Small world/weird coincidences

Parent Cafe
21

Years ago when kids were small we took a trip to France with friends and kids (4 adults, 5 kids). (that’s crazy enough but that was on us). Before cell phones.

Leaving Paris we needed cabs to get to the Paris train station but each cab would only take 3 people (plus luggage). So 3 cabs and said we’d meet at the train station. What we didn’t know was that there were 3 drop off points at the station and each cab went to a different one. We arrived and waited for friends–nobody coming. A porter said “you need me” and we explained we were waiting for our friends but he remained with us and after a few more minutes said “you need me and you need to leave now to catch your train”. Then he said for us to run–and we did–and as we were RUNNING by a door it opened and in comes friends husband (kids in tow) who just arrived at this second door! We yelled “follow us” and we were all running. Porter packs the six of us up in a back elevator for employees only. We run down a long line of trains still wondering where other friend is. Get to the train door and friend flings open the door and throws the suitcases anywhere there was a spot to get us on. Husband opens the train window as doors close to pull out and flings bills out the window to the porter who just laughed and waved good bye. I know he was an angel in disguise.
It didn’t stop there that day. We reached our destination with a total of 15 minutes to pick up two rental cars. It was a day of very close calls.

9 Likes
22

Last Saturday I saw a woman I knew vaguely from church at an event and later mentioned to my husband to identify her “remember she was friends with X family.” X family son was friends with my son before they moved away 12 years ago. Sunday I saw X mother and son at church. They were back in town for a wedding. I hadn’t seen her in 12 years. It was like I conjured her up.

4 Likes
23

This is about my son and DIL looking at homes for their first purchase 10 years ago. While walking around, my DIL notices a picture on the shelve. At closer look, she realizes the man in the picture is someone she went to high school with, not in the same city. As she went to a smallish private school, she absolutely remembered the man; she did not know he lived in the same city.

They ended up buying that same house and reconnecting with the owner.

4 Likes
24

My mother has been a life long learner and at 86 still enrolls in at least one college course (either auditing or through an adult learner program) every semester. About a decade ago, she became good friends with Sophie Freud, Sigmund Freud’s granddaughter, who also had a passion of learning and attended the same classes. The day after Sophie’s funeral, my mother received an update from Ancestry.com that she and Sigmund ( and thus, Sophie) were (distant) cousins.

8 Likes
25

I have MANY small world stories.

  1. First day at my London Study abroad program, in walks Steven ____. He and I graduated from the same suburban high school in So Cal, but never moved in the same circles. We attended completely different colleges. We were both on a “six year plan” and were a bit older than other juniors.
  2. Standing in line behind me at the Bureau de Change at JFK about 35 years ago was a guy from my British boyfriend’s coastal village. I was on my way to see this boyfriend, and this fellow was on his way to LA, where I was living at the time. The guy knew my boyfriend well.
  3. One day at a coffee morning about 19 years ago, in the northeastern state I live in now, a new woman showed up. We recognized each other and after some brainstorming, realized we both attended the same toddler music group back in the small neighborhood from the overseas metropolis we used to live in. Which relates to…
  4. A few weeks ago, a friend I haven’t seen or spoken to in 17 years messages me out of the blue. “Is it my imagination, or have I seen your daughter twice in the last month here in ______?” I said “She moved there last month from ______ (totally different part of city) and it is not your imagination.” We had lived in that neighborhood when D was a small child. I had no idea this friend was still living in the neighborhood.
  5. In a tiny village on the Costa Rican Caribbean coast, well over 30 years ago, the guy in the hut next to ours turned out to be from the same small village overseas as my ex’s cousin. They knew each other well.
  6. On a flight back from the UK, I went to the back of the plane to stretch my legs. There was my friend’s daughter, but with totally different hair to the last time I had seen her. I walked by again to be sure and it was her. We gave her a ride home from the airport.

