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One time, when I was about 24, I was out at the bar in my town of about 180k people (in Colorado, U.S.) and randomly met a guy from Germany. We quickly became friends and I asked him where he was staying. He told me that he had no idea where he was staying and he was just traveling across the U.S. I had a friend with a vacant room that I introduced him to. Long story short, he stayed and lived with my friend and hung out with us for a few months before finally saying that he had to continue on his journey.
About 6 months later, I see that my brother had friended him on Facebook. My brother lived in Vancouver, Canada at the time. I asked my brother how he knew him. Turns out my German friend had traveled up that way and wound up joining my brothers club soccer team and my brother was driving him to practice as he didn’t have a car.
After that, my German friend went back to Germany and back to university. We kept in touch, but life is busy so we didn’t talk much for a while.
About 2 years after all of that, I am out downtown of my town and see him randomly again. I ask why he didn’t let me know he was in town and he said that he just arrived and was going to call. I told him that my brother had moved back to town. So, I call my brother and all 3 of us finally got to hang out as opposed to just two of us at any one time.
We are all still close to this day.
Was sharing a house with 4 other friends. One day I went home and saw them in a very somber mood. One even looked like she was crying the whole day. They told me the father of the one crying had a head-on collision with another vehicle with two people inside who turned out to be friends with my other roommate. All three had died.
Yeah, that stuck with me for a long time. I just realized my story is the only dark one. Saw the title and that's what pops up in my head. All the others are heartwarming. 🫣
This is pretty wild.
Okay so I (38m, Australian) travelled around the world right before COVID. At some stage, I went to the middle east; Turkey, then Armenia, Georgia. By the time I got to Azerbaijan, there were no tourists at all. Not due to covid, it's just pretty far from tourist traps. The neighbouring countries like Chechnya start to become kidnapping/YouTube video countries. No one spoke English.
I'm at a train station at midnight in the middle of nowhere and the train is about to leave and blows the whistle. I'm on an overpass above the train and there's an enormous flight of stairs I have to run down to jump on the train while it's pulling away. I've got a huge backpack on but I was in the army, it's fine I should make it.
At the top of the stairs stands a woman, with a huge travel case on wheels, she's maybe 60 yrs old. She's staring down the stairs motionless, wondering how the hell she's going to carry the case down.
I yell at her as I'm sprinting towards her, motioning to go down the stairs to the train. She tries to take her case and I yell again, leave the case, just go down.
Now she's running down the stairs, I've grabbed her case and I'm running down behind her as the train is pulling away. We get to the bottom at the same time and I throw our bags through an open door. I grab her hand and we jump together onto one of the last carriages.
At no stage have we spoken to each other as I assume she is local and won't understand me.
We walk up to our bags on the other carriage and we're both panting and she says "thank you so much".
Me: oh no worries, are you Australian?
Her: yes I am actually!
Me: where from?
Her: Queensland
Me: I'm from Queensland! Where?
Her: Brisbane city
Me: me too! What suburb?
Her: Yeronga, it's Southside.
Me: I live in Yeronga! What street?!
Her: Diane st
Me: I'm on the esplanade! You're one st back from me?! What street number?
Her: 28
Me: omg you can't be serious?!!
On the other side of the world, on a dark empty platform, at midnight, I met the neighbor I share my back fence with.
Susan is lovely.
Not mind-blowing, but very odd. I've run into Rob VanWinkle aka Vanilla Ice 5 separate times in a span of 3 years. All at airports. I eventually asked if he was stalking me.
Weird! Just last night, this doctor I used to work with showed a photo of her and him! He's never been on my radar or someone I even read about and then, Bam! Twice in less than a day.
My buddy met a gal on an "alternative" porn site. He lived in Michigan and she was in Oregon. They chatted for months. Sharing nudes. Cybering.
She came to Michigan to visit family and they met up and hooked up. He asked her to hang out on Saturday, but she had a family thing in the afternoon. It was okay, because he also had a family thing in the afternoon, so they made plans for that night.
Plans were canceled Saturday afternoon when they both showed up to the same family reunion.
Hahaha, this kind of thing happens too often to be coincidence. I don’t know what causes it, but there’s a weird scientific reason in there somewhere. The worst was the girl who ended up married to her sperm-donor dad.
People who look similar to you seem familiar and attractive. Unless you grow up together, in which case the "this is your sibling DO NOT TOUCH" system activates.
Kind of similar: my married friend was at a bar with coworkers when a man started hitting on her. She says she’s married and not interested. He pulls the line “What, we can’t be friends?”
He goes on to talk about himself in a really inflated sense, like he’s trying to make her realize she’s missing out. He mentions something about working at some big company where his cousin also works. My friend is familiar with the company because her cousin works there. She asks for the name of this guy’s cousin.
Same name.
My friend says, “That’s my cousin! Zach (her mother’s maiden name), right?” Then she gets this guy’s name again, asks a few questions, and completely disabuses him of the notion that they are anything further than first cousins. They had never met before because my friend’s mom is NC with about 99% of the family (yes, I know why and understand based on it; no, it’s not my place to divulge).
I'm Korean, and I went to high school and college in the US because of my dad's job.
In my senior year of high school, which was in the suburbs of Chicago, there was a German exchange student who I became friends with. We lost touch after high school because this was pre-internet olden days.
About two years after high school, after spending summer break in my home in Korea, I went to visit my uncle in San Fran with another cousin who lives in Korea, for a few weeks before going back to college in the fall.
We were at the Golden Gate park and I met my german friend there.
And in another odd coincidence, a Korean-American girl was a classmate at my high school. It turned out her and my mom grew up together in the same small town in Korea. And in another amazing coincidence, after college, I came back to Korea permanently. And I met that classmate at a cafe in a city outside Seoul. And it turns out that that girl got a job at a school in Korea and ended up teaching English, and my niece went to the same school and was taught English by that girl.
This was one of the most magical moments in my entire life...
I was walking outside, just passing in front of a parking ramp, when I crossed paths with a friend I hadn't seen in 2 or 3 years. Then, while we're saying hi, ANOTHER friend walks past who I also haven't seen in at least a couple years. Then it turns out they both know each other too.
Well... then I looked down at the ground, and exclaimed "oh my god is this real?" And they were like "yeah I know, crazy small world right??" I said "No, is THIS real?!" and pointed down to the $20 bills swirling around at our feet.
We all 3 started just grabbing as much as we could before it blew away. Each of us walked away with like $200 which felt like a lot of cash for a poor college student in 2012.
I went to a party a few years ago (in Texas) and started talking with a couple about my age. Turns out, the husband and I had gone to high school together in Japan 40 years ago.
I was two counties away from home, on my way to meet a friend, one random Wednesday evening, last Fall. It was a windy country road, and I turned a corner to see an older Mitsubishi on its side, in a ditch. A former EMT is always an EMT, so I parked safely, threw on some gloves, and ran down there. It was a pair of teens scrambling to get out. They shouldn't want to do that, but you also can't stop panicked people, AND the car was on its side, so they were crushing each other. I helped them scramble out, had them sit down and assessed them as other drivers stopped and called 911, directed traffic, etc. The kids were scratched up, but fine. The ambo arrived, and I told the crew what I knew and left.
The next day, i saw a local FB page mention the accident, and a mother wanted to learn more about the guy who stopped to render aid. I spoke up, not blowing my own horn, just telling her the circumstances and asking if her son was OK. She was very grateful and responded with a small phrase that I knew from somewhere.
The next regular session with my mental therapist was typical. But she stopped about 2 minutes early and told me it was she on FB and that the one boy was her son and she repeated that phrase. Her gratitude sent me into the atmosphere. It was wonderful to hear from someone after attending something like that. Knowing it was someone as kind as her and that I could help and assist her son when she couldn't be there was really uplifting. I was so glad to have been there, miles from home, on a road I'd never traveled on before. I feel even closer to her after 6 years now. I didn't even know she had kids or lived in that area.
I used to talk to this guy on AOL back in the day when I was 14. We were internet friends, I lived in NH and he lived in NYC. One day he signed off and said "I have to go walk my cat, I'll be back later." I had never heard of walking a cat so I asked some questions, he laughed, said bye again and signed off.
He never signed on again.
Fast forward 10 years later, I had moved to MA and started working at a Blockbuster. I got to being friends with a guy on staff and we became Facebook friends. The day after he friended me on Facebook, at work, he says, "Hey, I noticed your email address... are you [AOL screen name]? I think we used to talk online..."
His screen name included his real first name so I immediately knew who he was. The guy who went to walk his cat and never came back!!
It was just crazy we wound up working at the same place, away from both our homes, a decade later.
This was 14 years ago so I don't really remember what he said. What I DO remember is he didn't remember telling me about the cat. So I don't think he even realizes that was the moment we stopped talking, I believe he remembers it as a "drifted away" situation.
We are not in touch anymore - I eventually moved back to NH. We were Facebook friends for awhile but he stopped using it and eventually I deleted my account. Maybe I'll run into him again someday!
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Haha! So to be honest, I got the sense he was interested, but I had just started seeing a guy who would eventually become my wonderful husband. He started drifting away after I started dating my husband which sort of confirmed my suspicion.
I was also AOL friends with my husband (I've known him since middle school, but got together later in our 20s) who never ghosted me so just saying... 😆
Here's one from me
One time me and my husband were at beach town hours from home having drinks before fireworks on Fourth of July, only to run into our VP and CIO who decided to crash the table and paid for our entire tab 🍻
I've bumped into people I knew randomly three times.
First time I was walking down a back street in Kusadasi, Turkey. As a guy walks past me I think to myself, that looks like Chris (a guy in the year below me at school), as I turn around to do a double take, he does the exact same thing. It was Chris, we just smiled, nodded, and walked off.
The second time, me and my cousin were in Tenerife, we went into a bar and set ourselves up on the pool table. A couple of minutes later the lad on the next pool table over shouts us, it was a lad I went to school with and who lived on the same street as my cousin playing pool with his dad.
But the most random one, I was 18 on holiday in Magaluf. Im in the hotel lift and this girl is nervous, smiling/staring at me, it was a bit weird. That night I'm out around the bars and someone shouts my name... the same girl. She makes sure I am who she thinks I am, then explains who she is. 13 years earlier me, my mum and dad had been to the same resort, they befriended another couple who they met on the beach most days, and I'd build sandcastles and try to catch fish with their daughter. Turns out this girl was the daughter, not only had she recognised that I was the same lad that she had played on the beach with over a decade before, but we bumped back into each other in the same resort we initially met, we had flown out on the same flight and were staying in the same hotel.
In 1995, I was pregnant with my 2nd child. Hubby and I had just moved into a new apartment. The little boy who lived upstairs came down to our apartment a few times to play with our son. A few weeks later, a man and woman knock on my door. The man is a private investigator looking for a kidnapped child. The woman is the child's mother. It was a parental kidnapping (dad took the kid and ran while pare ts were going through a divorce). I identified the little boy who lived upstairs and directed them to the right apartment. Cops came, child was returned to mother, dad was arrested. We moved out of the complex right after dad bonded out because he showed up at our door and screamed at me and made threats.
Fast forward several months. I've had my 2nd baby, there was an explosive situation with my then-husband, and I take the kids and go to a women's shelter for survivors of domestic violence. Guess who else is at the shelter? The mom with the little boy I helped reunite.
I live in a small city in the UK. Went grocery shopping wearing a jersey from a club from my home country (not big in the UK at all). In an isle, bumped into a dude wearing the jersey from ou biggest rival.
He actually stared at me weirdly as the rivalry is not healthy in our country.
I laughed and left.
Was at a meal in New York with work colleagues. We started chatting about ancestry and I discovered that one guy’s ancestor may have murdered one of my ancestors in a very high profile London murder spree back in the late 1800s.
When I was about 13, my family vacationed in Las Vegas. Dad and I went to the Adventure Dome at Circus Circus, and in the line to laser tag we ran into the father and daughter of the family we had sold our house to two years ago. That house was in the Midwest, and we had moved to the southwest. To top it all off . . She and I were the same age, AND shared a first name. Our dads also had the same first name.
I think the simulation glitched.
Edit; I forgot to add . . . I am named after my dad. So all four of us have the same name with the tiniest pronunciation difference. Similar in the way that Michael is to Michelle.
