Small World

[GB]

It really is such a small world. I am sitting here in the office talking about GPS units with my co-workers. I tell a story of how when I first got mine I went out for a ride. I told the GPS to take me to the nearest waterfall. It directed me about 3 towns over to the nearest city. It brought my down this one way street, past a hiking trail, to this really cool waterfall. As I go into more detail about where I was, the girl who sits next to me said "You should have stopped in. That is my street".

Talk about coincidence!

 

[kitchenelf]

WOW GB! It really is a small world. At a wine tasting a few months ago I was sitting across from this guy - he mentioned the town I grew up in and we started talking - he knows the exact house I grew up in!!!!!! Cleveland isn't a small town! LOL

 

[GB]

That is pretty wild Kitchenelf!

My dad likes to say how certain people are "hubs". My mom is a hub. No matter where she is she will always bump into someone she knows. She has been on trips to other countries and she bumps into someone she knows. Even other continents. It is a little freaky when it happens, but it does not surprise us anymore.

 

[Gretchen]

I have one without a GPS.
DH and I met and married in NYC. We lived in an apartment on the westside--a ground floor with a little "garden" while he finished his residency.
Move forward 4 years. DH is in the ARmy and chief of ___dept. at Walter Reed. Talking to chief of _____. DH went to Columbia.Other guy went to Cornell. They compare notes. Upshot--we lived in the SAME apartment one year after he did!!

 

[GB]

That is so cool Gretchen!

 

[TATTRAT]

It always amazes me that the degrees of seperation are getting less and less.

When I lived in Holland, I started making small talk with one of the very few Americans that lived in my building. Come to find out, he had just moved from Virginia, Virginia Beach to be more exact, and his house was a stones throw from mine, on Birdneck Rd. I had to travel half way around the earth to meet that niegbhor!

 

[CharlieD]

Let me tell you how small this world really is.



So I had this classmate back in my Soviet days. We were never very close, but as any good classmates would always said hello and how are you whenever we met. Then some day I was told that he moved to US of A. Couple of years latter (late 80’s) I started planning to move there (or is it here) too. I have first cousin who has been living here since 1979 or so. So I’m talking to him asking questions, you know, stuff like that. He, as an example, is telling me about this friend of his who came here recently and what he is doing with his life, how he is adjusting, working etc. This going on for couple of years. Finally, I arrive here. The first evening I go visit my cousin and he says that this guy, he’s been telling me about, is coming for diner too. Okay, great, what difference is it for me. It’s his friend, right?! Or is it? Guess who walks in the door. Yeap, you guessed it right, my classmate. We were so surprised, both of us, we never put 2 and 2 together. That is Small world!

 

[kitchenelf]

My husband finally confessed that he had heard "of" me about 5 years before we met. He lived in Florida I lived in North Carolina.

 

[Lynan]

CharlieD that is amazing!!!!

Was talking with our Insurance Broker yesterday after he returned from a vacation in Tuscany. Seems he and his wife spent one night in a hotel somewhere ( before going to a Villa..lucky things ) and as they checked in a gentleman came up to his wife and asked if she was Sandra so and so. She said yes, and it transpires that they too were classmates years ago here in New Zealand. Now what makes it even more incredible is that he also used to work with Sandras husband unbeknownest to both of them!!!

 

[lulu]

I think I am a hub, GB. My latest is this week. I am trying to track a particular thing down for DH for Christmas, very easy in UK, very hard in Italy. So, last week I try an email address given on the Italian Society relevant to this thing, and because she has an Italian surname, correspond painstakingly in Italian. Funnily enough we have a couple of shared interests, flagged by a random comment of hers last week, so we keep emailing about that and when I mention that I am sorry it is taking me so long to reply to her rapid emails, but I am slowly translating everything from English. Now my surname could seem Italian, and hers is, so neither of us twigged in a fortnight the other was english, then I notice a reference to something else she says, and it turns out she was my f-i-l's secretary a few years ago, (DH's surname is double barrelled so was not immeadiately obvious to her, especially with the Itlian element thrown in)