Perhaps the biggest one…
I met hubby about a year before we started dating. During that time, I was on a local radio program, using a pseudonym and fake profession. Hubby kept thinking “that sure sounds like Lindagaf, but Lindagaf isn’t this person’s name and has a different job. And I have only met her once, so maybe that isn’t her.” He thought I sounded flaky :rofl:

6 Likes
26

My wife and I were on a vacation in Los Angeles. We visited Universal Studios and were gazing out at the San Fernando Valley from an overlook. I turned and standing a few feet away was the daughter and son-in-law of our best friends. They were on vacation too. We had dinner together that night, 3000 miles away from our homes in Boston.

5 Likes
27

But can we trace all of these coincidences back to Kevin Bacon? Iykyk

12 Likes
28

A friend (really a coworker) DID go to high school with Kevin Bacon.

8 Likes
29

What is the kosher equivalent, because for Jews I swear it’s only 2-3 degrees. I can almost always find a common thread while playing Jewish geography, and it seems I’m way more likely to run into old friends, neighbors, camp friends and Rabbis :joy: in Israel than I ever do in the States.

On one trip, I ran into an old classmate that had moved cross country, an old camp friend and an old Rabbi all at the same tourist spot.

5 Likes
30

I saw the Bacon Brothers performs years ago at a venue 3 hours from home. At the stage door after (I was getting an autograph natch) I said I was from Philly too, because I figured the name of the tiny town where I was living at the time might be too obscure for them to know.

The next month I read a magazine profile on them and it turns out they summered in the tiny town where I was living - like a half a mile from my house LOL.

3 Likes
31

I used to live next door to a somewhat Famous Musician and their spouse, and they had a preschooler the same age as mine. They were very low key people, it’s just that sometimes they’d go to the Grammy’s or be on an international tour. (This was not a fancy neighborhood, we were in the woods.)

We didn’t have a fence between our yards and the kids would wander back and forth playing regularly. One hot day we set up a slip and slide, and I was out there with the kids and the spouse along with another kid who was visiting them. The kid’s father introduced himself, adding the context that he was out visiting for a few days as he was Famous Musician’s manager (he and his family live 5000 miles away on the opposite coast).

The kids continue playing, and the new kid’s mom walks out of the house, does a double take and exclaims: [my name] - is that you???!!

I also did a double take! For yes, it was me—30 years earlier we were in Girl Scout Brownies together in a different city, in a different state.

Talk about a small world!

We catch up that afternoon but don’t stay in touch as they live 5000 miles away, but it was fun to see each other that day.

Fast forward 10 years…

Famous Musician’s spouse has passed on my email to her and she is reaching out because her family is moving across the country to the west coast. While they were on a whirlwind tour of looking at houses, they visited one house for sale and were walking through it and something felt odd to her. They continued walking through the house and opened the door in the kitchen to go down to the basement, as it had been renovated as additional living space. Behind the basement door were pencil markings with the names of children and the dates, marking their height…from the early 1970s and 1980s. The current homeowner had repainted the entire stairway, but purposely left these children’s names and dates behind the door.

It hit her in that moment: those names were my name, and my sibling’s name, and this house was the house where she had been in Brownies with me in 1st grade…because my Mom was our troop leader.

She burst into tears, and told the broker, who said…oh my goodness, yes, we call this The [My Last Name] House, because they were the prior owners, and they lived here for over 30 years. The current owner just bought it a few years ago.

They didn’t buy the house, but she reached out to send me a picture of our names and the dates still behind the door, all these years later. :face_holding_back_tears:

24 Likes
32

Our family has cousins ( my moms first cousin and her children) on the west coast. Most of us just keep loosely in touch but my brother was close to one of the cousin kids when he lived out there when he and she were young and single. So when my moms first cousin passed away my brother went to the funeral as the family representative. He had a nice conversation with the cousin he’d been close to and started talking to her son who he’s never met. Kid lived on east coast and mentioned he went to A school out there and ended up staying. “Oh my nieces fiancé went to that same school.” Said my brother referring to my daughter…..his niece. “And I think he’s your age, Do you know him” Turns out not only were they friends in college they still see each other, including the previous week when he had dinner with not only his friend but my daughter! They had NO idea they were related! Lol

5 Likes
33

We have lake property 5 hours from my husband’s hometown. Three sisters own a condo a couple places down from us and although friendly, we just never have gotten to know them well in all the years we’ve owned the place.

