It's a small world

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

OK, try to follow me here.
About 3 years after my wife and I were married we discovered that we played together one night when we were about a year old.

My dad and her uncle were going to college to be pharmacists back in '70 in Madison, Wi. They sometimes went out together on the weekends. One weekend her uncle invited his sister (her mom) to come along and she brought her little girl (wife) with her. My parents and his sister shared a baby sitter for the night.
20 years later we met again at the restaraunt in Milwaukee we both worked at and ended up together. We found out at some family function where my dad and her uncle recognised each other and then realised the two of us had been introduced some 20 years ago. For some reason they didn’t recognise/meet each other at our wedding.

22

Some years ago, I went on a long trip and found myself.

23

A man stumbles up to the only other patron in a bar and asks if he could buy him a drink.
“Why of course,” comes the reply.
The first man then asks: “Where are you from?”
“I’m from Ireland,” replies the second man.
The first man responds: “You don’t say, I’m from Ireland too! Let’s have another round to Ireland.”
“Of Course,” replies the second man.
Curious, the first man then asks: “Where in Ireland are you from?”
“Dublin,” comes the reply.
“I can’t believe it,” says the first man. “I’m from Dublin too! Let’s have another drink to Dublin.”
“Of course,” replies the second man.
Curiosity again strikes and the first man asks: “What school did you go to?”
“Saint Mary’s,” replies the second man. “I graduated in '65.”
“This is unbelievable!,” the first man says. “I went to Saint Mary’s and I graduated in '65, too!”
About that time in comes one of the regulars and sits down at the bar.
“What’s been going on?,” he asks the bartender.
“Nothing much,” replies the bartender. “The O’Malley twins are drunk again.”

24

About 6 years ago, just before my son was born, my OB-GYN in New York City told me she was leaving the practice and moving to Hawaii. A couple of months later my mom calls me. Seems she’s got a new GYN in Lihue (island of Kauai, HI) and her GYN sends her regards. Yes, my OB moved to the same island my mom and sister live on. She’s delivered one of my nieces and my nephew too. That’s weird. In fact, I just told my sister to send the doctor my best.

My husband and I met at work (in NYC). We like to go hiking, and we were in Wyoming, in the Wind River Range, when a group with a few donkeys carrying supplies were coming down the mountain. We stepped aside to let them pass and came face to face with a former co-worker, who was using the donkeys to carry his photography equipment. We used to admire the nature photos in his office. As soon as he got home, he told people he’d seen us, so when I got back, everyone kept saying, “So, I hear you saw Rich in Wyoming!” Busybodies. :slight_smile:

25

Someone on the SDMB (at least, someone formerly on the SDMB) has the most amazing small world story imaginable, involving an airport, an author, a book, and a married couple.
Anyone? Anyone?

26

Years ago, my dad was in Paris, sitting in a cafe, when he saw someone he had known years before that. He was about to say something, when he realized he didn’t really like the person to begin with, so he kept his mouth shut.

27

In Laos we ran into an American couple living in Saudi. They were the next door neighbors of other Saudi-American friends we knew from 12 years earlier.

28

My great uncle Jack was chosen for the English cycling team in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. While watching some of the other events, a bloke came up to him and said , “You don’t know me, but I’m your cousin from New Zealand.”
They kept in touch and eventually that other bloke (Brian or Brian’s dad - the story is muddled now) sponsored the family to move to NZ
My parents only met because I had two relatives representing their countries at the Berlin Games.

Oh and, my mothers family grew up in the poorer area of Glasgow. They came out to NZ for a better life and my mum married a nice NZ Boy, whose mother had been born in exactly the same poorer area of Glasgow and moved to NZ for a better life.

29

This isn’t small world stuff but one morning my wife’s aunt stepped out onto her front porch, waved to the neighbor across the street and got into her car.

She and the neighbor backed into each other in the middle of the street.

30

When I was in 4th grade my parent’s house caught on fire, thankfully we were on vacation. The local fire department’s pretty close knit, and well known around Houston. Two years after that my sister catches a muffin on fire when she leaves it in the microwave too long, and the department comes back over. By this time most of them recognize the house and my poor mother has to put up with much teasing about the second visit.

Fast forward ten years, my uncle’s working on the Long Island rail road. Some new guy comes in, and they strike up a conversation. Of course, he lived a few streets away, worked in the fire department, put out both fires in the house, and played golf with my father at the local golf course.

31

After my folks got married, they were reminiscing about their childhoods, started comparing notes, and discovered that they had each seen the other daily as they carried competing newspapers in the same neighborhood in their early teens.

On a trip to Philadelphia, we ran into our metro Detroit neighbors in the Betsy Ross house.

On a trip through Europe, my folks heard some other people on a Rhine cruise boat speaking Great Lakes American. They introduced themselves and in the ensuing discussion discovered that the woman was actually a shirt-tail relative of my Mom, (2d cousin plus removed), and the man worked for a company that my Dad had helped get off the ground and was, in addition, the cousin of a family who lived in our town whose son was in my class at college. None of the four had ever met or known of the existence of the others prior to the meeting.

A departed poster once asked about my education background based on something I had posted. Comparing notes, we discovered that he had worked with a former classmate of mine for a couple of years and had a mild crush on the classmate’s wife, whom I also knew.

32

I lost touch with my best friend in elementary school and then re-initiated contact 10 years later through Facebook. The world really is getting smaller.

33

Myspace and Facebook are very interesting things. In general I stay away from that type of sociolizing, but it’s good to see what people are up to. In a not so recent visit to Colorado to see family and just vacation I saw a girl who looked exactly like my high school crush. But I was too scared to go over and talk to her, and I figured what would be the chance that I run into her in Colorado of all places anyway (both of us were Boston-area residents).

