Small f*cking world, innit?

[NHH]

This was posted on the Genealogy thread but I think might be better here as it not only has superb 'small world' chops, but has 'between two forum members' for added meta-ness...

The plot thickens even further...I found a couple of sisters of my natural father lived just up the road from where I grew up. My best friend from school's Dad knows one of them. I was googling one of her daughters and found a link to the aforementioned us-maintained family blog. I scrolled past the bit which named the daughter to see what else I could find out and my eye was caught by a picture of a family gathering. I had that immediate recognition where your eyes see someone they know before your conscious brain clocks it. I clicked to make the picture bigger and who should i see but a 4th cousin I didn't know I had. It was... E10!

[Nocturnal Submission]

Ah, good, my chance to tell you all my best coincidence story again!

One of my Canadian SiLs was drinking in a bar near her home in the Toronto area and got chatting to a guy. She quickly realised that he was English and said, oh, one of my sisters lives in England.

The conversion then went something like this:

Guy: "Really. Whereabouts?"

SiL: "Surrey"

Guy: "That's where I'm from! Do you know the name of the town?"

SiL: "Banstead"

Guy: "No!!! That's where I grew up!!! You don't know the road do you"

SiL: "Yup. (Redacted)"

Guy: "Er, that was was where we lived!!!"

(I presume he was starting to get slightly worried at this point and looking around for the hidden cameras.)

Guy: "House number?"

SiL: "(Redacted)"

Guy: "That was our house!!!"


Unbelievably coincidental, of course, but e-mail addresses were exchanged and he sent us, via SiL, a number of black & white photo images of our house when he lived there to prove that he wasn't some sort of fantasist.

A bit later, during a trip back to the UK, and with our blessing, he brought his sister and elderly mum over and we took them round the place to allow them to reminisce.

[ad hoc]

I'm sure I've told this story before, but obviously not on this thread.

Way back when I was living in Micronesia in the mid 90s, i was given the opportunity to attend a large conference in Seattle. I headed off on the epic journey (it was always an epic journey wherever you went from Pohnpei, except possibly Kosrae or Chuuk). Anyway, the conference was huge, i was holed up in a large impersonal hotel in the city and I knew precisely nobody. And conferences where you know nobody can be profoundly lonely experiences. Anyway, one evening rather than sit in my room, I went to a bar to have a couple of drinks. I think I had a book (this was pre-mobile phones), and I at there and quite enjoyed the atmosphere of the early Friday-evening-just-out-of-work crowd. On the next table to me there was a group of people who obviously worked together who seemed in good spirits. One of them had a London accent, so breaking the habit of a lifetime and totally driven by loneliness I introduced myself, using the fellow English bloke as my "in". Anyway they were very friendly, and I ended up spending the entire evening with them heading off to a different bar, and eventually a dance club of some description (I don't really remember the details).

Some years later, i went to Vermont to do my MA, and one of my closest friends there was Jessica, from Seattle. After the on campus phase finished everyone went their separate ways (well, i stayed there and worked on campus, but pretty much everyone else went there separate ways) . A few years later while still working there I was given the opportunity to go to a large conference in Vancouver (the same conference in fact as the one I'd attended in Seattle a decade earlier). It was much cheaper to fly to Seattle and take a bus than it was to fly to Vancouver so i did that, and wangled myself an invite to Jessica's place, where she was living with a guy she'd met shortly after she'd been at grad school. I arrived, and they came together to pick me up in his car. As we were driving back from the airport, I was getting some weird deja vu kind of vibes, and then when the guy started talking about his business partner, who was from London, i suddenly started putting two and two together. "This business partner", I asked, "Is he black?". he almost crashed the car "How the fuck would you know that?". "Because I've met you before...."

[Nocturnal Submission]

In town on Tuesday I spotted an old acquaintance, the father of a lad who played in the same football team as my son between the ages of 6 and 19. In the 15 or so years since the team disbanded, I don't believe I've thought of this chap even once, let alone seen him around to talk to. Except it wasn't him. As I got closer, the words "Hello Bob" died on my lips as I realised that this man, now looking at me rather quizzically, was someone else.

Earlier this morning I took the dog for a walk and followed a completely different route to usual as my wife had asked me to check if the road she drives to take granddaughter to gymnastics on a Friday was still blocked by roadworks (it was). On my way there I had to use a footbridge over the railway line and, turning the corner to take the downslope on the other side, I almost bumped into a man coming the other way. It was, of course, since this is a thread about coincidences, Bob. We chatted for 10 minutes before heading off in separate directions, perhaps never to meet again.

