I went to college in Boston in the early 70s after attending junior high and high school in VA. When I met one of my suite-mates, he mentioned that he was from Concord, CA. I told him that I used to live in Walnut Creek, CA, (which is near Concord) in the 50s and attended elementary school there. I hadn’t been back in over 10 years.
Suite-mate: “Really? Do you know Susan Jones from Walnut Creek?”
Me: “Yes! She was in all my school classes from first grade and I had a terrible crush on her.”
Suite-mate: “She was my high school prom date last year.”
He had met her at some regional student government conference a couple years previously.
In about 1981, I flew out to L.A. to spend the summer with an uncle in Santa Monica (maybe the Jewish equivalent of Rumspringa?]
I was about 16, but wanted a job. Being an aspiring audiophile, I applied for a job at a high-end stereo shop and got an interview.
Midst the interview, the interviewer – the store manager – took a phone call. Whoever he was chatting with, he asked that person, “What’s the name of that chiropractor you think I should see?”
Having received the answer on the phone, the store manager repeated the name aloud just to confirm it.
Yeah. The chiropractor’s name was the same as my name, first and last.
I responded only by whipping out my driver’s license and showing him.
We both had a laugh, but I didn’t get the job. Despite applying as a 16-year old, they told me I wasn’t old enough to work there.
Back in the mid 1980s I was with some family members getting some pics made at an Olan Mills. While waiting our turn, there was a little blonde girl (~5 or so) with a woman I presumed to be her grandmother. The child had a somewhat unusual name, and Grandma kept talking to her, basically asking her to be still so that she wouldn’t mess up her hair or clothes for the pic.
20+ years later, I’m eating at a restaurant, one which I frequented pretty fairly, and as such, most of the waitstaff treated me with a somewhat looser demeanor as opposed to all business. One who had worked there a couple of years had that same unusual name as the little girl from Olan Mills. She was also a blonde. So, at one point when she was waiting on me (as she had done countless times before), I started this conversation:
Me: I have a question for you. Are you originally from this area?
She: Yes, I graduated high school right across the river.
Me: OK, here’s why I ask. I remember back in the mid 1980s I was waiting with family to have some portrait photos done at Olan Mills. I remember there was a lady with a little blonde girl in a blue dress, and she kept talking to her to try to get be still. Is there any chance that might have been you?
She: [Blank stare, pregnant pause] Yes! In fact, I know exactly what portrait you’re talking about!
She confirmed that that was indeed her grandmother, but she was deceased by this time, so she couldn’t share the story of that coincidence.
I met my wife in college in 1980, but she was already involved with the man she would marry when they graduated in 1982. I fall out of touch with her after that. Fast forward about 30 years, and we reconnect, sparks fly, and we become engaged and get married within about 18 months.
She was born in Tehran in 1960 because her father worked for the US State Department.
My stepmother was a British citizen living in Tehran at the same time, working as nanny to an American family.
The first time I met my father-in-law-to-be, we discovered that he worked for for the father of that family. (Hated him.)
Separate story that falls in the category of Small Jewish World: Last Rosh Hashanah we were about to enter the Rhode Island synagogue that my wife’s daughter and her family attend when we saw a woman taking pictures of the plastic pink flamingos in someone’s yard. I jokingly commented that (like me) she must be from Baltimore (a references to Baltimore native John Water’s infamous 1972 film of the same name). In fact, she was!
But that’s not all. When we mentioned that we lived on the North Shore of Boston, she said she did too, and it turned out that she was the landlady of a work colleague and friend of my wife’s. She was there because, like us, her grandchildren’s family were members of that shul.
Quite a few years ago, I was at a village yard sale day. A lot of places around here have these; they try to get as many people as possible who are in or near the village to hold a yard/garage/barn sale on the same day. People come from all over, food vendors join in, most villages add in some event or other (bed races, anybody?), traffic is terrible and the streets are also full of people on foot, and a good time is had by most and money made by some.
I came across an old pressure canner. No info with it, but I knew I could get it checked at Cooperative Extension to make sure it was working right, and it was going for five bucks at a time when new ones of that size and quality were going for maybe 200. And I wanted a pressure canner. So I grabbed it.
Something like three blocks over, same day but otherwise unrelated yard sale, there was a table with multiple boxes full of books and pamphlets. And in one of those boxes — was the forty-some year old manual for my pressure canner.
Interesting idea, but I just googled and I see multiple sites confirming the existence of the other woman with my wife’s name. If it was identify theft, they went to an amazing amount of effort to plant fake info in multiple places.
There is a lot of truth to this. In a similar vein, there was a similar thread to this a few years ago (that’s not the coincidence). People were talking about walking across a plaza in Prague or whatever and running smack into a next door neighbor. Someone (I think @Chronos) pointed out that statistically for every one of those encounters, there were probably more near misses where you were just a few feet away or a few minutes apart and never saw them.
A couple of others; snakes are rare in the UK, I’d guess most people have never seen one in the wild, and even very outdoorsy people may only have a handful of sightings.
Years back, I was taking a friend to a local nature reserve, where I was a regular visitor. As we were walking round, she asked me if adders were found in the reserve. I started responding that ‘Supposedly, yes, there’s occasional sightings according to the visitor book, but I’ve been coming here for years and I’ve never seen a single sn…’ at which point I spotted the adder by the path.
In my life to date, I have seen 2 wild snakes in the UK. That was the first, and still the only adder. Yeah, they pretend to be deaf, I don’t know if I believe it.
Several years ago I was vacationing with family in an area about 300 miles away. One day we stopped for ice cream at a corner ice cream shop in a very small town. We were sitting at a picnic table in front of the shop, enjoying our treats, when a loud noise made us turn our heads. There was a collision at the intersection. We watched with mild interest as the post-collision events unfolded.
A few days later I’m back at work. I overhear a conversation between two cow-orkers: “…yeah, we were on vacation when this jackass ran a red light and crashed into us…”
Of course it was the same collision that I had witnessed.
My mom has a common birthday. I went to high school with 3 kids with this very birthday. My next-door neighbor shares her birthday too.
The real unbelievable truth is last year I took her to an x-ray + dr. appointment last year, on her birthday. The x-ray tech said “OMG today is my birthday too!” then after the doctor appointment we were talking with the scheduling lady and she said it was her birthday too! It was wild that 3 people with the same birthday, that very day, were all in the same building.
Also, I share a birthday with the old man who lived behind me, and the younger lady who lives across the street from me.
A couple of dorm mates of mine and I were on Christmas break in FL from MI. As often happens on vacation we got into a conversation with a couple who, as it happened, were from MI and whose son lived in the same dorm as us. Small dorm 96 students total, even split between the sexes.