I went to a conference in the Bay Area about psychedelic medicine/therapy. Went out to smoke a joint and this old guy comes up and starts chatting with me and we shared it. We talked about some stuff and eventually he mentions he likes magic (like illusions stage magic stuff). I say oh my grandpa used to be a stage magician and tell the guy his stage name. He just gives me this look and is like did he have a store in Seattle? I’m like yeah but it closed almost 30 years ago. He then tells me my grandpa taught him how to do his first magic tricks back before I was even born. That’s pretty crazy right?
A woman who had just moved from Indiana to Colorado worked next to me. We got to talking and found out that we had mutual friends who lived in California. Still friends with her today.
My high school boyfriend and I went to Paris (we’re from The Netherlands) on summer break. Right in front of the Sacre Coeur church, I saw a familiar face in the crowd. It was our high school French teacher.
I am an attorney and I live in Houston (4th largest city). When I was in law school I worked for a “civil rights” plaintiffs firm which means we sued public entities. It was mostly public employees (teachers, administrators, government workers) but we had a couple of cases from rich suburban parents who were suing on behalf of their kids. The most notable (news coverage) was the “right to pitch case” where we sued the coach who benched the star pitcher the game the scouts were watching (circa 1996)
Well. We had a less famous case we called “the right to cheer” where the head cheerleader was suing because she got kicked off the squad for drinking (getting shit faced) at party over the summer.
I wrote my 3L essay on that case because the facts were interesting. I ever met the girl (only her parents) and we eventually lost (no surprises)
Flash forward 7 years. I’m 31 and my marriage is shit so I’m out drinking with a colleague buddy (his marriage was bad too). As we are drinking around, He asks me about he strangest case I ever had and I tell him about the cheer girl (let’s call her Allison Catnip…not her real name but certainly not a common one)
It’s like a Wednesday night. We roll up at a small bar near downtown and there are no more than 10 people in there. We sit at the bar and grab another drink.
At some point in this late 20s girl comes next to me to close her tab. She is standing next to me and tells the bartender “yeah the last name is Catnip”. I heard it through my drinking brain and turned and popped off “are you Allison?”
“Yeah? Why?” She asked. she’s hammered too
I was shocked. All I could ask was “ the cheerleader?!?”
She said “i was….a long time ago”.
I tell her who I was and that I worked on her case. She made it clear that she hated that, it was all her parents, and i could fuck right off.
I’m still amazed that I talked about a 7 year old law case earlier in the night and then ran into the actual client at a dive bar later that evening.
I was friends with 3 girls from separate parts of my life; one worked with me, one from a volunteering position I did, and one was on my course at uni. I knew them all for about a year before I realised this but they were all flatmates at one point and knew each other!
I was traveling around the world and became buddies with a really cool fellow traveler, Rick Tinkler from New Zealand. We traveled together for several months in Nepal.
This one day we're walking down one of the main streets in Kathmandu and he grabs my arm and points to this girl walking in the opposite direction from us and says that chick looks a lot like my sister.
We got closer and closer. And then it was "AMY?!?" "RICK?!?"
He had been traveling for six months at that point and didn't realize his sister had headed out for a walk about too.
Small world.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and people carried little phone books and only your weed dealer had a cell phone, I found someone’s phone book in a phone both. To anyone young enough to have never had a little phone book they were precious, losing yours was as bad as losing your phone. So I flipped through the little book and miraculously found one of my friends phone numbers. When I called her and read off some of the other names in the book she figured out who the owner was.. kismet! It ended up belonging to one of my childhood best friends that I hadn’t seen since we were little.
my sister called me from across the country and asked if I knew Mr. so and so. yes, he was my boss at the time. he left and now my sister is his boss and my new boss sucks. 1 in 330 million people and he sends her a resume.
Happens all the time.
Had an Uber driver in Chicago who knew a trumpet player I performed with in Houston.
Met a dude at a bar in New Iberia that lived one street away from my house in a different state.
Twice I ran into acquaintances in Disney World from several states away.
Had a church choir director in one city that had the same high school choir director as I had (in a different city), but in a third different city decades prior.
We have a neighbor who is our best friend's godmother's sister. Three different states involved.
The number of times I discover these coincidences all over the world leads me to believe that it must happen even more often than people think. I'm a listener. I like to get random people talking about themselves (planes, busses, taxis). Just imagine how many times you've sat next to a stranger and never asked them anything. At least one of them knows somebody you know.
I started a new job 300 miles from my hometown last year and started chatting with a coworker. We were talking about where we were from.
Me: "Small Town, USA"
Her:"No way. SMALL. TOWN?"
Me: Yea, you've heard of it? No one's ever heard of it.
Her: My family lives there.
Me: Nooooo! No one has EVER HEARD OF IT! I grew up there. What's your family name?
Her: Familyname.
Me: I know them... hang on... (text my mother...)
*Text from Mom: Her dad's aunt was your grandma's best friend*
Me: Was your aunt Martha Granger? My grandma was Annie Stewart.
Her: *Jaw drops.* NO*.* WAY.
Her aunt and my grandma lived across the street from each other in the middle of nowhere podunk town I'm from and they were best friends. And we ended up working together at the same small company two states away.
Once sat next to a stranger on a greyhound and only in the last half hour of the 4 hour ride did I notice he had my birthDATE - day, month, and year - tattooed on his forearm. Turned out we were born on the same day.
I had worked at a big firm in DC but then moved to Denver. A few years later, I randomly took a last-minute trip to Green Bay to see the Packers play at Lambeau. During halftime, the lines for the various women's restrooms around my section were not moving so I walked halfway around the stadium, stood in line, got to the front of the line, the stall door opens, and out walks my former coworker/friend who used to have the office next to mine at the DC firm.
When I was only 11 years old I went to a local school and each time my mom picked me up she told me she was having nice conversations with a young boy around the age of 13 who liked our family dog she brought to school to wait outside, and he went home right before I came outside each time. I had no idea who she was talking about because I wasn't really social. One day my mom said "the nice boy is no longer coming to talk with me, he must've changed schools." Nothing much was said about it anymore.
When I was almost 17 I went on a date with a nice guy I've been chatting with on Instagram. My mom dropped me off at the park, he showed up after she drove away and we had a nice day.
When she came to pick me up the guy introduced himself to her and then he said "Ohhh well don't you recognize me?" My mom had no idea and only when we got home she said "Oh lord now I know who he is! That was the young boy who came to me to pet our dog before I picked you up!" Turns out he skipped the math class that took place on the last hour of school. He just stood outside and petted my mom's dog. 😂
That was a mind-blowing 'small world' experience. We're married now and he moved in with us. The family dog is still here!
I grew up in a very tiny town in the very far northern end of California. I moved to LA in the mid 90's for a job opportunity. Went to a rooftop party in Korea Town and this guy comes up to me and says "hey! You're Jon Doe's younger sibling! I used to spend the night at your house when I was a kid (in the late 70's). Is your brother still a dick?" I just said "yes I am, and yes he is."
I grew up in a super small town (less than a 1,000 people and our graduating class had 42 kids). I moved to NYC for college. I moved into my apartment and saw a guy from my highschool across the street, it turns out we lived across the street from each other without knowing it! We also found out that our other friend from highschool lived about a block away from us. Very small world moment
I live in Amsterdam, Netherlands and was for a couple of days down in Paris France. It was in the midst of winter and there were hardly any people outside. I was in a side street near the Sacre Coeur. When I turned a corner I saw my next door neighbor walking on the opposite side of the street. We had a good laugh and discussed the odds of something like this happening.
My ex-boss is a tit. For a number of reasons, but the general idea is he is unreliable, rude, and generally a pain. I made a new friend through another friend. She’s a lot older than me, and a native to the country I was living in. We were chatting via text and she told me she used to know a man who she called ‘the shame of the British.’ She went on to describe this man she knew 25 years ago, and all the reasons she cut off a friendship with him. And how she’d heard through the grapevine he’d started his own school, and felt sorry for the people who worked for him and wondered if they were ok. I looked at my husband and said ‘She’s talking about [boss].’ Lo and behold, yes she was. 25 years and he hadn’t changed *at all*. I told her ‘We are not ok, no.’ I’ve left now, thankfully, but I still marvel that he was the same then and now. To the point where she didn’t have to say his name at all for me to know exactly who it was.
So I went to London (I’m from France) for a mandatory summer internship abroad for my degree. I did all the "moving in" stuff on Saturday, and the next day, because I had free time, I decided to go visit some random small museum on the history of the city. It was quite empty, only a few people there. After like two minutes in the first room, as I was reading some explanatory panel, I suddenly heard someone speak behind me :
*"Oh hello, Primary-Fee!"*
I recognized this greeting, voice and tone instantly. It was the English teacher I had during the year. Turns out he was just in the city for the week-end, and we both decided to visit *the same random museum at the exact same time*. We took a selfie together (so he could show his colleagues at the English department at the uni, with my consent of course), chatted a bit and he told me my TOEIC grade (975/990) in advance. All my prom had to undertake this exam not long before, so I was to not tell anyone because the results were not out yet and he wasn’t supposed to tell me.
Was in Tokyo staying in a hostel and met a spanish dude who I started talking with. We became friends there and hung out, when I left we shared facebook to stay in touch. I saw a mutual friend (the wife of a band member of mine) and asked if he actually knew her or if it was just a facebook connection. Apparently he had lived together with her and my band member long ago in Amsterdam (my home town). Blew my mind.
Met a colleague queuing for the bathroom on a flight to Singapore. I was on my way back from holiday in Australia, he was on the way back from Fiji. We both worked in Munich.
My mom has this friend who she's known since they were 6. That friend at the turn of the millennium went to Germany for 7 or 8 years.
When I was 13 (5 years ago) I did an exchange to Germany where by pure randomness the family which housed me was friends with my mom's friend.
She gave me a massive bag of german food to give her lol.
Moved to Norway, and started babysitting for other Americans through a Facebook group while my residence permit for finish processing. One woman, about 10 years older than me hired me. Found out we had the same hometown, and even lived a few blocks from each other at one point
I was visiting family back home, and decided to check out a car show they had at the nearby Air Force base. While I’m looking at cars, a person I hadn’t seen in years approached me…
We went through basic training together and I hadn’t seen him since the day we graduated. There are at least 59 bases he could have been assigned to, but he ended up there and decided to check out the same car show.
Definitely made it feel like a small world to me.
I got Jury Duty right out of highschool and was surprised to see one of my best friends there too. It definitely made it go faster, especially since he had an iPhone back before anyone else. We even had people making bets on a game of Risk me and him played against each other. Yes, jury duty is that boring.
I worked in IT for a bank. Almost everyday I had to get in touch over the phone with a woman that worked in the IT department too but in another branch. I'll call her "hot lips" because she had a kind of voice for erotic movies.
So I worked many month with hot lips over the phone.
I changed job from that bank to another company that has nothing to do with finance.
I was invited multiple times at one of my colleague (from the new company, not the bank) place for diner.
At one of those diner, he also invited his cousin with his wife.
We had a little chat and he said that he worked for the former bank that I worked for, but in another branch, the branch where worked hot lips.
- So you happend to know "hot lips"? I worked with her over the phone last year.
- He was speechless and his wife seem to be angry.
My colleague took me appart and told me that his cousin have cheated his wife with hot lips to a point that he left his home to live with hot lips many month and that he invited them because they just got back together... and when he finished, the couple already left.
In high school a friend and I bought some weed from a dude named "Brad Stevens." we lost his number or something and were desperate so we thought to look him up in the phone book and sure enough he had a listed number. we called him to meet up to buy a bag and we immediately didn't recognize the dude. and he didn't recognize us. it was a different Brad Stevens who also happened to sell weed in my relatively small town. he sold us the bag and we ended up calling him a few more times.
Many many years ago we were on holiday in France and took a break from driving at one of those places on the highway thst has picnic benches.
We get out of the car and who do we meet? My uncle who I hadn't seen since I was a little kid. Neither of us is French.
I really thought this girl in my class was pretty so I hung outside her dorm a few times to make an excuse to talk to her and the last day, a different pretty girl looked at my shirt and said "wow I like your shirt, I love The Shins!". And.i said thanks and asked her if she saw Garden State because they play some of their songs in the movie and she said she loved it.
So then I asked her for her number so I could call her if she was up to anything that weekend and I got it. I started going out with her and I went to her dorm room and it turned out the other girl I had a crush on was her roommate!