I think that there's some sort of spin-off from the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon whereby, when some one or thing pops into your mind, you become more sensitive to spotting it.

For instance, when I lived in Wimbledon I was aware that Annette Crosbie lived in the area and, one day, happened to ponder why I had never bumped into her when I was out and about. A few hours later I was browsing in Books Etc and who should I see...

[Guy Profumo]

I think that there's some sort of spin-off from the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon whereby, when some one or thing pops into your mind, you become more sensitive to spotting it.

For instance, when I lived in Wimbledon I was aware that Annette Crosbie lived in the area and, one day, happened to ponder why I had never bumped into her when I was out and about. A few hours later I was browsing in Books Etc and who should I see...

Richard Wilson?

[Nocturnal Submission]

Richard Wilson?

Sadly not, though if I had I know what I would have jolly well exclaimed, (cue Father Ted).

Actually, for added coincidentality, if such a word exists, One Foot In The Grave regular Angus Deayton's childhood home was a few minutes away from where I currently type.

[WOM]

For instance, when I lived in Wimbledon I was aware that Annette Crosbie lived in the area and, one day, happened to ponder why I had never bumped into her when I was out and about. A few hours later I was browsing in Books Etc and who should I see...

I was working bar at a high-end golf club when I was 25 or 26. The owner of the course also had some oil & gas businesses in Alberta, and on the night I was working, one of them was having their AGM (annual general meeting) in the upper floor banquet room.

There was a sign that said [let's say] Morris Petroleum Meeting upstairs. And my mind was just dwelling on the name. "Morris...Morris....who did I know named Morris...?" so I noodled that around a while and then "Oh, yeah", I recalled it was an ex girlfriend from university. Her parents had good friends named Morris. Nice couple. No kids. Now what were their names? So I noodled that a while. Kay...and...hmmm....Kay Morris and hmmmm. A while later "Richard! That's it. Richard Morris."

All of ten seconds later, who rounds the corner into the bar but Richard Morris, my ex's parents' good friend. Coming in from golfing, and nothing to do with the group upstairs.

[WOM]

"Because I've met you before...."

At that same golf course, our Club Pro, Kevin, was like a savant with names and faces. Once he was breezing through the pro shop and there were four generic, white golf douches standing at the counter paying for their round. Kevin looks at one and goes "Dave Miller...how are ya, man?" and he goes "Uh....sorry...I don't...." and without breaking stride Kevin goes "1991...Merv Griffin's club...Las Vegas...we played in a foursome with [name here] and [name here]....nice seeing you again..." and keeps walking. The guy's face was priceless.

[Sporting]

I once ran into, in Obo, while walking in the CAR, a former student of mine from Tambura. Only 150km away but you have to bear in mind the almost complete lack of motorised transport.and other infrastructure issues.

While I was sitting with the Sudanese merchants, a young man on a bicycle arrived. He was selling soap.

"Mr xxx" he exclaimed. "How is it? You have come to Obo!"

I didn't recognise him. "Hello," I began, "Yes, I've..."

"You have forgotten me," he said. "I am William, your former student from Tambura."

Then I placed him. It was remarkable, two years' absence, Tambura miles to the east, and yet William took it in his stride. So should I have done: such chance encounters had happened to me before.

William told me what he had been doing since leaving school. He'd passed the School Certificate, excelling in French, and had been selected for a three-year course in Paris. "But this trouble," he shrugged, "It has prevented me from going. These people (he meant the SPLA) are causing so many problems. Now the regional government in Juba have stopped paying for courses abroad and I will have to wait."

"So what are you doing now? Are you still in Tambura?"

"I am still there. I do my magendo (by which I understood business combined through smuggling). Now I will buy cotton in Obo and sell it in
Sudan."

[DPDPDPDP]

I was at university with a guy and a few years later passed him in the street, said “hi” and stopped to speak to him. He completely blanked me, which was odd as we got on well at uni and occasionally played football together.

Fast forward 25 years later and I’m giving a presentation and I spot his face in the crowd. I look at the attendee list and his name isn’t on it, but someone with the same surname is listed. I sought him out, had a chat and it turns out he was the identical twin brother of my uni pal. I jokingly gave him grief for apparently blanking me 25 years earlier.

