I am trying to improve my pool game, so I have started going to a bar on Saturdays and playing for an hour or so. I go to this dive bar out in the country because it is cheap and it isn’t busy.
Last Saturday the bartender came back and said “What is your name?” I told her and she said “The phone is for you.” No one knows I go to this bar. I live alone and no one would even know I was out to be honest. I told her so. She asked the person on the phone for a last name and of course it turns out that they were not looking for me.
Today, I am sitting in my cube and the receptionist comes back and says: John Jones is here to see you. “No” I say, “I am not expecting any John Jones.” She says “He asked for you by name.” As it turns out, he was in the wrong building.
Two people looking for (my real first name) bump into me in one week. If one were to believe in portents, what do you suppose this one means?
Sometimes I get bored in class, and during a particular week, I decided to write an ad for my local wiki (daviswiki.org) on my desk. It was in three different rooms on one desk each.
The other day my bf tells me how he was taking this midterm and noticed that someone had written on the desk. It said “more info than a lecture: daviswiki.org”. After he told me how cool he thought it was, I admitted to writing it. It took a lot of questioning before he believed me, that out of the thousands of desks on campus, he sat in one that I had sat in and mildly defaced.
I started to work with my current roommate while we were in college, about 100 miles from my hometown. She grew up in a tow roughly 80 miles from my hometown. We got to be friends while working together and one weekend she went to visit her parents. When she got back, she told me, “We have a picture of your dad on the wall in my living room.” What? Turns out that her stepmom used to live in my hometown and had worked on a community theatre play with my dad. The picture was a full cast picture.
Two years ago I got an email from a lady in Irvine congratulating me on graduating college. She went on to say she didn’t want to bug, but if I’ve finished the video I shot for her she’d love a copy.
I had just graduated with an animation degree, but I also do video production, too. I had no idea who this woman was, but after a little Google-fu I found my namesake. He had just gotten a film studies degree from UC Santa Barbara. The twerp beat me to a listing on IMDb and uses my name on mySpace. (he can have that one)
I forwarded the email.
(We should start a club, there’s a petroleum safety expert in Austrailia with my name, too.)
One day a few years back I was riding the bus home from work and reading a book about hermetici philosophy. It made some passing reference to Plato’s Symposium, and I scribbled in my notebook that I needed to obtain a copy of that.
When I got home, my new girlfriend was waiting for me on the porch. On the way over, she’d picked up a giftie for me, which she put in my hands before I opened the door: A slim volume from a second-hand book store; Plato’s Symposium.
Given the subject matter of the Symposium, you can bet that I was quick to file that one under “Portentious.”
In 1966, I briefly living in an apartment building in Nashville. I was there for less than six months. In 1969 I returned to the same apartment building to move in for the summer. When I got on the elevator, I noticed some mail that was torn in half and stuffed into the ashtray. It was my driver’s license renewal form.
I don’t recall why it came in an “off” year back then. Maybe it was renewed every three years.
My sisters and I all had the same math book in second AND third grade.
that is, second grade math book number five has all three of our names scrawled inside the cover, as does third grade math book number seven.
There’s a boy in my sister’s class who was born on the same day in the same year and within the same hour as she was. They are both blonde, both taller than average, and are the two smartest in their class. Next year, they will be sharing the position of student council president.
My next-oldest sister and I looked very similar when we were younger. We were both blonde, she was tall for her height and I was short for mine, and we tended to stand right next to each other a lot for no partaicualr reason. We got a lot of strangers coming up and asking if we were twins and a lot of people mixing us up. Teachers, especially, called me by my sister’s name an annoying amount. So I eventually just responded to both names.
then I got to high school. My family was not at all involved in my high school, so nobody had ever met my sister before. By the time I got to high school, we no longer looked alike and only old ladies from church who couldn’t remember which child had grown into which teenager still confused us. I was sitting reading a book after school waiting for rehearsal to start, and the theatre teacher/director called me by my sister’s name. When I responded, it was clear he was talking to me. I asked why he had called me that particular name (and explained that it was my sister’s) and he had no idea.