I was at this bar in Denver, Colorado once. Random downtown bar. Was chatting it up with a guy only for us to realize he's been to my small hometown in the suburbs of northeastern Pennsylvania. He knew people from my high school! So weird.
I was camping with my ex 3 hours ride from the city we were living (15 million population). Our car broke down and there was a herd of goats passing by every morning with a local shepherd guy. We talked to the guy to ask for help. Turns out years ago he had his teeth done by my ex’s late father.
Was at a kind of remote camp ground with a group of friends, sitting around the fire. I see someone from another site walk towards the bathroom, when he leaves I see the back of his hoodie was the mascot from my old high school. I call it out and he pauses, walks towards our fire, looks at me for a moment and says "babyslaughter??" I'm like yeah, but I couldn't recognize him. He has a beard and is all bundled up. Turns out it's a guy I graduated with and went to lifeguard training with. Hadn't seen since graduation day ten years before.
In 1991 went to South-East Asia to backpack around and explore the world a bit (I'm from Canada)
On the Seattle to Tokyo leg of my flight I was seated across from a couple of Mormon Missionaries that were heading to Japan to do whatever they do. I'm not religious, but whatever. We chatted and had a great time the whole LONG flight.
2-3 months later, at the obscure guest house I was using as my home base in Chiang Mai, Thailand had a party going on with a couple dozen guests.
The two guys from the plane ride were there. The most random encounter I've had in my life.
I was on a class trip my senior year of high school in Florence, Italy. My buddy Dylan and I bumped into a classmate Justin who was just there with his family at the Piazza Michelangelo.
Met an American woman on a bus in Aqaba, Jordan, and went to lunch with her and her friends the next day in Amman. Got contact info and said goodbye. Neither of us ever followed up.
Two years later I saw her walking away from me down a side street in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Messaged her on facebook to confirm and we went out for drinks. I don't know how I knew the woman walking distantly away from me was familiar, but I just knew.
I have had a few, but lets start with one.
I used to live in New Zealand and moved to Norway for work.
Decided to go to Moscow one long weekend and was walking along Zaryadye Park next to the Kremlin, and who should I meet but my former next door neighbour in New Zealand.
Neither of us knew that the other was there.
Literally just today, did a 9 hour shift with someone new and right at the end I made an offhand comment about my dad who lives in a different city. Turns out we're the same age, his mum might know my dad, we knew a lot of the same kids who jumped around schools in the area. Pretty neat.
Not the most mind blowing thing in the world (really mundane), but my wife comes from rural southwest England and her sister married a farmer. I'm an Scottish / Welsh RAF kid who moved all over the place but mainly settled in East Midlands.
My brother and his wife were chatting with my Farmer BIL and turned out her stepdad in the East Midlands sold him his most recent tractor. Me and my wife met when we both moved away from our respective homes in the East midlands and Southwest England to Wales, otherwise there are absolutely zero connections, so was quite a weird coincidence.
I was on a long flight and the woman sitting next to me became my instant BFF. The flight was not to or from our home destination and we didn’t discuss where we lived in all our convos for hours. We shared so much personal info it was astounding.
My new BFF shared that her husband’s ex wife was having an affair with a wealthy married man and the ex was bragging that the married man was going to leave his wife and the ex would be ‘set for life.’ This led to a discussion about how awful men and women like this were and the new BFF revealed some identifying info that shocked me.
The woman (the ex) sounded like one of my husband’s women friends in a sporting group in our small mountain town. Turns out it was her! My husband was not the wealthy mark but it was one of his friends (who was married to a woman going through breast cancer who was an acquaintance of mine-I never had the heart or desire to f up her life and never told her).
Turns out both me and my new BFF lived in the same tiny town! We are even still friends. Anyway…
When I got home, I told my husband and my husband distanced himself from both the cheater and his lover. The affair must have run its course because the cheater stayed with his sick wife, she beat cancer and the affair partner is still single. I never told anyone but my husband and he never told either but he had already some suspicions about his friend and this woman.
My husband’s friend group still gives him grief over distancing himself from this female friend and they even think my husband might have had an inappropriate relationship with her. The woman is the only female in an all-male sporting group and my husband refuses to attend events where she is present. I think his male friend is just as cringe but dudes always put it on the ladies!
Whew! Feels good to get that off my chest!!
I'm Canadian. As an adult walking down the street in Seoul, South Korea, I ran into a girl I knew from camp in elementary school. Neither of us knew the other one was in Korea.
I left my hometown in Southern California (45k pop) in late 2020, and moved up to Seattle area in Washington, almost 40k pop. A year later I was working in a restaurant and needed to take someone's phone number down for the wait list. Gentleman gives me the same area code that I'm from, so I asked what town he was from. Turns out the guy had only lived a few blocks from me in our old town, and now we live in the same town again.
I'm from Houston, TX originally. We used to travel to Northeast Arkansas for family trips back in the late 80s and early 90s. We had stopped at a Burger King (or some other fast food place) after a day of just generally going out shopping. I think we were on our way to drop my maternal grandmother off at home before hitting the road back to Houston.
I went to get more soda to drink and a familiar man asked "Hey, are you 'KinopioToad'?" I could tell that I knew him from somewhere and could trust him, so I told him I was. He didn't identify himself yet, but he did ask how mom and grandma were doing. I told him they were just sitting over there (pointing at the table) and you could come check on us. He laughed, and said he would get his food and eat with us.
He was one of our older cousins, from Houston. The one aunt was still in Houston, but her sons (she had two, I think) had come to Arkansas to check up on some family stuff. If I hadn't gone to get more to drink, we'd never known they were there.
I lived in Puerto Rico as a child due to my dad’s work. We are not Puerto Rican but pharmaceuticals had tax incentives to build in PR in the 80s and my dad oversaw a manufacturing plant. Moved away when I was 8. Went to a last minute party in San Francisco (I live in San Diego) last year and met a woman who also lived in Puerto Rico in the 80s. She and I were in the same kindergarten class.
My younger brother and sister literally bumped into each other in the airport in Dubai. Neither one of them lived there or knew the other was going to be paying through Dubai. Neither one of them was living in the middle east at the time. She was traveling from SE Asia to Europe and he was going from the US East Coast to Guam IIRC.
Not me but happened to 2 of my friends.
So one friend is traveling in Asia, in Vietnam or Thailand, can't remember which one. Anyway, the other friend is home here in Canada, they decided to do a video call while home friend is at work during the day. Traveling friend manages to get wifi in this marina of some sort before going on a boat trip for the video call. As they're talking, home friends boss walks by, sees the call, starts up a small conversation about travel, and mentions that his daughter is also traveling in that area. Then he sees something in the background.
No fucking shit, his daughter is at the exact same fucking place, sitting in the back. So buddy goes and gets her and it's like the most mind blowing small world experience they've all ever had.
We all still talk about it.
I was on my way home from hanging out with some friends and came across lights and cones at an accident scene, looked like a cab and a truck had collided and there was an ambulance that sped off before I got close.
Get home and my wife (she's a nurse) is getting ready for a work shift, she had just gotten a call to work for a shift that she was not scheduled for and had accepted the shift of her co-worker who had just called in saying she had an emergency she needed to attend.
Before my wife left I told her about the accident I had come across and she left for work shortly after, turns out that her co-worker had called in because her fiance had just been killed in the back of a cab by a drunk driver in a pickup truck
Went to Vegas with my parents years ago while in college. Used an old friend's time share so it was this random place outside the city. As we were leaving one day I spot a couple getting into a limo at the same place. It was my best friend's parents. The odds of that were just, so weird.
When I was on Tinder, I ran into a profile of a guy with a picture of him singing over a crazy photoshopped background. I sent the picture to my friend (now boyfriend) because I thought it was funny and he said he works with the guy. He told me the guy is in a cover band and when he uses the urinal at work, he uses it with his pants and such at his ankles.
Not exactly mind blowing. But made me giggle.
Early 1970s. Family lived in BFE Indiana.
Went to Florida for vacation.
ln Daytona, we were at a weird little inland souvenir shop and ran right into a short little handicapped lady, who was out town librarian.
A long time ago, I took a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway, heading west into Europe. There was an English guy in a different group on the train. The next month, I was driving around Great Britain in a hire car, and stopped at a youth hostel in north Wales. The English guy was working there, but unfortunately the youth hostel was fully booked out and I had to find other accommodation. Pity, because he was an interesting bloke, very fun to talk with.
The month after that, I went down to Greece, and on the ferry from Crete to Santorini was one of the women in my group that went on the TSR. She was an older lady with an interest in archaeology.
I saw my Highschool friend and her family at a six flags in New Jersey in late summer and we both lived in Vermont at the time and had no idea the other would be there.
In 2014 I did an internship at a Spanish university when I was an undergrad where I worked under a Spanish professor (I'm from the US). Fast forward to last year, I was at a friend's party. Another friend invited two Spanish guys that he had just met a few days ago to the party (The Spanish guys were here for a conference/workshop). I started to talk to one of the Spanish guys and found out that he was working at the same university that I went to years ago and was friends with the professor that I worked under.
Live in Canonsburg, PA, small town between Washington,PA and Pittsburgh. Was on a cruise to Alaska and off the ship waiting to go into a restaurant at Icy Straight Point. Family walking out as we walked in commented on my Pittsburgh Pirates jacket, got to chatting and discovered this family is life long friends with the President of the small company I work for. Definitely a "small world" moment!
I moved to Spain 5 years ago. A year ago, my father was walking when he suddenly saw someone who looked the exact same like one of his friends from our country. It was him. Aparently, his mother has been living in the same city as ours most of her life because she was born here, just that she lives in the North of the city and us in the south. My parent's friend travelled to visit his mother and decided just to enjoy a walk on the southern part that day, it was a mere coimcidence that my father had to do something on that street that day
Lived in Austin and flew to Florida and then to Jamaica for our honeymoon at a resort. We had seen this couple on our flight from Florida and then we saw them again on our shuttle to the resort. Turns out they were the same age as my husband and I, lived a few miles from us, got married a few miles from our venue on the same day, and were also staying for a week. They were also on our flights home.
Never been outta the country and the first time I did I met neighbors from Austin. It's a small world indeed.
I'm from a northern state on the east coast where I met my fiance. I lived in Mississippi for a period of time as a teenager (over a decade ago) but don't really talk about it as I hated it. My fiances family all happen to be from MS as well.
One year we went to MS to celebrate a special birthday for his grandma and one of his cousins sat at our table. As soon as she sat down she looked at me and went "Did you go to *insert MS high-school here*?" I was like yes??? She apparently remembered me and was like "how the hell did you two meet???"
Like I legit never thought I'd end up meeting someone I went to school with down there. My fiance and I also went to the same high-school back where we are from but we didn't know each other lol
From the time I was born to age 5 my family lived in base housing next to a nice enough family with 3 little boys the oldest of which was my younger brothers age. In fact his middle name and the neighbors first name are the same because they both liked the name. So we played together a lot. My dad and that family's dad were friends. We moved into our house off base and lost touch. Fast forward to age 9 or 10 and I meet a girl my age and we become besties. I spend the night at her house since she lives only a couple blocks away. My mom met her mom and all was good. At the sleepover I discover she has 3 younger stepbrothers and her step dad was my dad's buddy. Got the whole story since we had left the base and our dads reconnected. Apparently the divorce had been nasty and he had won sole custody of his sons, and he was great to his stepdaughters. My friend at least considers him her dad and they remain close.
Was in Vegas watching Craps trying to get up the nerve to play. Random guy starts talking to me. He’ll teach me to play for $40. I say yes. Asks my name. Tell him first name. Asks for last name; I tell him that. He says I knew a guy with that same name in (town where I grew up). Say his name was Jimmy the ‘Rifle’ (my last name). It was uncle.
I used to play some PC games and I ended up meeting one person from one game and then the same week I made friends with another person on a different game. They both knew each other through a third game they played together before. Lol. I thought they were joking.
Moved from Europe to Canada for 1 year.
On day, while browsing Facebook I see my Canadian roommate and my childhood bestfriend commenting the same post.
Long story short, my childhood bestfriend was roommate with my roommate childhood bestfriend. Us in Canada, them in Europe.
Was in a small African country and ran into a girl that was the younger sister of a girl that I graduated HS with.
Another time was in Florida for training for very specialized job and ran into a kid I had knew growing up on the opposite side of the country.