[S. aureus]

Quite a while back somebody came up to me in the grocery store and said "Hi, Staph." Then proceeded to chat with me about stuff that showed that he had known me at some point, but I had (and still have) absolutely no idea who he was or where he knew me from. Completely blank, and all rather unnerving.

[Hot Pepsi]

I may have told this before.

A while back our company said they’d reimburse us up to $200 to get our picture taken professionally to put with our bylines on our website.

I happen to know a photographer/photography teacher who does that kind of photography on the side. She’s a few years older than me but grew up across the street from me. I’m good friends with her brother but know the whole family. She still lives around here and I see her sometimes when their family is hosting a big gathering, but I don’t have her number.

Anyway, I kept forgetting to contact her and then I lost her number. I was on a flight from somewhere and was connecting in Philadelphia. As I was coming off the plane from wherever, I randomly remembered I needed to get those pictures but first I needed to text my friend to get his sister’s contact info. I pulled out my phone to do that as I was walking into the terminal, I looked up and she was sitting 20 feet in front of me.

She was on her way back from Texas to look into a job. We arranged the photo job.

[Jobi1]

I'm the kind of person who finds unarranged social interactions so excruciating that I often pretend not to have seen people I know on the streets around here, so these kinds of things fill me with horror.

Nevertheless, the best coincidence story I can think of off the top of my head is that one of my husband's university housemates (who he's still friendly with) had grown up in the town where my dad lived and worked as a secondary school teacher, and in fact had had my dad as his form tutor for a while. It also turned out that he was friends at that school with some lads in a band who my band back then happened to have done a couple of shows with (another small world thing at the time), and A's housemate would have been at at least one of those shows, so he'll have seen me in action on stage several years before he met A and a good decade before I met A myself.

Really what this story tells us is that if one of your parents is a popular teacher, even if they teach in a place at least 20 miles from wherever you live/have lived, there's a very good chance at some point in life you'll run into someone who remembers them. More awkward is that while they gush over how great a teacher your parent was, your parent, having been through decades of young faces, is highly unlikely to remember your new acquaintance at all.

[Patrick Thistle]

I met Mrs Thistle at Uni. In one of the holidays I met her friend V who had gone to uni in a different city and was living in a shared house which included a lad I was in school with since I was 8 and whose mum worked with my mum in a non-profit for years.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Quite early in my time teaching French, I did the year abroad visit and there was a leftie student I got on quite well with at the University in Poitiers. After buying him a meal and a drink or two, he dragged me along to a house party.

Sitting on the sofa I got chatting to a woman who turned out to be at Wolverhampton Poly, my beloved alma mater. What a pleasant surprise. The longer we chatted, though it turned out she was having a passionate affair with a Wolverhampton friend of mine.

[WOM]

I worked with a woman who grew up about a block from me, and we attended all the same schools. Thing was, we worked out that she was entering kindergarten the same year I was exiting high school...

[Benjm]

About ten years ago a new vet took over at the practice we take our cats to because it is within walking (and carrying) distance of our house. He was audibly from my home town, 120 odd miles away, and looked familiar but I wasn't sure whether I actually recognised him personally rather than as a local type. I told one of my brothers for whom it rang a faint bell so he asked a mate of his and we established that the vet had been in the year below me at school. When I mentioned this in passing during our next appointment he looked absolutely stricken, as if he would be going home at lunchtime, picking out a new passport from the selection in his safe and never returning. Nor did he seem overly impressed when I wished him a Happy Black Country Day not too long afterwards. Fair enough, really. If he had wanted to be reminded of the place he could have just stayed there.

[WOM]

So, we welcomed two young interns to the office this morning. 23 years old, just out of school. Turns out that the art director intern, who is working on our automotive account, will be working alongside his cousin...and neither of them knew the other worked here.

[The_Purple_Cow]

So I got two, but neither of them are anything like as impressive as some of the stories already told on this thread - the second one is particularly lame.

1. My cousin married a woman some 19 years older than himself. When he introduced her to his mom they recognised each other instantly, turns out on the day my cousin was born, his new fiancé was giving birth to her first child in the very next bed.

2. My parents lived and worked for a decade or so in a place called Symonds Yat. Dad operated a rope ferry over the River Wye, and Mom ran a gift shop. They took a week off and rented a cottage in North Yorkshire. They were supposed to go on a coach tour to somewhere but missed their bus. There was one tour left with unsold seats. A 'Magical Mystery Tour', they brought tickets and went off on their mystery. The mystery destination was of course Symonds Yat.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

So I got two, but neither of them are anything like as impressive as some of the stories already told on this thread - the second one is particularly lame.