But man oh man did I have a heavy crush on this girl. It was the super emo, loser-guy thing for the pretty girl who he made laugh, while she made him smile. I think there were about two awkward dates, but thanks to having no enthusiasm and no sparks it never turned into anything. I missed her so much, and that was a terrible summer where I felt us moving apart socially.

In college, all I had were pictures. Good days, days like spring flowers, and that feeling of the warmth of a pillow laying in the sun. Days like old, riding bikes, and skinned knees. Oh how I missed her. But, just pictures.

When I got back from Colorado, after years of trying to move on, grow up post-college and start other sorts of life, I decided that there would be no harm in looking her up on Myspace. And there she was, in Colorado! It was her after all.

I had my second chance, to at least say hello, try to reconnect, maybe spend some time with her, but I passed up the chance because I was too damn chicken.

Myspace said she was studying at the Colorado Technical University.

Oh, and also a lesbian.

Myspace and Facebook, very interesting things.

:eek:
(If it seemed like an overly sappy and dramatic post, it’s because it was.)

34

Chowder, I just came in to say, “Thanks for the earworm!”

Thanks, buddy. :wink:

It’s a small world, after all.
It’s a small world, after all.
It’s a small world, after all.
It’s a small, small, small, small world.

Hey, why should I suffer by myself?

35

Yeah, that goes through my head too every time I read the title. Only it’s usually a small or bald squirrel, just because.

I’ve always wanted to do an It’s A Small World video, narrated in the style of Apocalypse Now. ‘Never get out of the boat…’

36

I ran into not one, but two people I knew while I was in Tokyo one day. One was a guy who used to work at the same office I did when I first came here. I’d only just met him a week or two before when he dropped by to see if anyone he knew still worked there. The other was a young woman I’d met at a seminar in Los Angeles about a year before (she was quite attractive, and I have an exceptional memory for faces, which is why I remembered her). That was weird, since Tokyo is a really crowded and relatively large city in area too.

At a KMFDM, Lords of Acid, Rammstein concert, I saw a girl I’d met years ago in my community college fencing class. That wouldn’t be that much of a coincidence, if it weren’t for the fact that we met in Stockton and the concert was in LA, about 350 miles away. The only reason I was at the concert was because my soon-to-be ex had bought me the tickets as a birthday present. (Too bad the bitch didn’t break up with me before going, because the good bits of the Nerfherder’s song Nosering Girl kind of describe how I felt about this girl. Nosering, hot, fun, shared interests. Total crush, totally unrequited.)

37

I ran into a friend from college while on a ferry going to another country. But I get that kind of weird connection all the time because I still live in my home town, so maybe not that weird.

However, when I was young I would always walk a certain route through my estate on my way to school. This route took me past a house where I was certain I heard Guinea pigs in the back garden. My family denied ever hearing anything. Years later when I was talking to my GF about where she grew up it turns out she lived in that house and there were Guinea pigs in there.

Weirdest one was on my first ‘date’ with my wife. I’d told no one about it but the moment I got back in my door I got a message “Are you going out with <insert wife’s name> ?”

It turns out my future wife had told her sister. Who told her best friend. Who was going out with my friend. Not sure if it counts as small world, but bloody small town.

38

Bobbio, that was on my personal calling cards for years! [Steven Wright fan, too]

In 1975, I was on an air mattress floating in the pool at my apartment just outside Kansas City (Parkville Mo). It was the middle of the day, on a weekday. A guy pulled up a lounge chair pool side. He was wearing a UW tee shirt.
I told him I was from Seattle. He said, he was too. Then I qualified that, saying I was from the small town of Kent, outside Seattle. He was too! He asked what year I graduated. 1964. He did too! Our class was less than 200. Neither of us recognized the other. Our names weren’t even familar.
At the time, he was a pilot. His friend, who lived in the complex, let him stay during his few hour layover.

A couple years ago, Hubby and I were coming back from Las Vegas. We got to our middle and window seats, only to find his second level boss in aisle seat. We were plesantly surprised, but, she appeared to be less so.

39

After college, I moved to Salt Lake City to ski and figure out what to do with the rest of my life. My roommate picked up random shifts at this little bar (the rest of the time, he bartended at one of the more popular microbreweries). He called me from work one night and said he’d forgotten something (can’t remember what) and could I drop it by? So, I stopped in there for a few minutes on my way to meet some friends. As I’m standing there talking to him, a group of guys walk in. It turns out one of them was a good friend of mine from college…I’d met him my first night there, he dated my freshman roommate, then dated one of my sorority sisters. It turns out, he and his friends were flying (out to California, I think) and had a layover in Salt Lake. His connecting flight was delayed and they had a few hours to kill, so they had a cab driver drop them off at a bar…any bar. I ended up taking them with me to the party I was going to and we had a great time.

40

This happened to a friend from Canada, not to me.

A year or more ago she corresponded with someone on another message board about moving to New York. Then this random person who might move dropped out of sight. Maybe she moved, maybe she didn’t. Nobody knows. They didn’t know each other besides a few posts.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of this Canadian was in New York at the Museum of Television & Radio, looking up an old Daily Show episode. One of the employees saw this and remarked on it, and in the course of conversation it came up that the MTR visitor was from Canada and had been recommended to visit the MTR by another friend from Canada. MTR employee says, “Oh, I talked to this woman from Canada on XYZ Board a year ago about moving to New York and now here I am.”

“Oh, my [real-life] friend who said I should come here is on XYZ too.”

“This one was really into comedy and knew all about standup.”

“Um … that sounds just like my friend.”

Within seconds they figure out they are talking about the same person.