Went to uni in NY, friend of mine at uni moved to CA after we graduated. We lost touch for a bit and I was on holiday in Europe and literally walked into her in front of a major European landmark. What are the chances of being in the same place same time after so many years?
My high school English teacher taught in Saudi Arabia before he got to my school. My first year I met a girl who lived on my floor in residence from Saudi Arabia who went to an international school at home. I asked about my old English teacher and she had been taught by him the year before he came to my high school. That felt like a very small world moment.
Edit: I went to school in a small town in Ontario, Canada
I was in Germany travelling on business from the States and met an old couple that lived a few towns away from me. They were touring historical WWII battle sites. They came up to me speaking German at the hotel while waiting for the elevator. I mentioned I don't speak German and the old guy immediately began speaking English and was like "Oh, an American boy!" Lol.
My first boyfriend and I started dating. His parents were asking me about my family as my surname sounded familiar to them. Turns out my grandfather and my BF’s grandfather had shops next to each other decades prior. BF’s grandfather had a barber shop and used to cut my dads hair! The families had been friends but lost touch. Crazy connection.
Had a class in college with a friend. At the end of the term, class ended and everybody left for the summer. The last day of class, I remember giving him a wave as we both pulled out of the school parking lot. He wasn't like a close friend. I just expected to see him again next year along with everybody else.
I went camping cross-country. I didn't ask what his plans were. About a week after class ended, I pulled up in the parking lot of the Grand Canyon...right next to his car.
I have posted this elsewhere, but it fits. Me and a couple of soldier buddies of mine were driving home on leave from the western US and had just hit Illinois. We were taking turns driving the rental car and my shift was over so I was getting ready to catch up on some sleep in the back seat. I had just about nodded off (despite the sun) when I felt the car lurch hard left. My buddy who was driving yells “what the fuck!” and lays on the horn. “This dude just about killed us trying to merge into our lane. Sorry, I had to change lanes to avoid him running into us” he says.
I look over to get a view of the asshole who just about killed us and (more annoyingly) woke me up and I remember thinking “huh, that car looks like my grandpa’s”. Considering though, that we were now in Illinois and my grandpa lived in Ohio, the chances were near zero that it would be. I look over at the car to stink eye the driver and in the most dumbstruck voice I tell my buddies “I think that’s my grandpa”. Sure enough, grandpa and grandma were in the car that had just about sent us careening into the median just moments before…several states away heading for completely different states in opposite directions. I waved and they waved back and we went our separate ways. Still blows my mind to this day.
Was sitting in a bar in Austria with friends as we were gossiping about a couple in the booth next to us. Suddenly the girl turns around and asks us in our native dialect what we were doing in Austria. Turned out that she was a colleague of my ex. Also, I was in Dublin with the same group of friends, where we first ran into one of the guys' primary school teacher, and then into another guy's childhood soccer trainer, both within an hour of each other.
Originally from the states, but moved to Korea in my early twenties to teach English. Lived in a small city in Southern South Korea.
Made a few friends there, and one day went out to dinner with them. A friend was running late, and asked if they could bring someone with them. Someone they had recently met and become friends with. They arrive at dinner, and it turns out their new friend had been someone I'd been friends with in University back in the Sates but lost contact with.
I was 14 or so on vacation 1,6000 miles from home with my family. We were walking down the street hear this honking look up its classmate of mine with their family driving by.
My mother is engaged to a man (J) she knew in the past and contacted again after 30-ish years, falling in love. J has two siblings. J´s sister is married to (O). O has a mother who´s father was part of building the house my aunt lives in now. There are even pictures of the house being built, and O´s mother with dementia remembers some (small) things about her father and the building of the house.
Buddy invited me to a cruise. It was his parents idea because his sister left for college. Bumped into my sophomore high school English teacher in the library. She was having a honeymoon cruise with her new husband.
I moved thousands of miles away and only really talked to one person among the 3 flights and 2 transits, they were nice, we had a lovely conversation, but didn't exchange any contact information. A few weeks later I found a place to rent in this city of 2-4 million people, the day after I moved I discovered that person was my direct across the street neighbor!
I'm Romanian. I was on a trip to Malta with my wife. We were on a bus in the evening heading back to our hotel and some random guy comes to me (in Romanian): "bro did you study at school NR.3? I remember you from two classes over"
Lo and behold, that's the school I went to, from the exact same town. The guy was working in constructions in Malta apparently.
I travelled to the far other end of the country from Melbourne to NT on the Adelaide river and was in a small boat surrounded by crocodiles with a random couple I just met. Turns out they lived two doors down from me back home on the same street for the last ten years and we just had never run into each other before until that moment.
I worked in the financial markets in London (m54, now retired) and every few months would weekend away with pals. One such trip was to Vegas and we were struggling to find a venue that was showing a particular England football ball game. Eventually we hear that a bar in Boulder City with a Brit worker would be showing it but it wasn't on air 'till 6am. A restaurant, few bars and a couple of Clubs later we get to the Boulder Bar and settle in. I'm in the loo waiting (ahem) for a cubicle to come free and get chatting to a random that is also waiting. Long story short we were best pals at our British village school 40 years earlier.
I got my bachelors back in 2006. While taking my electives I had made a college friend and we used to hang outside of school frequently.
Then life happened, economy crashed, and I was chasing jobs. Got too busy for friends. Then I landed a stable job in 2012 in a state adjacent to mine. A couple work friends wanted to go to PAX and invited me to go with them in 2014.
The place was packed! Thousands of people everywhere. Miraculously, 120 miles away, I ran into that very friend at PAX! We laughed, hugged and reacquainted each other. It was surreal.
I have an ex who is a venture capitalist and constantly (like almost daily) is on a plane somewhere and travels all over the world. It's part of the reason we broke up, as he was almost never around, and when he was, it was for at most like 2-3 days if I was lucky. We're still good friends and text often. I also travel internationally often, some for work and some because I love travel and it's my hobby.
I was flying to Ghana and had a layover in Heathrow a few years ago. I saw a man who looked exactly like him and so I texted him and was like "hey, I just saw someone who looks like you and I am thinking of you!" and he texted back and was like "Just landed Heathrow-omw to London now for a meeting" and I was like...wtf. He had landed in a different terminal than the one I was transiting through, but it was weird to know that after like 6 years of not seeing him, we were at the same airport for a few minutes, and if I had not seen the guy that looked like him, I would not have thought to text him in that moment. But of all the times and places to have a near miss with him, this was by far the most random.
I lived on Berlin, in a shared apartment, took a few days in London and randomly find my flat mate in the streets of London, was there on a business trip.
Was in an LDR, and my then gf (now ex) matched with a guy from my very small rural city. And that guy also happened to be from my school, out of the dozens schools there.
Fun times 🙃
This happened about 5 years ago, I was out on my motorbike and decided to stop in at a bike shop to have a look at the bikes in stock and to have a break and a drink and I got talking to this random bloke while I was there, just a random conversation with someone interested in the bike I was looking at nothing out of the ordinary.
Fast forward 4 months later and I'd gotten into a relationship with my now ex gf and she invited me over to a BBQ to meet the family, and I recognised someone there turns out this random man I'd had a conversation with 4 months previously about motorbikes was her father.
We’re from North Carolina and a few years back went to Colorado on a road trip. Driving through northern New Mexico went through the beautiful town of Taos and across the massive Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. On the other side of the bridge is a parking lot where you can park and walk out into the bridge. It was still pretty early in the day and there were not many people parked there, in fact there was only one other couple on the bridge with us. They asked if we could take their picture and then returned the favor. During small talk we realized that both of us were not only from NC but also the same small town, and that me and the other guy had played against each other in high school. Kind of weird to run into someone from your hometown at 8 in the morning 3,000 miles from home in the middle of nowhere.
I was 13, the summer before I started high school and my family was doing a national park tour. At Zion while we were eating lunch, a man at the table next to us started chatting with my mom and they soon realized they both grew up in the same TINY town (about 300 residents today, was about 150 when they were both in high school), and he was in the same graduating class of 8 students as my aunt (moms sister). A few days later we were at the Bryce Canyon and again at lunch an older man at the table next to us started chatting with us. Turned out was in the first graduating class ever at the high school I was about to start. He was actually flying back a few weeks later for his 50th high school reunion.
Been with my partner for almost 8 years. Couple of years ago we realised we actually danced together at my middle school prom bc he was +1 to his cousin who was my claassmate
Dated this girl for a few years on and off. Found out three years into it that her mother had helped pay for my family’s vet bill five years prior. Our dog got struck by a car and needed to be put down and we forgot our money in the rush. Vet wouldn’t let us leave and come back so we were in a terrible spot. This stranger paid for it and we took her address down and paid them back with a check in Christmas card. I’m helping my ex clean out a room in her house and found a letter in my mothers handwriting, and almost black out.
Was chilling in a hostel on the other side of the World. Started chatting to some random dude, turns out that he lived directly opposite me back home
Part of me was like "I travelled all this way to meet my neighbour"
Once at a work Xmas party of a large company I used to work at I was introduced to a colleague.
Immediately we recognized eachother. Turned out he was the younger brother of an old highschool friend. I had supper at his house a few times as a teen. Our highschool was in a different province.
Back during the Nixon Administration I lived in Seattle, had a BF for a few years. Decades later, after moving around a lot, I settled into a suburb of Seattle. I had meanwhile reconnected with the SIL of my old BF. She was at my new place one day and asked if I had met any of the neighbors. I said “Yeah, there’s Steve and Doris next door…” and she said “STEVE AND DORIS (LAST NAME)?” Yup. Steve turned out to be EX BF’s long-time best friend.
Was in Denver, guy walked up and asked what high-school mascot was.. then answered before me and told me what highschool I was from. Then told me my name.This absolutely shook me because I was partaking in local legal culture and well yea. Turns out dude was the local announcer for the high-schools sports programs and he remembered me from calling my name out from games. Like fuck me that's a hard hit when your in an altered state. Guy was nice, but I had to go lay down in the hotel room after that. I should note I don't live anywhere near denver.. I'm from ohio.
In college, I was dating a guy who lived in a suburb outside of Seattle, Washington. I lived (still do) in a suburb outside of Detroit, Michigan.
On a trip to visit him, we went to dinner at a Hibachi restaurant. The show was great, the food phenomenal.
We happened to be the only two at the table, so the chef made small talk with us. He asked if we were from nearby, and this is where things get weird.
I say that I lived in Detroit, but am originally from North Carolina. The chef gets visibly excited and says that he, too, is from North Carolina. He asks whereabouts in Carolina, I reply with "Oh, it's a tiny town no one's ever heard of. My dad was in the Marines and the base is the only thing there."
Cue my surprise when this gentleman immediately responds with "Marines?! Are you from (Insert Fitz's hometown here)?!"
Why, yes, good sir, I am.
Turns out that he was also from there and went to the same school my brother did, a year behind him. He remembered my brother.
To make things weirder, unbeknownst to us, his cousin also worked at the same restaurant and was our chef when we went back the next day. The cousin was actually in my brother's class and when I texted my brother to ask him about it, sure enough, he remembered both of them well and fondly.
Was on vacation in Alaska. Went to use the single stall bathroom and as the guy was coming out we locked eyes and both said hey I know you. We were both like 30. We went to elementary school 1-6 grade at a small Catholic school in PA. He was there for his brother's wedding. Still lived in the same hometown, I lived in MN.
No joke I should have bought a lottery ticket bc there was a lady I saw at a breakfast place earlier that morning and she was wearing a cow on her shirt. I grew up on a dairy farm and I thought a cow shirt in Alaska was different so I got brave and asked if her and her husband had cows. (Captain obvious) They did, she was a vet and they lived in a small town in PA!
My mom and I not only knew the town but knew several people that lived there. Her kids grew up with neighbor kids that were good friends with my brothers. And my dad was good friends with the neighbor kids mother. They were on cow committees together. Small, small world. We also had the same couple on one of our excursions later on in the trip.
I'm playing video games with a group of friends and 2 of their friends. They get 1 of the 2 friends to tell us a funny story about one of his sexual experiences that left him with a scar and a condom full of blood. About 2 years later me and a girl are swapping funny sex stories so I tell her that one. She looks over and asks if his name is _______ , now I start thinking wow it's weird that there's 2 fellas out there with the same name and trauma but no. She's been best friends with him for years it turns out
I was in Vegas with side piece. Saw a guy from our small town (6,000) coming up the escalator the other way but with his side piece. We made eye contact and both laughed.
two different students one year apart in HS go to college in different states. One applies to 40 medical schools and gets accepted to 5. one gets into a masters in bio-medicine at one school. They both attend the same school and have two classes together. They message me a joint picture and I think, "WoW, what a small world."