In a similar vein, there’s a girl in my dance group with the same name as my youngest sister. She’s about the same age as the middle sister. When we’re in public, people often ask if we’re sisters. Apparently we look alike. It happens often enough that now when someone asks, “is (sister’sname) your sister?” I say, “you mean blonde (sister’sname)? no, we just look alike.” instead of, “yeah she is! how did you know my sister’s name?”
I grew up in a smallish town with two telephone exchanges. One was 849, and this one had been used forever for our town and some surrounding towns. When I was about 11 or maybe a little younger, they introduced a new one, 842. Most numbers were 849 and some of the new ones would be 842. Since 849 was more common, most people would dial it as a reflex.
Anyway, when I was 12 we had to have our number changed. My new phone number was, let’s say, 842-1234.
My name is Lynn. At 849-1234, there was a Lynne. She was my age and in my class.
We both had brothers named Mark and fathers named John. I’m sure you can imagine the amount of confusing wrong numbers we had, her family more so than mine, as they had the more common 849 exchange. There was one amusing event once in high school, though, when a guy attempting to call Lynne called me instead. When he found out it was me, it turned out he was looking for help in calculus and I was in his class too.
One more:
My dad went golfing once a few years ago, and he met a guy who was visiting from across the country. They joined up and golfed together for the day. After a little while, the other guy realised he hadn’t introduced himself. He stuck out his hand for a shake and said, “John Raithbheartaigh[sup]*[/sup].”
My dad said, “Yeah! How’d you know?”
They did indeed have the same name.
[sup]*[/sup] Not my real last name, but it is close, in a way. Where I’m from, my last name is rare and everyone who has it is related to me, but according to Google it’s not too rare anywhere else. I’ve still never met anyone else with my last name, so it’s pretty funny to me.
I was on vacation in Colorado and was in the bathroom in a honky tonk somewhere near Aspen. I was chit-chatting with another girl and we were remarking about how we were familiar with the band from clubs in the Chicago area. I asked her where she was from, and she said Fox Lake, IL. I said I had a cousin who lived there. She asked what her name was, and I told her. Her jaw dropped and she told me my cousin was out in the bar. I hadn’t spoken to this cousin in years. Totally freaked me out.
I went to a very small private school in Philly for grades 7 though 9. One of my classmates, who I knew but with whom I wasn’t particularly close, was Ruth Williams. (Real last name – since it’s in the top 10 most common surnames, I don’t feel like I’m blowing her cover.)
Fast forward four years; I’m in college, at UC Santa Barbara, 3000 miles away, having moved to California between 9th and 10th grades. Summer between sophomore and junior years, I meet my college BF, who I’m with for the next four years. When we meet, one of his roommates is Scott the Psycho, who’s on SSI for psych issues. Smart guy, but very weird. Prided himself on being weird. (Went on in later years to make serious money in real estate, but that’s another story.) Scott’s last name is Williams.
Yup, Ruth’s cousin – which I found out a few years ago when I met up with some people from the small school in Philly for dinner.
I went to pick up a girl I just started dating at her apartment which she shared with another female roommate.
The girl I’m there to see does not know my last name at this point.
She invites me in and I sit down on the couch and glance over at the coffee table and see a drivers license sitting there. I bend over and notice that the guys name on the liscense is almostexactly like mine, both first and last names (it would be like Tony Kukoc, verses Toni Kukoch). I get a little nervous because I have a Croation last name and it is very rare. My first thought was that this girl knew my last name and how it was spelled and that this other guy was here first and something happened to him and now I’m next. Like she’s tracking down all the people in the area that have the same sounding unusual name for some nefarious reason, except she was hot so I had to get over it.
