I had a strange feeling today when I checked Facebook, and there was a photo of two people I know, who were both in Antarctica now at McMurdo. It just seemed really weird checking on person’s page and seeing the other on there (as far as I know, they didn’t know each other before this.) And a notably strange and rare place for them both to meet.
Has this happened to you? Any odd stories about people you know meeting each other?
I can think of a couple of cases where people that I know, that don’t know each other, end up meeting due a marriage.
For example, I was at my parents house for Christmas a few years back and an old friend from high school walked in the door. No one mentioned to me he was coming. I’m assuming no one knew that I knew him. It turns out my brother’s wife and his wife were college roommates.
Another one, kinda from a different point of view. I’m at work, chit chatting with one of the younger kids (I’m late 30’s, he’s in high school). We were talking about his car and I mentioned that I had only driven a Fiero once…then I looked over at the high school cashier and said 'and come to think of it, it was your grandmother’s Fiero". The cashier’s mom and myself we’re really close friends in high school, but sort of drifted apart before she was born so she knew of me, but I don’t think she realized how close her mom and I were. Like, that I’d been to her grandmother’s anniversary parties or have pictures of me and her mom that were taken years before she was born.
I am not sure this is what you are asking for, but it’s a nice story anyway:
When I was in high school we had something like a career room. Every once in a while we had to go and read about being a welder or some other nonsense like that. There was an older woman who was a teacher’s aide or a volunteer there. One day she said that I looked familiar to her and asked about me and my family. It turns out she had babysat my father, in a town about an hour’s drive away.
Not that exciting but…my best friend and I both went to the same college. We spent a lot of time together and we didn’t make many friends. I made one friend in my morning AP English class, and my best friend made a friend with the guy who sat next to him in band.
Turns out it was the same guy. We’re still all friends 20 years later.
I’m Facebook friends with a woman I went to high school with. One time I mentioned something about my mother on a FB post, and this high school friend of mine told me to say hi to my mother. They had worked together after we graduated from high school.
I met TubaDiva through a StraightDope problem years and years ago. As an admin, she sent me an email and in it, asked me a question about my email address leading me to discover that we shared a hobby. A couple of years down the road, I got to meet her in person and discovered that we are doppelgangers, which has since caused a lot of entertainment for us. Sadly though, I can’t play tuba.
About 5 years ago, we were meeting Mrs FtG’s cousin* and spouse that she hadn’t seen in a while. We were catching up on what the kids were doing. Got into a “Oh, my kid’s a teacher too. Where? Ours does too. What school? …” cycle. Turns out two second cousins both worked at the same school and didn’t know they were related. Once informed it became for them a “This is sort of weird.” thing.
- They at one time lived next door to each other when kids.
The town where I grew up is about one hour away from my ancestral hometown. One night during the local fairs, my group of friends got together with a cousin of one of my pals and the cousin’s friends; cousin and his friends were from my ancestral hometown, except from one who was from the other end of Spain. The faraway guy and me hit it off straight away, we had the same weird sense of humor.
Two days later I met him again, when we went to visit my hospitalized great-uncle. After one of our dads’ common cousins “introduced” us and toddled off “to leave you young kids alone so you can talk freely”, we jinxed “you HAD to be my relative? I was trying to get your contact information!” Mind you, that explained the sense of humor, it’s probably genetic…
My brother met his current wife in court. He was finalizing a split of assets between him and a long term girl friend. She was there finalizing a divorce. Both had the same attorney. The attorney took them out for lunch and like they say, the rest is history.
Before my dad retired, he’d occasionally take my mom with him when he had business overseas. It seemed that no matter where they went, they’d run into someone from their childhood neighborhood in East Baltimore and if they didn’t know each other, they all knew some of the same people.
Then after he retired, they would travel by RV or go on cruises, and more often than not, the same thing would happen. It must have been something about my dad, because since he died, Mom has continued to travel and cruise, but she doesn’t seem to have the same encounters any more.
OK, not exactly what the OP was looking for, but still, strange meetings…
Nearly 30 years ago, I was in the Japanese Gardens in the Seattle botanical gardens. My younger son happened to be wearing a McGill sweatshirt; I don’t know why. He came to me and said there was a man who wanted to talk to me. He had come up to my son and asked if he was a McGill Student. “No, but my father is a McGill professor”, my son answered. So the man started by saying his son was a student at McGill. Oh, one of 20,000, I thought but didn’t say. Then he added he was in grad school. I asked what department. Math, he said. So I asked what was his name since I knew a number of them by name from teaching grad courses. So he named him and it turned out he was my PhD student!
Neither of us lives in Seattle, but his daughter and my older son do.
I don’t really have any stories about “people I know meeting each other”. All of mine are about finding out years later that two people I know also know each other - possibly the best one was the day after my daughter’s wedding. I get a Facebook message from a childhood friend who says he couldn’t figure out why Facebook was full of J&B’s wedding photos - turns out he works with my son-in-law and had known my daughter for a couple of years without knowing she was my daughter (which he figured out because me, my sister and my mom were posting the photos)
Nearly a decade ago, I was doing physical training with a man who we’ll call John Doe. His name was not particularly common. John Doe had commented on something on my Facebook page, and my dad said “Hey! I taught a guy named John Doe! Is that the same guy?” I asked the guy I trained with it about it, mentioning the university my dad taught at, what subject, and what dates. Turns out my dad had taught my trainer’s dad, and now here my trainer was, teaching me!
I’ve been working with and friends with “Daniel” for 15+ years.
A number of years ago, my wife and I began attending a new church, and befriended “Julia” there.