1. My cousin married a woman some 19 years older than himself. When he introduced her to his mom they recognised each other instantly, turns out on the day my cousin was born, his new fiancé was giving birth to her first child in the very next bed.

2. My parents lived and worked for a decade or so in a place called Symonds Yat. Dad operated a rope ferry over the River Wye, and Mom ran a gift shop. They took a week off and rented a cottage in North Yorkshire. They were supposed to go on a coach tour to somewhere but missed their bus. There was one tour left with unsold seats. A 'Magical Mystery Tour', they brought tickets and went off on their mystery. The mystery destination was of course Symonds Yat.

Wait, are they the people that featured in "The book of heroic failures", I can't remember where exactly the places involved were, but the people nipped home for a quick cup of tea.

[Greenlander]

So I got two, but neither of them are anything like as impressive as some of the stories already told on this thread - the second one is particularly lame.

1. My cousin married a woman some 19 years older than himself. When he introduced her to his mom they recognised each other instantly, turns out on the day my cousin was born, his new fiancé was giving birth to her first child in the very next bed.

2. My parents lived and worked for a decade or so in a place called Symonds Yat. Dad operated a rope ferry over the River Wye, and Mom ran a gift shop. They took a week off and rented a cottage in North Yorkshire. They were supposed to go on a coach tour to somewhere but missed their bus. There was one tour left with unsold seats. A 'Magical Mystery Tour', they brought tickets and went off on their mystery. The mystery destination was of course Symonds Yat.

Was it an overnighter because that's a long old poke from North Yorkshire for a day trip.

Reminds me of a bloke I worked with who, when his relatives from Leeds came down for a long weekend, took them on a day out to Cheltenham. By all accounts they weren't impressed.

[Hot Pepsi]

So, we welcomed two young interns to the office this morning. 23 years old, just out of school. Turns out that the art director intern, who is working on our automotive account, will be working alongside his cousin...and neither of them knew the other worked here.

I'm getting the idea that Toronto is more like that than one would expect.

Boston is definitely like that. The greater Boston area has almost five million people and yet everyone seems to be connected to everyone.

The most Boston thing in The Departed was this bit.

Other Prisoner: Hey, you Billy Costigan?
Billy Costigan: Yeah. Who wants to know?
Other Prisoner: I know a Sean Costigan, down on L Street.
Billy Costigan: Yeah that's my cousin.
Other Prisoner: Connected. Not too bright.
Billy Costigan: I know.
Other Prisoner: I mean no offense.

[EIM]

When I was in Vietnam with the missus, we went to a national park right in the middle of the country. We stayed in a hotel that was just six bungalows, miles from anywhere. It was well off the tourist path, so we were appalled to hear English accents when we arrived and checked in.

We'd got there late, but they said they'd prepare food for us in the bar. I had a sandwich and a beer, and we heard the other English people chatting not far from us. On the way back from the toilet, the man in the couple, short and stout and in his 60s, stopped to talk to us. He'd heard we were English too, and asked where we were from.

At this point his wife came over. They were from Wigan. I asked if they ever visited Manchester. They did. I asked if they ever drank there. They did. I asked if they ever drank in the Grey Horse on Portland Street. They did. I asked if they'd drank with the manager the night before they flew to Vietnam three months previously. They had.

The penny dropped for them then. They'd stayed in town the night before their flight and come into the pub. I'd finished work at 5 and had a few drinks before heading down to London to see the missus. I'd got chatting to them about their trip, and their enthusiasm and passion about it was part of the reason we'd booked.

I still can't get over that coincidence. What are the chances, eh?

[DCI Harry Batt]

Pretty high, I reckon.

[Balderdasha]

Nothing that spectacular but a few stories come to mind.

I once opened the door of my hotel room in Havana, Cuba and came face to face with the boy who always sat beside me on my school bus. Seemed astonishing until I realised that we'd probably booked our trips with the same branch of STA travel and probably had the same budget.

I once saw a friend I hadn't seen in ages on the street in Beijing out of the window of a taxi and got the taxi to stop so I could dash across the road and say hello.

I sat next to a mum at the swimming pool watching our kids in their lessons for months on end before discovering we had a mutual friend from different schools (from when we both lived in a different town).