Just moments ago I was linking to a story under discussion in another thread here on this board and when the ABC News page came up, there was a picture of an old SO that I’d not seen in a dozen years and that I’d dated for longer than anyone else, save my wife.
blinks twice, rubs eyes
Well I’ll be damned. It really is her. She’s the model for a health segment, apparently in a yoga or Pilates class. I had to refresh the page a couple of times to get her pic to come back up, as they’re rotating a couple of different ads in the spot, but Bam there she is again in the beige, sleeveless top.
Being quite happily married, I’d no real lingering curiosity about her other than wishing she was well because she truly was a nice person and, from the photo, it’s clear that she’s healthy and at least looks happy. That’s nice to see, even if the abrupt coincidence was a bit of a shocker.
How bizarre to have a significant someone from your past suddenly appear before your eyes from way, way out of the blue. I hope you’re treated to the same someday as well by someone that makes you smile.
In about 1975 I dated a woman (rather briefly) who, much later, became an astronaut on the space shuttle. Some years after the last time I heard from her, I read a news article that mentioned that someone with her name was entering the shuttle program, but as her name was not too uncommon I wasn’t sure it was really her.
Some 10 years after the last time I had heard from her, I went to see an IMAX film about the shuttle program. There was my ex-girlfriend on the screen about 50 feet tall. Quite a surprise.
A few years ago I was reading the newspaper. On the front page of the regional section, there was a story about a young girl who had just graduated from high school; she’d been in a fatal car crash. Turns out her father was a guy I dated very seriously for a while. He ended up marrying the girl he’d originally dumped to start dating me.
It was a little weird. I wrote them a sympathy note (addressing it to the funeral home because I had no idea where they lived). For several weeks after that, he popped up in my dreams every now and then.
I found out that my ex-boyfriend was getting married when I read a post by his fiancee on a messageboard. That, too, was bizarre. I think it had only been about 6 months since he’d dumped me for her, so I might have freaked out about it for a moment or two… :o
This story is sort of the OP inside-out but I saw a *current * SO in a public medium. One day I was home (I worked the night shift) and flipping through the t.v. channels. I stopped on a hokey children’s show with Mr. Coveralls dancing around a studio barnyard with a banjo singing “The cow goes moo! And the chicken goes cluck!” or something like that, and just as I was getting into the groove I noticed a little girl sitting on a bale of hay, boppin’ to the tune. It was my wife! I recognized her from childhood photos. I put a tape in the VCR and called her at work. When she came on the line I just asked, “Were you ever on a television show?” She sounded very surprised and said that she was an extra on some shows for public television because she was a neighbor of a director of children’s programming. Weird.
Late last year, I got a newsletter in the mail from a charity I donate to. I never read them, so I was in the act of tossing it in the trash when something caught my eye - a picture of a person that looked vaguely familiar. I read the story, and it was about a new employee, the girl I went to my H.S. prom with 20 years ago, 2000 miles from here! She looked exactly the same. It turns out she lives less than a mile from me. Bizarre.