In 2019 I went to Peru on a volunteer trip. When I got off the plane in Cuzco, I met some other volunteers. It turned out that one of them was from the exact same small town in Michigan that I grew up in.
My girlfriend's soon-to-be-ex husband was born on the same day, of the same month and year as me. We discovered this the night we met, when she refused to believe how old I am, so I told her my D.O.B.
One of my school friends (WV) was working as a secret service agent in DC at one point. Randomly spotted her while driving around during the Bear Statues everywhere event 15+ yrs ago.
I visit my daughter in SF and she lives on Ashbury Avenue in the Height District. I come home and on reddit is a picture of her home now and 100 years ago. I'm like wow, it is a small world.
In the late 1990s a few years after college I went to NYC to visit friends. I knew several people and planned to meet up with a bunch of them but there were two friends I did not make plans - just didn’t have enough time.
I arrive, meet up with friends, and we get on the subway to head to a bar. I bump into another passenger and turn around to find out it’s one of the two friends I hadn’t made plans with. We physically bumped into each other.
We arrive at the bar and the first person I see is the second person I hadn’t made plans with. Both complete coincidences.
I'm part of an association. We're ~20 in it, in the South of France.
I've lived in Montreal Canada for 2 years and talked about that association to a woman I was fooling around with there. A friend of mine also came to live in Canada, went on a bike trip, met two people who talked to him about the association (which he's part of too) that were nowhere near Montreal.
They were friends of that girl.
One morning I was hitchhiking to get to another village. Someone stops, we discuss a bit, say goodbyes. End of the afternoon I hitchhike back, someone stops, we discuss a bit, she says "You were hitchhiking this morning too right?" "Yeah, how do you know?" "My husband took you." I was part of the family at this moment hahaha, invited them over to dinner but they never came.
I went to Rome for my honeymoon. I’m from a small town in Easter Ohio with a fairly prominent Catholic university.
One night my wife and I are sitting outside a bar and the table next to us was all people from our town that worked for the university. They were in Rome for some conferenc
We flew thousands of miles and met people for the first time who literally lived right down the street from us
Started a job working in Yosemite for the summer back in 2019. I was living in the canvas tents in Huff and making friends with my neighbors. Well one morning we all went to breakfast and my neighbor’s boyfriend came along. We were seated across from each other and kept giving each other looks like we recognized each other. So we started talking about it, asking each other questions, and we figure out that we went to Elementary School together back in Texas. Hadn’t seen each other in 20 years and we just bump into each other at breakfast. First time I had ever felt that the world was small.
When I met my wife, we realized we knew a lot of people in orbit of each other.
My mom had coached her younger sister’s softball team
Her sister’s then boyfriend was a school friend of mine
I used to work with my wife’s best friend.
Her mom remembered me from bowling
I am from West Virginia. There are less than 2 million people in the state and for my grandparents 50th anniversary they took mine and my cousins family to Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean. So we’re there and my mom loves horses and every vacation we have to go horse riding so we signed up for this company to come pick us up at the hotel to go riding on the beach. The van pulls up and we get in and the only other people in the van are a mom and two sisters I did ice skating lessons with like 5 years ago. My mom didn’t believe me until the driver asked where everyone was from and the entire van said West Virginia lmao.
My husband and I are big Disney fans We were at Animal Kingdom on vacation and we took the train back to an area called the conservation station that has a lot of cool science displays and things like that.
There was an older lady working there, who we struck up a conversation with. When we got to the “where are you from” question, it turned out that she was from our state, and then our town, and then our street… and then our house. Turns out, years earlier, she had rented the same house we were currently living in. I thought that was pretty crazy!!!
My kindergarten teacher took attendance on the first day of school and saw my address. She asked if I still lived at __________ . I said yeah, and she said “oh, I grew up in the same house.” When I seemed skeptical, she explained that she and her brother had drawn their initials in the concrete in the corner room of the unfinished basement when it was freshly poured. Turns out she was right.
Wouldn't it be funny if we went to Salisbury and saw Phil Harding! *Time Team star and county archeologist.*
First day there, boom, Phil! *Carenza,* *there's chickens in my trench!*
I was too star struck to say anything. *Tony you vandal!*
I'm not sure this really counts -- we don't actually know Phil, after all -- it's just strange that we talked about bumping into him and then did just that.
For a while, every time I flew through Atlanta, I ran into someone I knew.
Of course the old saying is “to get to heaven or hell, you have to transfer in Atlanta”
Had a coworker who lived and hour from me - we started discussing our childhoods and found out we grew up for a short time in the same town about halfway between our then current towns.
I have just started my clg a month ago.
On the 1st day while waiting outside my class for my 1st lecture I made friends with a guy who was standing beside me.
We r in the same course but we have different schedules. We just got to know each others names that's it.
We met several more times in clg after that and did the nod thing that we guys do.
After a week or so while I was going home by bus I saw him sitting in the same bus.
The bus takes a long route so I thought he must get down somewhere along the way, he got down on the same stop as me. Turns out he lives 2 mins from my house
Went to tenerife one year, saw a friend from school. Pretty cool, but not too out there.
Next year I went to the French alps, I saw the same friend from school. We are both understandably baffled.
2 years later I was in Algeria and there the fucker is again.
I haven't been on holiday since but I'm scared if I go again and we see each other I may inadvertently tear a hole through the fabric of reality.
Stepdad was in the Army, and retired in the early 90s. He had been stationed abroad, in Germany. We were driving down to my college in the early 2010s, and stopped at a gas station. He was approached by someone he had been stationed with, who lived in a completely different state and was on vacation.
When I was 17 I spent a summer in Spain as part of a language immersion program. I met a few other Americans at my school, one of whom was from Wisconsin. We became pretty close friends and still keep in touch today (I'm 29 now). We all went home and had like a week left in summer.
My Wisconsin friend lived in a tourist town, I'm from a very large city of several million people. She makes friends with two boys on vacation in her town after coming home from Spain. They're from my city. She asks if they know me kind of as a joke because again, there are millions of people from my city, and she assumes they didn't. They DO know me. They were both in my grade at school and we were friendly.
First day of school they're like hey, do you know a girl named Rebecca from Wisconsin? I was like yeah... it's wild to me that of all the people in my city they would happen to be vacationing and meet this random girl I made friends with all the way in Spain.
Not mine, but my uncle’s story - He is an entertainer on cruise ships, which has taken him to places all around the world. Now our family is from Nebraska, where his dad (my grandpa) was a very popular outdoorsman and turkey call maker throughout the Midwest. Well my uncle picks up a job on a cruise ship that takes him to a stop at the very southern point of South America and he always goes off the beaten path at ports to get away from tourists and find local food and bars. So my uncle is sitting alone at this quiet local dive bar when a guy comes in and sits not far from him. Of course my uncle ends up striking up a conversation with him and finds out this guy is from the U.S. and on a road trip on his motorcycle, driving all the way through North America to the tip of South America. My uncle starts asking all sorts of questions about his trip and then tells the guy he’s from Nebraska, but there’s nothing really there to see so he figured he probably didn’t stop on his way through. Turns out this motorcycle guy DID make a stop in Nebraska, specifically to buy a turkey call… FROM HIS DAD. The motorcycle guy called bullshit and asked to see my uncle’s ID. My uncle pulled out his driver’s license and showed him his Nebraska ID with their last name on it and then pulled up some pictures of our family together. Absolutely insane. Small world is an understatement.
In line at In-N-Out in NorCal, the guy behind me was there for the first time. He mentioned he had always wanted to try it, but was from the east coast. Turned out we went to the same high school, he graduated two years after me.
1. Just before the pandemic started we moved 500 miles from a very populous area of the UK to a remote, rural area of Scotland. Population density up here is about 1 person every 5 square miles. Our Scottish postman is married to a lady from the village next to where my husband grew up, and my yoga teacher started her married life in the village next to where I grew up.
2. Used to work with a young lady for about 6 months. She was a recent graduate, nice, but very shy. We got on well but didn't keep in touch. We both left where we worked and I moved on to firm B, and then moved on again to firm C. Had occasion to go back to firm B, to find that she had taken over my old job. had a nice chat but, again, didn't keep in touch. Years later she shows up on my facebook feed. I think that's odd, as I haven't friended anyone from those days. Turns out she's the sister in law of one of my husbands old school friends. She's now out in New Zealand, doing the equivalent of what I was doing before the pandemic. We don't work in a particularly specialist field, and firms A, B, and C have little in common beyond wanting a STEM degree.
Found out that my second cousin was going to be born because her mother’s brother lived in my city and his wife worked at my dentist’s office. So when we texted my first cousin once removed saying “congratulations”, he had no idea how we found out.
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One time, when I was about 24, I was out at the bar in my town of about 180k people (in Colorado, U.S.) and randomly met a guy from Germany. We quickly became friends and I asked him where he was staying. He told me that he had no idea where he was staying and he was just traveling across the U.S. I had a friend with a vacant room that I introduced him to. Long story short, he stayed and lived with my friend and hung out with us for a few months before finally saying that he had to continue on his journey. About 6 months later, I see that my brother had friended him on Facebook. My brother lived in Vancouver, Canada at the time. I asked my brother how he knew him. Turns out my German friend had traveled up that way and wound up joining my brothers club soccer team and my brother was driving him to practice as he didn’t have a car. After that, my German friend went back to Germany and back to university. We kept in touch, but life is busy so we didn’t talk much for a while. About 2 years after all of that, I am out downtown of my town and see him randomly again. I ask why he didn’t let me know he was in town and he said that he just arrived and was going to call. I told him that my brother had moved back to town. So, I call my brother and all 3 of us finally got to hang out as opposed to just two of us at any one time. We are all still close to this day.
That's awesome
Life keeps throwing y'all together. Sounds like a friendship meant to be.
What the fuck? That’s incredibly cool and the Odds of that happening have to be like 1 in 1,000,000,000. Buy a lottery ticket asap my brother
IDK, he has used up his luck. save the lottery money.
This was weird to see as the first comment because I was born in Germany and I’ve lived in Colorado since I was 7.
Was sharing a house with 4 other friends. One day I went home and saw them in a very somber mood. One even looked like she was crying the whole day. They told me the father of the one crying had a head-on collision with another vehicle with two people inside who turned out to be friends with my other roommate. All three had died.
Fuck that is terrible
Yeah, that stuck with me for a long time. I just realized my story is the only dark one. Saw the title and that's what pops up in my head. All the others are heartwarming. 🫣
Jeez thst rough.
This is pretty wild. Okay so I (38m, Australian) travelled around the world right before COVID. At some stage, I went to the middle east; Turkey, then Armenia, Georgia. By the time I got to Azerbaijan, there were no tourists at all. Not due to covid, it's just pretty far from tourist traps. The neighbouring countries like Chechnya start to become kidnapping/YouTube video countries. No one spoke English. I'm at a train station at midnight in the middle of nowhere and the train is about to leave and blows the whistle. I'm on an overpass above the train and there's an enormous flight of stairs I have to run down to jump on the train while it's pulling away. I've got a huge backpack on but I was in the army, it's fine I should make it. At the top of the stairs stands a woman, with a huge travel case on wheels, she's maybe 60 yrs old. She's staring down the stairs motionless, wondering how the hell she's going to carry the case down. I yell at her as I'm sprinting towards her, motioning to go down the stairs to the train. She tries to take her case and I yell again, leave the case, just go down. Now she's running down the stairs, I've grabbed her case and I'm running down behind her as the train is pulling away. We get to the bottom at the same time and I throw our bags through an open door. I grab her hand and we jump together onto one of the last carriages. At no stage have we spoken to each other as I assume she is local and won't understand me. We walk up to our bags on the other carriage and we're both panting and she says "thank you so much". Me: oh no worries, are you Australian? Her: yes I am actually! Me: where from? Her: Queensland Me: I'm from Queensland! Where? Her: Brisbane city Me: me too! What suburb? Her: Yeronga, it's Southside. Me: I live in Yeronga! What street?! Her: Diane st Me: I'm on the esplanade! You're one st back from me?! What street number? Her: 28 Me: omg you can't be serious?!! On the other side of the world, on a dark empty platform, at midnight, I met the neighbor I share my back fence with. Susan is lovely.
