I was at PetCo park this weekend, and knew an old Kenyan roommate I hadn’t seen in a year would be at the rugby tourny. As I was walking down the corridor, I pulled out my cell phone to call him. After a couple rings, I saw a guy digging for his cell phone. At a park with around 20,000 people present, I was within twenty feet of him when I was trying to call him!
Last night, I took a gal I’ve been seeing out for a Valentine’s dinner. I made reservations, but we still had to wait about ten minutes or so. We were seated directly next to one of my rugby buddies, whom I carpool with. Stranger still, him and his party said they were talking about me as I walked into the room!
Have any strange coincidences of running into somebody when you weren’t expecting it?
When I was in high school I met a cute girl and asked her to the Friday night dance. She accepted and we had a great time together, I really liked her and she really liked me. So, as the evening ended we were trying to make plans for when we would meet next. We really wanted to get together the next day, Saturday, however we both had commitments.
I had a job doing regular yard work and maintenance every Saturday for the family of my church group leaders. Her parents were going to be going to the football game with some friends and she was going to be staying at the family friend’s house with the daughter of the family. So, I told her I would call her on Sunday.
So, I show up on Saturday and start to work painting the garage. After about a half-hour a car pulls up and a some people get out - including my girl! We had no way of suspecting that we were both going to be at the same house the next day! The parents all left for the game and I had one of the best days of my young life! (Yes, the daughter of the family was there too, get you’re mind out of the gutter.)
Many times.
The most impressive was the time I met a friend from Upstate New York in the middle of Times Square. I was living in Utah at the time, and she was living in Washington, D.C. But even if we knew we’d be in Times Square at the same time, there’s a fgood chance we’d miss each other. That I ran into her there by chance still floors me. (It’s the last time I saw her, too).
I was attending a convention in San Antonio, Texas and ran into a former co-worker who was vacationing down there. We were both living in Massachusetts at the time.
I ran into an old roommate rom New York in a supermarket in Massachusetts
I ran into an associate from Salt Lake City while canoeing on the Concord River in Massachusetts.
I’m constantly amazed at these coincidences – not only were we in the same place, away from where we knew each other (and sometimes from where we were living at the time), but we happened to be there at precisely the same time. And we did see each other, rather than missing each other.
This makes it virtually certain that there were many more cases in which I just missed running into associates by a day, or an hour, or by 100 yards, or because we both happened to be looking the wrong way. Because there are so many more ways of NOT running into someone you know than there are where all the factors line up favorably.
Before I got my current job, I had one where I took the bus. I met a very nice woman who got on and off the same bus at the same stops as I did.
I got fired from that job and got this one. A month after I started, the bus stop lady walked into the office of my new job. Turned out she was one of my Boss’s closest friends. They grew up together.
We used to live in upstate NY. As time went on our best friends moved to western NY, we subsequently moved to the midwest and they ultimately move to Tennesee. About 10 years after their move to W. NY and about 5 years since we saw them last we were at Disney World Epcot having lunch at the German place (bleh, by the way) and I heard the distinctive voice of our buddy from upstate NY. I looked over at the table next to ours and reconginzed him. I started sing songing his name and a couple of the people at his table brought it to his attention. He was there for a convention. Good times.
SO and I took a red-eye from San Diego to Pittsburgh; when we got off the plane at 4:45am, one of her colleagues from SD was standing there. It turns out that the colleague’s father had died suddenly and she had just disembarked from another flight.
Well, I was sorting mail one day at work, and I came across a postcard from SF. It had a picture of Alcatraz on it. Against the rules, I read the little printed blurb, and it said there was a prison governor or somebody with the given name “Olin”. I have NEVER heard of the name (though I’m sure about ten dopers will now come forward with it) and assumed at first it was a misprint of “Colin”. But it was capital O, and it seemed ok. The very next letter I sorted was to a person with the female form “Olina”.
I am nearly forty years old, I sort thousands of letters a day, and I have never heard of either name before or since.
Last summer, I went to Japan for two weeks. A few months prior, I became online friends with a Japanese woman living in Kyoto. We planned to meet up in Kyoto one weekend. Two days before we planned to meet in real life for the first time, I was in Kyoto for the Gion festival. Who do I see at the subway station but her!! We meet up randomly in a city of 1.5 million people. Craziness. We had a great time together that night. (not in the bedroom unfortunately).
When I first came to Japan, my company had an orientation in Oregon, and I met this cool guy who was going to be assigned to Chiba, a few hours from my assignation. We were leaving to different parts of Japan the next day, so I figured I would probably never see him again. Well, a few weeks ago, I went to an obscure wine festival in a nearby prefecture. I was sitting there with some friends when he suddenly appeared–he was the friend of a friend of a friend! He didn’t remember me though. What an ass.
