some friends had draged him to the party.
My story – slighly more embarrassing.
A friend is getting married. He lives in Central Nowhere Florida. I used to live there but had just relocated to Tampa. He comes down my way for the bachelor party debauchery. OK. No problem. Tampa leads the US in strip clubs per capita, both high-quality and not. So, a group of us are doing circuit, and we end up in one of the medium-raunchy clubs. It’s my turn to provide, so when I see my buddy’s eyes focus on a particular dancer I break out the wallet. They go off together. They come back, both smiling, and she sits down to join us for a drink. Then she starts talking to me. By name. Okay, I figure, jokes on me. Buddy told her my name and prompted her. Good one. I laugh, tell her I don’t think we’ve met. So she describes my old house, in detail. Her story is that I had picked her up in a bar years before when SHE had also lived in Central Nowhere (trust me–we are not talking a large population to draw from). My story is that she crashed a party and I never saw her. But I’ll change it if I think of a better one.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
Arnold: You had luck. I know several men who have “visited” those ladies and now live in a place with 6 hours daylight in December.One guy was stuck there 30 years. I’m going to check up on him, he finally escaped.
When I was 18, I had a penpal from Australia. We communicated for about four years, and she even came over to meet me and everything. We had tons of things in common.
I moved to Melbourne six months ago, and decided to see if I could track her down, but I didn’t know if she was still here, married, dead, or what, so had no leads.
I was at the train station about six weeks ago, where a familiar looking woman stood chatting to the newspaper guy, but I wasn’t certain, so I waited a while before asking outright. Luckily, I saw her name on her notebook, and knew it was her!
It turns out she lives about five streets away from me!!!
Went round to her place last week - had a barbecue with her and her SO, then saw James Bond.
We get junk mail daily for previous residents of our condo. One recent piece was addressed to a name I recognized as someone I used to work with. Since he is still with my old company, I tracked him down and found he out used to live in the same unit about seven years ago, before I met him.
Years ago my dad was invited to visit several European industries in connection with a process he was developing for GM. He messed around with the itinerary and his vacation and brought my mom along. In Germany, they found themselves standing next to a couple talking in really familiar accents. Turns out that they are also from SE Michigan.
The men each mention where they work and it turns out that my dad and the other man have a mutual friend who, in turn, it later develops is a cousin to a classmate of mine (mildly bizarre–we are the only classmates from our village going to a small college in Detroit).
My mom and the lady compare notes, each mentions an earlier life in Indiana, and they discover that they are (2d) cousins who never knew the other existed.
Back on the old AOL/SDMB I replied to a post using some terminology that caught the eye of the husband of a frequent poster. He made a guess about my background and she IM’d me to ask about it in a friendly way. We compared notes and discovered that I had a classmate who had later been a classmate of her husband.
Cancun, Mexico. I’m lounging by the pool at the Kin Ha hotel soaking up sun and suds and hear a vaguely familiar voice. I look up and see, just a couple of chaises away, a pair of friends from Toledo. I hadn’t seen them since they had married and moved to Las Vegas about 3 years previously. Their room at the hotel was just two doors away from mine.
That turned out to be the best vacation I ever had just because they were there. We had a great week.
Dopeler effect:
The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
I met this girl at a bar in Crystal City, VA. We spent the whole evening chatting, when the topic came up about braces (for teeth). I mentioned how I still had had two bands on my back molars after I moved to the DC area. An orthodontist my mom knew said he could remove them, but he would need to confer with my old orthodontist. Well, it turns out my orthodontist had died in a plane wreck, so the new doc was clear to remove them.
My new friend remarked that her old orthodontist had also died in a plane wreck; a small plane he was piloting with some of his assistants. Same situation as my doctor. Yes, it was the same doctor! But we had received our treatments in western Colorado 1600 miles away!
It turns out she had lived in a little town in Utah, and went to the “big city” of Grand Jct., CO, where I grew up, for her orthodonture.
We don’t know if we were ever at his office at the same time, naturally. I wouldn’t’ve recognized her either: she was in her early teens, and I was 19.