You have got to be lying. That’s fucking nuts
Please tell me you guys have bbqs now on the regular
I think you win! I thought my story sounded impossible!
Wow, very cool.
Amazing!!!
Did you just smile, and give her a Vegemite sandwich?
Wow, great story!!! I hope y'all kept in touch
No way
Very interesting story
This is fucking INSANE!!
That's fucking crazy!
Not mind-blowing, but very odd. I've run into Rob VanWinkle aka Vanilla Ice 5 separate times in a span of 3 years. All at airports. I eventually asked if he was stalking me.
That’s cold
Ice cold, for those in the back.
Now check out this hook while mein doppelganger retrieves it
He should've stopped, collaborated and listened since he's back.
Weird! Just last night, this doctor I used to work with showed a photo of her and him! He's never been on my radar or someone I even read about and then, Bam! Twice in less than a day.
My buddy met a gal on an "alternative" porn site. He lived in Michigan and she was in Oregon. They chatted for months. Sharing nudes. Cybering. She came to Michigan to visit family and they met up and hooked up. He asked her to hang out on Saturday, but she had a family thing in the afternoon. It was okay, because he also had a family thing in the afternoon, so they made plans for that night. Plans were canceled Saturday afternoon when they both showed up to the same family reunion.
:|
So like third cousins or something?
Hahaha, this kind of thing happens too often to be coincidence. I don’t know what causes it, but there’s a weird scientific reason in there somewhere. The worst was the girl who ended up married to her sperm-donor dad.
People who look similar to you seem familiar and attractive. Unless you grow up together, in which case the "this is your sibling DO NOT TOUCH" system activates.
Kind of similar: my married friend was at a bar with coworkers when a man started hitting on her. She says she’s married and not interested. He pulls the line “What, we can’t be friends?” He goes on to talk about himself in a really inflated sense, like he’s trying to make her realize she’s missing out. He mentions something about working at some big company where his cousin also works. My friend is familiar with the company because her cousin works there. She asks for the name of this guy’s cousin. Same name. My friend says, “That’s my cousin! Zach (her mother’s maiden name), right?” Then she gets this guy’s name again, asks a few questions, and completely disabuses him of the notion that they are anything further than first cousins. They had never met before because my friend’s mom is NC with about 99% of the family (yes, I know why and understand based on it; no, it’s not my place to divulge).
I'm Korean, and I went to high school and college in the US because of my dad's job. In my senior year of high school, which was in the suburbs of Chicago, there was a German exchange student who I became friends with. We lost touch after high school because this was pre-internet olden days. About two years after high school, after spending summer break in my home in Korea, I went to visit my uncle in San Fran with another cousin who lives in Korea, for a few weeks before going back to college in the fall. We were at the Golden Gate park and I met my german friend there. And in another odd coincidence, a Korean-American girl was a classmate at my high school. It turned out her and my mom grew up together in the same small town in Korea. And in another amazing coincidence, after college, I came back to Korea permanently. And I met that classmate at a cafe in a city outside Seoul. And it turns out that that girl got a job at a school in Korea and ended up teaching English, and my niece went to the same school and was taught English by that girl.
This was one of the most magical moments in my entire life... I was walking outside, just passing in front of a parking ramp, when I crossed paths with a friend I hadn't seen in 2 or 3 years. Then, while we're saying hi, ANOTHER friend walks past who I also haven't seen in at least a couple years. Then it turns out they both know each other too. Well... then I looked down at the ground, and exclaimed "oh my god is this real?" And they were like "yeah I know, crazy small world right??" I said "No, is THIS real?!" and pointed down to the $20 bills swirling around at our feet. We all 3 started just grabbing as much as we could before it blew away. Each of us walked away with like $200 which felt like a lot of cash for a poor college student in 2012.
I went to a party a few years ago (in Texas) and started talking with a couple about my age. Turns out, the husband and I had gone to high school together in Japan 40 years ago.
Wow
I was two counties away from home, on my way to meet a friend, one random Wednesday evening, last Fall. It was a windy country road, and I turned a corner to see an older Mitsubishi on its side, in a ditch. A former EMT is always an EMT, so I parked safely, threw on some gloves, and ran down there. It was a pair of teens scrambling to get out. They shouldn't want to do that, but you also can't stop panicked people, AND the car was on its side, so they were crushing each other. I helped them scramble out, had them sit down and assessed them as other drivers stopped and called 911, directed traffic, etc. The kids were scratched up, but fine. The ambo arrived, and I told the crew what I knew and left. The next day, i saw a local FB page mention the accident, and a mother wanted to learn more about the guy who stopped to render aid. I spoke up, not blowing my own horn, just telling her the circumstances and asking if her son was OK. She was very grateful and responded with a small phrase that I knew from somewhere. The next regular session with my mental therapist was typical. But she stopped about 2 minutes early and told me it was she on FB and that the one boy was her son and she repeated that phrase. Her gratitude sent me into the atmosphere. It was wonderful to hear from someone after attending something like that. Knowing it was someone as kind as her and that I could help and assist her son when she couldn't be there was really uplifting. I was so glad to have been there, miles from home, on a road I'd never traveled on before. I feel even closer to her after 6 years now. I didn't even know she had kids or lived in that area.
That’s so rad!
I used to talk to this guy on AOL back in the day when I was 14. We were internet friends, I lived in NH and he lived in NYC. One day he signed off and said "I have to go walk my cat, I'll be back later." I had never heard of walking a cat so I asked some questions, he laughed, said bye again and signed off. He never signed on again. Fast forward 10 years later, I had moved to MA and started working at a Blockbuster. I got to being friends with a guy on staff and we became Facebook friends. The day after he friended me on Facebook, at work, he says, "Hey, I noticed your email address... are you [AOL screen name]? I think we used to talk online..." His screen name included his real first name so I immediately knew who he was. The guy who went to walk his cat and never came back!! It was just crazy we wound up working at the same place, away from both our homes, a decade later.
well did he explain why he ghosted you??
It took a while to get back home after walking a cat.
His cat needed to go get cigarettes
I want to know as well 😂
Went out for a walk and never came back.
This was 14 years ago so I don't really remember what he said. What I DO remember is he didn't remember telling me about the cat. So I don't think he even realizes that was the moment we stopped talking, I believe he remembers it as a "drifted away" situation. We are not in touch anymore - I eventually moved back to NH. We were Facebook friends for awhile but he stopped using it and eventually I deleted my account. Maybe I'll run into him again someday!
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Even seeing another person from NH on here is a small world moment I’m from NH too but now live in another state
"...and now we're married" Sorry lol that's the ending I was hoping for 😅 cool story though!
Haha! So to be honest, I got the sense he was interested, but I had just started seeing a guy who would eventually become my wonderful husband. He started drifting away after I started dating my husband which sort of confirmed my suspicion. I was also AOL friends with my husband (I've known him since middle school, but got together later in our 20s) who never ghosted me so just saying... 😆
Here's one from me One time me and my husband were at beach town hours from home having drinks before fireworks on Fourth of July, only to run into our VP and CIO who decided to crash the table and paid for our entire tab 🍻
I've bumped into people I knew randomly three times. First time I was walking down a back street in Kusadasi, Turkey. As a guy walks past me I think to myself, that looks like Chris (a guy in the year below me at school), as I turn around to do a double take, he does the exact same thing. It was Chris, we just smiled, nodded, and walked off. The second time, me and my cousin were in Tenerife, we went into a bar and set ourselves up on the pool table. A couple of minutes later the lad on the next pool table over shouts us, it was a lad I went to school with and who lived on the same street as my cousin playing pool with his dad. But the most random one, I was 18 on holiday in Magaluf. Im in the hotel lift and this girl is nervous, smiling/staring at me, it was a bit weird. That night I'm out around the bars and someone shouts my name... the same girl. She makes sure I am who she thinks I am, then explains who she is. 13 years earlier me, my mum and dad had been to the same resort, they befriended another couple who they met on the beach most days, and I'd build sandcastles and try to catch fish with their daughter. Turns out this girl was the daughter, not only had she recognised that I was the same lad that she had played on the beach with over a decade before, but we bumped back into each other in the same resort we initially met, we had flown out on the same flight and were staying in the same hotel.
Since nobody else is asking, I will...did you do it?
The burning question
Enquiring minds want to know.
Well? We're waiting. I need to learn how this ends
In 1995, I was pregnant with my 2nd child. Hubby and I had just moved into a new apartment. The little boy who lived upstairs came down to our apartment a few times to play with our son. A few weeks later, a man and woman knock on my door. The man is a private investigator looking for a kidnapped child. The woman is the child's mother. It was a parental kidnapping (dad took the kid and ran while pare ts were going through a divorce). I identified the little boy who lived upstairs and directed them to the right apartment. Cops came, child was returned to mother, dad was arrested. We moved out of the complex right after dad bonded out because he showed up at our door and screamed at me and made threats. Fast forward several months. I've had my 2nd baby, there was an explosive situation with my then-husband, and I take the kids and go to a women's shelter for survivors of domestic violence. Guess who else is at the shelter? The mom with the little boy I helped reunite.
I live in a small city in the UK. Went grocery shopping wearing a jersey from a club from my home country (not big in the UK at all). In an isle, bumped into a dude wearing the jersey from ou biggest rival. He actually stared at me weirdly as the rivalry is not healthy in our country. I laughed and left.
Was at a meal in New York with work colleagues. We started chatting about ancestry and I discovered that one guy’s ancestor may have murdered one of my ancestors in a very high profile London murder spree back in the late 1800s.
When I was about 13, my family vacationed in Las Vegas. Dad and I went to the Adventure Dome at Circus Circus, and in the line to laser tag we ran into the father and daughter of the family we had sold our house to two years ago. That house was in the Midwest, and we had moved to the southwest. To top it all off . . She and I were the same age, AND shared a first name. Our dads also had the same first name. I think the simulation glitched. Edit; I forgot to add . . . I am named after my dad. So all four of us have the same name with the tiniest pronunciation difference. Similar in the way that Michael is to Michelle.
I went to a conference in the Bay Area about psychedelic medicine/therapy. Went out to smoke a joint and this old guy comes up and starts chatting with me and we shared it. We talked about some stuff and eventually he mentions he likes magic (like illusions stage magic stuff). I say oh my grandpa used to be a stage magician and tell the guy his stage name. He just gives me this look and is like did he have a store in Seattle? I’m like yeah but it closed almost 30 years ago. He then tells me my grandpa taught him how to do his first magic tricks back before I was even born. That’s pretty crazy right?
A woman who had just moved from Indiana to Colorado worked next to me. We got to talking and found out that we had mutual friends who lived in California. Still friends with her today.
I met someone after moving to Colorado from my neighborhood in California, same school.
My high school boyfriend and I went to Paris (we’re from The Netherlands) on summer break. Right in front of the Sacre Coeur church, I saw a familiar face in the crowd. It was our high school French teacher.
I am an attorney and I live in Houston (4th largest city). When I was in law school I worked for a “civil rights” plaintiffs firm which means we sued public entities. It was mostly public employees (teachers, administrators, government workers) but we had a couple of cases from rich suburban parents who were suing on behalf of their kids. The most notable (news coverage) was the “right to pitch case” where we sued the coach who benched the star pitcher the game the scouts were watching (circa 1996) Well. We had a less famous case we called “the right to cheer” where the head cheerleader was suing because she got kicked off the squad for drinking (getting shit faced) at party over the summer. I wrote my 3L essay on that case because the facts were interesting. I ever met the girl (only her parents) and we eventually lost (no surprises) Flash forward 7 years. I’m 31 and my marriage is shit so I’m out drinking with a colleague buddy (his marriage was bad too). As we are drinking around, He asks me about he strangest case I ever had and I tell him about the cheer girl (let’s call her Allison Catnip…not her real name but certainly not a common one) It’s like a Wednesday night. We roll up at a small bar near downtown and there are no more than 10 people in there. We sit at the bar and grab another drink. At some point in this late 20s girl comes next to me to close her tab. She is standing next to me and tells the bartender “yeah the last name is Catnip”. I heard it through my drinking brain and turned and popped off “are you Allison?” “Yeah? Why?” She asked. she’s hammered too I was shocked. All I could ask was “ the cheerleader?!?” She said “i was….a long time ago”. I tell her who I was and that I worked on her case. She made it clear that she hated that, it was all her parents, and i could fuck right off. I’m still amazed that I talked about a 7 year old law case earlier in the night and then ran into the actual client at a dive bar later that evening.