She comes out of the bedroom ready to go out and I ask her about the license. She says she doesn’t know the guy and that it must be her roommate’s friend or something. So, they’re both dating two different guys with almost the exact same unusual names?
I tell her my last name and show her the drivers license that was on the table. She of course doesn’t believe me so I had to whip out my license to prove it. Now she gives me this awkward look like I’m setting her up or something. She claims she never saw that license sitting on the table before.
Now we’re both looking at each other like each one is crazy.
Well, let’s just say the night ended up going well after that, strip poker is always a swell nightcap.
I never did confirm who the other guy was. But his name was in the phone book.
When I was a freshman at college, I met and made friends with a guy in my dorm. We both liked to party and hung out a lot. We came to find out that our fathers, who both went on to become Drs., met as freshmen in college (different college), liked to party and hung out a lot.
I’m a native Houstonian, graduated high school in 1966. In December 1980, I was sitting in the lobby of the Sari Pacific hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, when the parents of my best friend in high school came walking in. They did a double-take, walked over to me and said, “Clothahump? What are you doing here?”. Turns out that they were on an around-the-world trip, lucky them.
In 2002, my wife and I vacationed in Florida, flying to Miami then driving to the Keys. We had no firm agenda. With a day left, we decided to drive across the state to Naples. On the way, I pulled off at the Shark Valley area of Everglades National Park on a whim. While we were there, we saw a couple of guys with a long camera lens taking pictures inside of a large pavilion. It turns out there was a big hawk perched in the rafters, and this guy and his son were taking pictures of it. We chatted with them for a bit and then took off for Naples.
In December 2005, we took a cruise which included a stop at the Panama Canal. While we were there, we took an excursion that involved riding a bus to several spots in the jungle and then hiking to look at sloths, monkeys and birds. On the bus, there was a guy sitting right behind with a long lens on his camera. Yep, the guy from the Everglades. This time, we got his email address and stayed in touch, since we were clearly intended to be acquainted.
Last year, I was on a plane, flying from Amsterdam to New York. I was sitting next to a very nice German woman, and we talked for much of the long plane ride. Towards the end, she asked me where I went to school, and I told her the name of the small liberal arts college that I attend. She got very excited and said “Oh! I know someone from there! Twenty years ago, a professor from there stayed at my house while visiting Germany.” The professor whom she had met two decades ago was my favorite professor. Very small world.
I was walking my dog last night and a man on a sidewalk attempted to pet her. She’s cute but skittish so I said “Oh, she’s a little skittish. If you do manage to pet her she’ll likely just pee on your shoe, so you might be better off just skipping it.”
He looked at me oddly and said “I know you. You’re the skeptic.”
I said (cautiously) “Yes, I’m a skeptic. How do you know that?”
He said “You used to work at (XYZ place) and one night you and I talked about James Randi, pseudoscience, and you ranted a little about religion.”
I said “Yes, I’m still a skeptic, and I still do that. I hope I didn’t offend you.”
He said “No. I’m a skeptic, too.”
I said “And, you have an amazing memory- I haven’t worked at that place for over 20 years!” and walked away.
How cool is that?
Who remembers a conversation and a face from a one- time conversation so long ago?
When I graduated from high school, my parents took me on a 3 week trip to Europe. When we arrived at Heathrow and went out for dinner, I ran into a friend from high school who I had jut graduated with at the restaurant in London. A couple days later, I bumped into her on the subway. We then traveled to Munich and Zurich, where we saw the same street performer in each city that we’d seen in London. And then on the flight home, we were sharing a plane with the same friend from school. Three times in London, we ran into her. Three times in different countries, we ran into the same busker.
The next year, we were hosting an exchange student from Denmark. We were showing him photos of our trip to England. He recognized one of his classmates in a photo, who was taking a vacation in London at the same time we were.
Where I’m from, my last name is rare and everyone who has it is related to me, but according to Google it’s not too rare anywhere else. I’ve still never met anyone else with my last name, so it’s pretty funny to me.