 

[boufa06]

Talking about coincidences. When I was still in Singapore, I was invited to a reception to honour the then Greek President who was travelling through Singapore en route to Australia and New Zealand. During the reception, we were entertained by a military band playing well-known Greek songs. On the spur of the moment, I thought that making a special request for one of my favourite songs would be in order. I proceeded to do so and to my utter shock DH shoved me forward to sing the requested song as a duet with the band singer. Later we discovered that the band singer was from Volos, a city near my DH's hometown and our present residence as well.

About three years later, in October last year, the new President of Greece accompanied by his Moldovan counterpart visited my DH's hometown. They were participating in an event commemorating the return of the remains of an illustrious man of letters who lived for the greater part of his life and died in Moldova. There was of course a military band to take part in the event. During the last stage of the event, while photographing the two presidents laying wreaths on the tomb of the honoured person, I noticed a member of the military band, this time dressed in army fatigue and helmet beckoning to me to the extent that the circumstances allowed. At first I thought that he was beckoning to someone behind me. However, on closer look, there he was my singing buddy from the Singapore presidential visit! Small world indeed!

In the end, we were able to get his phone number here and pass on to him photographs we took from both presidential visits.

 

[CharlieD]

Here is another story of mine. I befriended this guy on Internet cigar board. We were friendly for couple of years, though never discussed exact location or real names. One day I was traveling to CA, so I mentioned it to him, so he asked me where I will be and maybe we could meat. Turns out he lives in the same town as my in laws, so we met. Then we start talking, and he goes to the same synagogue as my in-laws, he knows not only them, but all their friends and also my friends, in that town, and the rabbi that belongs to a different synagogue who is also like my favorite rabbi in the whole world, the freakiest thing was when we pulled out our cigars and cigar lighters they were identical.

 

[Anau]

I went on a week-long trip to this little town in Tennessee as a volunteer to help out needy folks. We were split up into groups and assigned a household for the week. It turned out that the lady my group was supposed to build a porch for lived in the same town I am from (Friendswood, Texas) and had worked as a janitor in the same junior high school I attended! How crazy is that?

 

[middie]

Cleveland isn't a small town! LOL

No it sure isn't Elf lol

 

[mudbug]

In the A/E world I work in it's fairly common to run into people you either worked with before or teamed with on projects before. We change partners, but we're all going to the same dances it seems.

 

[The Z]

My mother was 'stolen' from an orphanage at a young age. She never knew her biological family and we never knew any of our relatives on her side of the family.

I posted what little information I knew about her on a geneology forum and years later the message was seen by someone in Oregon who recognized the information and told his family who shortly afterward made contact with my mother and introduced her to sisters and brothers she didn't remember.

While that's not exactly "small world" material.... (or, rather, it's an example of how the Internet makes the world smaller).

Turns out that the person who saw my message was my biological first cousin whom, as I've said, I had never met... who, coincidentally and quite separately, moved to Las Vegas from Oregon one month before I did from Vermont. We now live close (small world) and socialize frequently.

((I apologize for repeating myself to all those who already know this story))

 

[GB]

It is a very cool story and one well worth repeating Z!!!

 

[kitchenelf]

Cleveland isn't a small town! LOL

No it sure isn't Elf lol

I know!!!! And we should have gotten together when I was there in July!!!!!! LOL

 

[bullseye]

My dad likes to say how certain people are "hubs". My mom is a hub. No matter where she is she will always bump into someone she knows. She has been on trips to other countries and she bumps into someone she knows. Even other continents. It is a little freaky when it happens, but it does not surprise us anymore.

GB, if you don't know the book, you should check out The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. It is about the different roles people have in making product popularity happen, but my interest in reading it had more to do with the types of people he described. Your dad's "hub" is Gladwell's "connector."

 

[GB]

I will have to check that out bullseye.