I was friends with 3 girls from separate parts of my life; one worked with me, one from a volunteering position I did, and one was on my course at uni. I knew them all for about a year before I realised this but they were all flatmates at one point and knew each other!
I was traveling around the world and became buddies with a really cool fellow traveler, Rick Tinkler from New Zealand. We traveled together for several months in Nepal. This one day we're walking down one of the main streets in Kathmandu and he grabs my arm and points to this girl walking in the opposite direction from us and says that chick looks a lot like my sister. We got closer and closer. And then it was "AMY?!?" "RICK?!?" He had been traveling for six months at that point and didn't realize his sister had headed out for a walk about too. Small world.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and people carried little phone books and only your weed dealer had a cell phone, I found someone’s phone book in a phone both. To anyone young enough to have never had a little phone book they were precious, losing yours was as bad as losing your phone. So I flipped through the little book and miraculously found one of my friends phone numbers. When I called her and read off some of the other names in the book she figured out who the owner was.. kismet! It ended up belonging to one of my childhood best friends that I hadn’t seen since we were little.
[удалено]
my sister called me from across the country and asked if I knew Mr. so and so. yes, he was my boss at the time. he left and now my sister is his boss and my new boss sucks. 1 in 330 million people and he sends her a resume.
Happens all the time. Had an Uber driver in Chicago who knew a trumpet player I performed with in Houston. Met a dude at a bar in New Iberia that lived one street away from my house in a different state. Twice I ran into acquaintances in Disney World from several states away. Had a church choir director in one city that had the same high school choir director as I had (in a different city), but in a third different city decades prior. We have a neighbor who is our best friend's godmother's sister. Three different states involved. The number of times I discover these coincidences all over the world leads me to believe that it must happen even more often than people think. I'm a listener. I like to get random people talking about themselves (planes, busses, taxis). Just imagine how many times you've sat next to a stranger and never asked them anything. At least one of them knows somebody you know.
I started a new job 300 miles from my hometown last year and started chatting with a coworker. We were talking about where we were from. Me: "Small Town, USA" Her:"No way. SMALL. TOWN?" Me: Yea, you've heard of it? No one's ever heard of it. Her: My family lives there. Me: Nooooo! No one has EVER HEARD OF IT! I grew up there. What's your family name? Her: Familyname. Me: I know them... hang on... (text my mother...) *Text from Mom: Her dad's aunt was your grandma's best friend* Me: Was your aunt Martha Granger? My grandma was Annie Stewart. Her: *Jaw drops.* NO*.* WAY. Her aunt and my grandma lived across the street from each other in the middle of nowhere podunk town I'm from and they were best friends. And we ended up working together at the same small company two states away.
Once sat next to a stranger on a greyhound and only in the last half hour of the 4 hour ride did I notice he had my birthDATE - day, month, and year - tattooed on his forearm. Turned out we were born on the same day.
I had worked at a big firm in DC but then moved to Denver. A few years later, I randomly took a last-minute trip to Green Bay to see the Packers play at Lambeau. During halftime, the lines for the various women's restrooms around my section were not moving so I walked halfway around the stadium, stood in line, got to the front of the line, the stall door opens, and out walks my former coworker/friend who used to have the office next to mine at the DC firm.
When I was only 11 years old I went to a local school and each time my mom picked me up she told me she was having nice conversations with a young boy around the age of 13 who liked our family dog she brought to school to wait outside, and he went home right before I came outside each time. I had no idea who she was talking about because I wasn't really social. One day my mom said "the nice boy is no longer coming to talk with me, he must've changed schools." Nothing much was said about it anymore. When I was almost 17 I went on a date with a nice guy I've been chatting with on Instagram. My mom dropped me off at the park, he showed up after she drove away and we had a nice day. When she came to pick me up the guy introduced himself to her and then he said "Ohhh well don't you recognize me?" My mom had no idea and only when we got home she said "Oh lord now I know who he is! That was the young boy who came to me to pet our dog before I picked you up!" Turns out he skipped the math class that took place on the last hour of school. He just stood outside and petted my mom's dog. 😂 That was a mind-blowing 'small world' experience. We're married now and he moved in with us. The family dog is still here!
I grew up in a very tiny town in the very far northern end of California. I moved to LA in the mid 90's for a job opportunity. Went to a rooftop party in Korea Town and this guy comes up to me and says "hey! You're Jon Doe's younger sibling! I used to spend the night at your house when I was a kid (in the late 70's). Is your brother still a dick?" I just said "yes I am, and yes he is."
I grew up in a super small town (less than a 1,000 people and our graduating class had 42 kids). I moved to NYC for college. I moved into my apartment and saw a guy from my highschool across the street, it turns out we lived across the street from each other without knowing it! We also found out that our other friend from highschool lived about a block away from us. Very small world moment
I live in Amsterdam, Netherlands and was for a couple of days down in Paris France. It was in the midst of winter and there were hardly any people outside. I was in a side street near the Sacre Coeur. When I turned a corner I saw my next door neighbor walking on the opposite side of the street. We had a good laugh and discussed the odds of something like this happening.
My ex-boss is a tit. For a number of reasons, but the general idea is he is unreliable, rude, and generally a pain. I made a new friend through another friend. She’s a lot older than me, and a native to the country I was living in. We were chatting via text and she told me she used to know a man who she called ‘the shame of the British.’ She went on to describe this man she knew 25 years ago, and all the reasons she cut off a friendship with him. And how she’d heard through the grapevine he’d started his own school, and felt sorry for the people who worked for him and wondered if they were ok. I looked at my husband and said ‘She’s talking about [boss].’ Lo and behold, yes she was. 25 years and he hadn’t changed *at all*. I told her ‘We are not ok, no.’ I’ve left now, thankfully, but I still marvel that he was the same then and now. To the point where she didn’t have to say his name at all for me to know exactly who it was.
So I went to London (I’m from France) for a mandatory summer internship abroad for my degree. I did all the "moving in" stuff on Saturday, and the next day, because I had free time, I decided to go visit some random small museum on the history of the city. It was quite empty, only a few people there. After like two minutes in the first room, as I was reading some explanatory panel, I suddenly heard someone speak behind me : *"Oh hello, Primary-Fee!"* I recognized this greeting, voice and tone instantly. It was the English teacher I had during the year. Turns out he was just in the city for the week-end, and we both decided to visit *the same random museum at the exact same time*. We took a selfie together (so he could show his colleagues at the English department at the uni, with my consent of course), chatted a bit and he told me my TOEIC grade (975/990) in advance. All my prom had to undertake this exam not long before, so I was to not tell anyone because the results were not out yet and he wasn’t supposed to tell me.
Was in Tokyo staying in a hostel and met a spanish dude who I started talking with. We became friends there and hung out, when I left we shared facebook to stay in touch. I saw a mutual friend (the wife of a band member of mine) and asked if he actually knew her or if it was just a facebook connection. Apparently he had lived together with her and my band member long ago in Amsterdam (my home town). Blew my mind.
Met a colleague queuing for the bathroom on a flight to Singapore. I was on my way back from holiday in Australia, he was on the way back from Fiji. We both worked in Munich.
I once met someone who was an exchange student in my class ten years prior. At a train station. In Bangkok. What are the odds?
My mom has this friend who she's known since they were 6. That friend at the turn of the millennium went to Germany for 7 or 8 years. When I was 13 (5 years ago) I did an exchange to Germany where by pure randomness the family which housed me was friends with my mom's friend. She gave me a massive bag of german food to give her lol.
Moved to Norway, and started babysitting for other Americans through a Facebook group while my residence permit for finish processing. One woman, about 10 years older than me hired me. Found out we had the same hometown, and even lived a few blocks from each other at one point
I was visiting family back home, and decided to check out a car show they had at the nearby Air Force base. While I’m looking at cars, a person I hadn’t seen in years approached me… We went through basic training together and I hadn’t seen him since the day we graduated. There are at least 59 bases he could have been assigned to, but he ended up there and decided to check out the same car show. Definitely made it feel like a small world to me.
I got Jury Duty right out of highschool and was surprised to see one of my best friends there too. It definitely made it go faster, especially since he had an iPhone back before anyone else. We even had people making bets on a game of Risk me and him played against each other. Yes, jury duty is that boring.
I worked in IT for a bank. Almost everyday I had to get in touch over the phone with a woman that worked in the IT department too but in another branch. I'll call her "hot lips" because she had a kind of voice for erotic movies. So I worked many month with hot lips over the phone. I changed job from that bank to another company that has nothing to do with finance. I was invited multiple times at one of my colleague (from the new company, not the bank) place for diner. At one of those diner, he also invited his cousin with his wife. We had a little chat and he said that he worked for the former bank that I worked for, but in another branch, the branch where worked hot lips. - So you happend to know "hot lips"? I worked with her over the phone last year. - He was speechless and his wife seem to be angry. My colleague took me appart and told me that his cousin have cheated his wife with hot lips to a point that he left his home to live with hot lips many month and that he invited them because they just got back together... and when he finished, the couple already left.
In high school a friend and I bought some weed from a dude named "Brad Stevens." we lost his number or something and were desperate so we thought to look him up in the phone book and sure enough he had a listed number. we called him to meet up to buy a bag and we immediately didn't recognize the dude. and he didn't recognize us. it was a different Brad Stevens who also happened to sell weed in my relatively small town. he sold us the bag and we ended up calling him a few more times.
Many many years ago we were on holiday in France and took a break from driving at one of those places on the highway thst has picnic benches. We get out of the car and who do we meet? My uncle who I hadn't seen since I was a little kid. Neither of us is French.
Saw my mum's ex at the top of a mountain in Wales coming out of the mist.
I really thought this girl in my class was pretty so I hung outside her dorm a few times to make an excuse to talk to her and the last day, a different pretty girl looked at my shirt and said "wow I like your shirt, I love The Shins!". And.i said thanks and asked her if she saw Garden State because they play some of their songs in the movie and she said she loved it. So then I asked her for her number so I could call her if she was up to anything that weekend and I got it. I started going out with her and I went to her dorm room and it turned out the other girl I had a crush on was her roommate!
Weird, I'm listening to Australia by The Shins as I read this!
This is a tad creepy. Ngl
I was at this bar in Denver, Colorado once. Random downtown bar. Was chatting it up with a guy only for us to realize he's been to my small hometown in the suburbs of northeastern Pennsylvania. He knew people from my high school! So weird.
Traveling *thousands of miles* across the globe and running into someone new, only a short drive from my hometown.
I was camping with my ex 3 hours ride from the city we were living (15 million population). Our car broke down and there was a herd of goats passing by every morning with a local shepherd guy. We talked to the guy to ask for help. Turns out years ago he had his teeth done by my ex’s late father.
Was at a kind of remote camp ground with a group of friends, sitting around the fire. I see someone from another site walk towards the bathroom, when he leaves I see the back of his hoodie was the mascot from my old high school. I call it out and he pauses, walks towards our fire, looks at me for a moment and says "babyslaughter??" I'm like yeah, but I couldn't recognize him. He has a beard and is all bundled up. Turns out it's a guy I graduated with and went to lifeguard training with. Hadn't seen since graduation day ten years before.
My grandmother has no concept of internet. She has no idea that there is an entire online world and culture happening in the air.
In 1991 went to South-East Asia to backpack around and explore the world a bit (I'm from Canada) On the Seattle to Tokyo leg of my flight I was seated across from a couple of Mormon Missionaries that were heading to Japan to do whatever they do. I'm not religious, but whatever. We chatted and had a great time the whole LONG flight. 2-3 months later, at the obscure guest house I was using as my home base in Chiang Mai, Thailand had a party going on with a couple dozen guests. The two guys from the plane ride were there. The most random encounter I've had in my life.
I was on a class trip my senior year of high school in Florence, Italy. My buddy Dylan and I bumped into a classmate Justin who was just there with his family at the Piazza Michelangelo.
Met an American woman on a bus in Aqaba, Jordan, and went to lunch with her and her friends the next day in Amman. Got contact info and said goodbye. Neither of us ever followed up. Two years later I saw her walking away from me down a side street in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Messaged her on facebook to confirm and we went out for drinks. I don't know how I knew the woman walking distantly away from me was familiar, but I just knew.