About 6 years ago, DH was having our boat filled up with gas and one of the sisters was at the boat gas station doing the same. They got to chatting, after DH mentioned where he was from (small Ohio River town).

She said, “we lived there too for awhile when I was young!” Then they proceeded to talk about where they lived in detail. One would say, “then you turn left at so and so”, the other continued, yes, and provide more detailed directions. Turned out they had lived in the same house!

Husbands family bought in in 1979 from her family. DH was already in college , but his brother knew one of the sisters from high school. Even weirder, DH and the sister had the same bedroom in the walk-out basement!

How odd!

11 Likes
34

On a Viking river cruise, we saw a gentleman wearing a sweatshirt with a logo for a country club in the Iowa town where our BIL grew up. We asked him if he knew anyone from the XXXX family (BIL’s last name). He knew our BIL, and was in the same HS class as BIL’s brother.

2 Likes
35

Once we were staying in Colorado Springs with friends, went out to dinner. Based on NY sweatshirts we got to talking to a fellow, figured out his wife was from same home town. The wife came up and said “Hi ”… luckily her little girl looked just like she had in kindergarten, so I knew her name too. Interestingly I had also run into husband of another grade school pal out here in Colorado when he sold me some ski boots. (I’ve also run into two younger high school acquaintances out here.)

36

We joked all the time about how we’d go places and our dad would run into someone he knew. My HS soccer game - parent of a teammate. At Disneyland there were two people (not together).

My husband and I grew up 8 blocks from each other and didn’t meet until college.

4 Likes
37

My biggest Small World subset Jewish is after we moved to San Diego ten years ago. We went to a new synagogue for services and at the kiddush afterwards, someone heard I grew up in Michigan. Oh, she said, you have to meet Joy, she’s from Michigan. So Joy comes over and we start talking and I say, my dad was the Rabbi at Hillel at (state university). Oh, she said, I worked for him!

Turns out she worked for a year cooking Sunday night dinners at the Hillel so knew my dad very well and had met my mom. This would be 50 years earlier. She didn’t remember me as a junior high kid running around, or my brother, but was able to tell me several stories about my dad, who has been gone 18 years now.

9 Likes
38

Second Small World story subset Former Home Town. Again, moved to San Diego 10 years ago. We were at Bali Hai for Happy Hour for Valentine’s Day just before the pandemic hit and my husband said, I know that voice. He turns around and it was our neighbors from our old house in suburban Chicago; they lived behind us. Turns out they come to San Diego every winter. We joined them for dinner and now they check in every year when they come here and we get together for lunch.

I have enough trouble remembering faces and certainly would not have remembered a voice.

4 Likes
39

Third Small World story subset Girl Scouts. We were driving from Chicago to pick up son in Pittsburgh at college and stopped for gas at an Indiana rest stop. A car heading the opposite way noticed our stickers and started chatting. Turns out they were from my brother’s Chicagoland suburb. So I tell them his name and the husband goes,
XXX, hmm (turns to wife) do we know the XXX’s? Their daughter was in Girl Scouts with my niece.

So I told my niece her name was known up and down the rest stops on the Indiana Toll Road.

4 Likes
40

My DH and I went to Charlotte 2 summers ago driving my Tesla. On the way home we stopped at an off-the-beaten-path charger (a row of about 8 of them but in a weirdly remote area) to charge the car, and at the charger next to us was my DH’s coworker!

4 Likes