A couple of years later, “Daniel” became engaged to “Alice”. My wife and I attended their wedding, and guess who we bumped into there? “Julia, what are *you *doing here?” Turns out that “Julia” and “Alice” are cousins. They’re at least 15 years apart in age, so there is no obvious physical resemblance between them.
Definitely one of those “small world” scenarios.
The strangest meet-cute (only it really wasn’t) of people I know was, a woman I worked with met a cop because he was investigating her estranged husband’s so-called kidnapping (spoiler, he faked it) and they dated and got pretty serious for awhile. Which was particularly amusing because she was kind of an anti-establishment sort. But, you know–chemistry.
Not a meet-cute but some odd coincidences:
I went to college in Oklahoma, then moved to Denver. I had been in Denver a couple of years. I lived in a duplex, a top floor/bottom floor situation and I lived on the bottom, with a roommate.
The guys upstairs had a big blowout of a party. A drunken guest of these guys–who we did not know before they moved in–stumbled into our place by mistake, and it was someone my roommate had known in college (in Michigan) who she had not known was in Denver. A few minutes later another drunken guest stumbled into our place by mistake, and he was someone I had known in college, who I had not known was in Denver. It was a strange coincidence of worlds intersecting. My roommate and I were like, “who else is gonna come through that door from our past?” But nobody else did…
During my post-college romp through Europe with two friends we saw a guy in the Luxembourg train station who looked a lot like a guy who’d gone to our school, but he’d transferred somewhere else so we hadn’t seen him in a couple of years. We established that it was that guy, and we traveled together for a couple of weeks. During those weeks we ran into someone else from our school and he (who had transferred to a school in Rhode Island) ran into someone else from his school. It was like everyone who graduated that year went off to traipse around the Old Country.
In junior high and high school I had a good friend, Karen, who moved away before we graduated. In college, I met and became friends with a girl, Mary, who reminded me a lot of Karen, in looks and behavior, in fact I first went up to her because I thought she WAS Karen, and I asked if they were related. Nope. Or maybe they knew each other and picked up each other’s gestures? They were so much alike. Nope. 20 years later when we were all getting back in touch for our HS reunion I reconnected with Karen, who now had the same last name as Mary, so I asked if she knew Mary and she said, “Oh, that’s my sister-in-law.” I was like well, guess they know each other now! (I have no idea how they met, and I have no idea if Karen’s husband noticed any resemblance to his sister. It could have just been me.)
I got called up for jury duty. Letter came. It said to come to court and be interviewed for jury they were seating for a manslaughter case.
I get to court and am in the first few to be questioned. The court person said to say my names and address. Did that. The states attorney was asking mundane things. I was answering yes or no. Not elaborating. The judge held his hand up to stop the lawyer. He looked at me and asked “Is your maiden name ???”, I sez, “yes it is”. He asked “Is your Sister’s name ???”, I sez “Yes”. He told me I was excused from jury duty from his court. He told the recorder to strike my name from the list. I’m thinking what horrible thing had my Sister done. The judge said to wait a minute. I deserved an explanation. Turns out he went to college with my Sister. They had dated a bit. But he met her dorm mate and then they dated and eventually married. He said he felt like my Sister hated him after that. Well, fine. That was ok with me. Didn’t wanna be on jury duty anyway. I coulda been impartial, I thought.
My Sister confirmed the story. She did, indeed think he was a jerk.
I briefly dated a woman about ten years ago, let’s call her Beth. I think two dates before we decided that we weren’t a good romantic fit, but we hung out as friends a few times after that, before drifting apart.
On three separate occasions, my current girlfriend would introduce me to one of her friends, and something they’d say would prompt me to ask, “Do you know Beth Lastname?” and they’d say “yes.” In one instance, the woman I was talking to was about to leave on a trip to a week-long conference and was sharing a hotel room with Beth.
My girlfriend, incidentally, has never met Beth, nor ever heard of her before we started dating.
When I first got to Ft. Riley, KS I was browsing some art being sold by the artist right outside the PX one fine saturday morning. Said artist kept looking at me funny and finally asked where I was from originally which led to her asking if I knew a man named Dad Vader. Yes sez I, only I just call him Dad. Turns out the nice lady was Dad’s cousin.
I had a friend “John”. In a land far away (60 miles) an unknown person, who later became wife, had a friend “Susie”.
Then I meet the unknown person and she becomes wife. And “Mary” becomes part of a social group that includes John and me.
Last Christmas, Susie (from the land far away) posted a picture from a family Christmas party. And in this picuture was John and Mary - as a couple. Wife saw the picture and pointed it out to me.
It turns out that Susie and Mary are sisters.
And, John and Mary hadn’t told the social group that they were a couple. So, I was the only one to know. They didn’t realize there was a connection to anyone from the group.
We knew a girl in college, let’s call her Mary Smith (not real name, obviously - but NOT a terribly uncommon one).
A couple years later, we knew another girl named Jane Smith.
When Facebook came around, we friended both of them.
Turns out they were second or third cousins; neither knew the other or even that the other existed - nor that they went to the same college (I think they may even have overlapped one year), until one of them saw the other one posting a comment to something my husband had said.
When Dweezil was a toddler, I joined a parenting email list, which had people from all over the US and Canada (and a few from Australia). When Facebook became a thing, I friended most of them on FB.
One day, I posted something about visiting Jane Smith (same person as above) while travelling. Two of the friends from the parenting list posted comments. Turns out, they all live in the same metropolitan area and had known each other for years IRL.
About 5-6 years back, I was at a farmer’s market (in Virginia) purchasing some apples. One of the fellows working there looked at me funny and said “where did you go to High School?”. Baffled I said “Um, (my home state)”. He said “(such and such) school?”. Uh, yeah, sez I. Turns out he went to the same high school and recognized me, nearly 40 years later. I had no memory of him whatsoever.