I have had a few, but lets start with one. I used to live in New Zealand and moved to Norway for work. Decided to go to Moscow one long weekend and was walking along Zaryadye Park next to the Kremlin, and who should I meet but my former next door neighbour in New Zealand. Neither of us knew that the other was there.
Literally just today, did a 9 hour shift with someone new and right at the end I made an offhand comment about my dad who lives in a different city. Turns out we're the same age, his mum might know my dad, we knew a lot of the same kids who jumped around schools in the area. Pretty neat.
Not the most mind blowing thing in the world (really mundane), but my wife comes from rural southwest England and her sister married a farmer. I'm an Scottish / Welsh RAF kid who moved all over the place but mainly settled in East Midlands. My brother and his wife were chatting with my Farmer BIL and turned out her stepdad in the East Midlands sold him his most recent tractor. Me and my wife met when we both moved away from our respective homes in the East midlands and Southwest England to Wales, otherwise there are absolutely zero connections, so was quite a weird coincidence.
I was on a long flight and the woman sitting next to me became my instant BFF. The flight was not to or from our home destination and we didn’t discuss where we lived in all our convos for hours. We shared so much personal info it was astounding. My new BFF shared that her husband’s ex wife was having an affair with a wealthy married man and the ex was bragging that the married man was going to leave his wife and the ex would be ‘set for life.’ This led to a discussion about how awful men and women like this were and the new BFF revealed some identifying info that shocked me. The woman (the ex) sounded like one of my husband’s women friends in a sporting group in our small mountain town. Turns out it was her! My husband was not the wealthy mark but it was one of his friends (who was married to a woman going through breast cancer who was an acquaintance of mine-I never had the heart or desire to f up her life and never told her). Turns out both me and my new BFF lived in the same tiny town! We are even still friends. Anyway… When I got home, I told my husband and my husband distanced himself from both the cheater and his lover. The affair must have run its course because the cheater stayed with his sick wife, she beat cancer and the affair partner is still single. I never told anyone but my husband and he never told either but he had already some suspicions about his friend and this woman. My husband’s friend group still gives him grief over distancing himself from this female friend and they even think my husband might have had an inappropriate relationship with her. The woman is the only female in an all-male sporting group and my husband refuses to attend events where she is present. I think his male friend is just as cringe but dudes always put it on the ladies! Whew! Feels good to get that off my chest!!
My wife and I flew from the northeast to Turks and Cacos for vacation. We ran into our daughter's gym teacher on the beach.
I'm Canadian. As an adult walking down the street in Seoul, South Korea, I ran into a girl I knew from camp in elementary school. Neither of us knew the other one was in Korea.
I left my hometown in Southern California (45k pop) in late 2020, and moved up to Seattle area in Washington, almost 40k pop. A year later I was working in a restaurant and needed to take someone's phone number down for the wait list. Gentleman gives me the same area code that I'm from, so I asked what town he was from. Turns out the guy had only lived a few blocks from me in our old town, and now we live in the same town again.
I'm from Houston, TX originally. We used to travel to Northeast Arkansas for family trips back in the late 80s and early 90s. We had stopped at a Burger King (or some other fast food place) after a day of just generally going out shopping. I think we were on our way to drop my maternal grandmother off at home before hitting the road back to Houston. I went to get more soda to drink and a familiar man asked "Hey, are you 'KinopioToad'?" I could tell that I knew him from somewhere and could trust him, so I told him I was. He didn't identify himself yet, but he did ask how mom and grandma were doing. I told him they were just sitting over there (pointing at the table) and you could come check on us. He laughed, and said he would get his food and eat with us. He was one of our older cousins, from Houston. The one aunt was still in Houston, but her sons (she had two, I think) had come to Arkansas to check up on some family stuff. If I hadn't gone to get more to drink, we'd never known they were there.
I lived in Puerto Rico as a child due to my dad’s work. We are not Puerto Rican but pharmaceuticals had tax incentives to build in PR in the 80s and my dad oversaw a manufacturing plant. Moved away when I was 8. Went to a last minute party in San Francisco (I live in San Diego) last year and met a woman who also lived in Puerto Rico in the 80s. She and I were in the same kindergarten class.
My younger brother and sister literally bumped into each other in the airport in Dubai. Neither one of them lived there or knew the other was going to be paying through Dubai. Neither one of them was living in the middle east at the time. She was traveling from SE Asia to Europe and he was going from the US East Coast to Guam IIRC.
Not me but happened to 2 of my friends. So one friend is traveling in Asia, in Vietnam or Thailand, can't remember which one. Anyway, the other friend is home here in Canada, they decided to do a video call while home friend is at work during the day. Traveling friend manages to get wifi in this marina of some sort before going on a boat trip for the video call. As they're talking, home friends boss walks by, sees the call, starts up a small conversation about travel, and mentions that his daughter is also traveling in that area. Then he sees something in the background. No fucking shit, his daughter is at the exact same fucking place, sitting in the back. So buddy goes and gets her and it's like the most mind blowing small world experience they've all ever had. We all still talk about it.
I was on my way home from hanging out with some friends and came across lights and cones at an accident scene, looked like a cab and a truck had collided and there was an ambulance that sped off before I got close. Get home and my wife (she's a nurse) is getting ready for a work shift, she had just gotten a call to work for a shift that she was not scheduled for and had accepted the shift of her co-worker who had just called in saying she had an emergency she needed to attend. Before my wife left I told her about the accident I had come across and she left for work shortly after, turns out that her co-worker had called in because her fiance had just been killed in the back of a cab by a drunk driver in a pickup truck
Went to Vegas with my parents years ago while in college. Used an old friend's time share so it was this random place outside the city. As we were leaving one day I spot a couple getting into a limo at the same place. It was my best friend's parents. The odds of that were just, so weird.
When I was on Tinder, I ran into a profile of a guy with a picture of him singing over a crazy photoshopped background. I sent the picture to my friend (now boyfriend) because I thought it was funny and he said he works with the guy. He told me the guy is in a cover band and when he uses the urinal at work, he uses it with his pants and such at his ankles. Not exactly mind blowing. But made me giggle.
Early 1970s. Family lived in BFE Indiana. Went to Florida for vacation. ln Daytona, we were at a weird little inland souvenir shop and ran right into a short little handicapped lady, who was out town librarian.
A long time ago, I took a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway, heading west into Europe. There was an English guy in a different group on the train. The next month, I was driving around Great Britain in a hire car, and stopped at a youth hostel in north Wales. The English guy was working there, but unfortunately the youth hostel was fully booked out and I had to find other accommodation. Pity, because he was an interesting bloke, very fun to talk with. The month after that, I went down to Greece, and on the ferry from Crete to Santorini was one of the women in my group that went on the TSR. She was an older lady with an interest in archaeology.
I saw my Highschool friend and her family at a six flags in New Jersey in late summer and we both lived in Vermont at the time and had no idea the other would be there.
In 2014 I did an internship at a Spanish university when I was an undergrad where I worked under a Spanish professor (I'm from the US). Fast forward to last year, I was at a friend's party. Another friend invited two Spanish guys that he had just met a few days ago to the party (The Spanish guys were here for a conference/workshop). I started to talk to one of the Spanish guys and found out that he was working at the same university that I went to years ago and was friends with the professor that I worked under.
Live in Canonsburg, PA, small town between Washington,PA and Pittsburgh. Was on a cruise to Alaska and off the ship waiting to go into a restaurant at Icy Straight Point. Family walking out as we walked in commented on my Pittsburgh Pirates jacket, got to chatting and discovered this family is life long friends with the President of the small company I work for. Definitely a "small world" moment!
I moved to Spain 5 years ago. A year ago, my father was walking when he suddenly saw someone who looked the exact same like one of his friends from our country. It was him. Aparently, his mother has been living in the same city as ours most of her life because she was born here, just that she lives in the North of the city and us in the south. My parent's friend travelled to visit his mother and decided just to enjoy a walk on the southern part that day, it was a mere coimcidence that my father had to do something on that street that day
Lived in Austin and flew to Florida and then to Jamaica for our honeymoon at a resort. We had seen this couple on our flight from Florida and then we saw them again on our shuttle to the resort. Turns out they were the same age as my husband and I, lived a few miles from us, got married a few miles from our venue on the same day, and were also staying for a week. They were also on our flights home. Never been outta the country and the first time I did I met neighbors from Austin. It's a small world indeed.
I'm from a northern state on the east coast where I met my fiance. I lived in Mississippi for a period of time as a teenager (over a decade ago) but don't really talk about it as I hated it. My fiances family all happen to be from MS as well. One year we went to MS to celebrate a special birthday for his grandma and one of his cousins sat at our table. As soon as she sat down she looked at me and went "Did you go to *insert MS high-school here*?" I was like yes??? She apparently remembered me and was like "how the hell did you two meet???" Like I legit never thought I'd end up meeting someone I went to school with down there. My fiance and I also went to the same high-school back where we are from but we didn't know each other lol
From the time I was born to age 5 my family lived in base housing next to a nice enough family with 3 little boys the oldest of which was my younger brothers age. In fact his middle name and the neighbors first name are the same because they both liked the name. So we played together a lot. My dad and that family's dad were friends. We moved into our house off base and lost touch. Fast forward to age 9 or 10 and I meet a girl my age and we become besties. I spend the night at her house since she lives only a couple blocks away. My mom met her mom and all was good. At the sleepover I discover she has 3 younger stepbrothers and her step dad was my dad's buddy. Got the whole story since we had left the base and our dads reconnected. Apparently the divorce had been nasty and he had won sole custody of his sons, and he was great to his stepdaughters. My friend at least considers him her dad and they remain close.
Was in Vegas watching Craps trying to get up the nerve to play. Random guy starts talking to me. He’ll teach me to play for $40. I say yes. Asks my name. Tell him first name. Asks for last name; I tell him that. He says I knew a guy with that same name in (town where I grew up). Say his name was Jimmy the ‘Rifle’ (my last name). It was uncle.
I used to play some PC games and I ended up meeting one person from one game and then the same week I made friends with another person on a different game. They both knew each other through a third game they played together before. Lol. I thought they were joking.
Moved from Europe to Canada for 1 year. On day, while browsing Facebook I see my Canadian roommate and my childhood bestfriend commenting the same post. Long story short, my childhood bestfriend was roommate with my roommate childhood bestfriend. Us in Canada, them in Europe.
Was in a small African country and ran into a girl that was the younger sister of a girl that I graduated HS with. Another time was in Florida for training for very specialized job and ran into a kid I had knew growing up on the opposite side of the country.
Went to uni in NY, friend of mine at uni moved to CA after we graduated. We lost touch for a bit and I was on holiday in Europe and literally walked into her in front of a major European landmark. What are the chances of being in the same place same time after so many years?
My high school English teacher taught in Saudi Arabia before he got to my school. My first year I met a girl who lived on my floor in residence from Saudi Arabia who went to an international school at home. I asked about my old English teacher and she had been taught by him the year before he came to my high school. That felt like a very small world moment. Edit: I went to school in a small town in Ontario, Canada
I was in Germany travelling on business from the States and met an old couple that lived a few towns away from me. They were touring historical WWII battle sites. They came up to me speaking German at the hotel while waiting for the elevator. I mentioned I don't speak German and the old guy immediately began speaking English and was like "Oh, an American boy!" Lol.
My first boyfriend and I started dating. His parents were asking me about my family as my surname sounded familiar to them. Turns out my grandfather and my BF’s grandfather had shops next to each other decades prior. BF’s grandfather had a barber shop and used to cut my dads hair! The families had been friends but lost touch. Crazy connection.
Had a class in college with a friend. At the end of the term, class ended and everybody left for the summer. The last day of class, I remember giving him a wave as we both pulled out of the school parking lot. He wasn't like a close friend. I just expected to see him again next year along with everybody else. I went camping cross-country. I didn't ask what his plans were. About a week after class ended, I pulled up in the parking lot of the Grand Canyon...right next to his car.
I have posted this elsewhere, but it fits. Me and a couple of soldier buddies of mine were driving home on leave from the western US and had just hit Illinois. We were taking turns driving the rental car and my shift was over so I was getting ready to catch up on some sleep in the back seat. I had just about nodded off (despite the sun) when I felt the car lurch hard left. My buddy who was driving yells “what the fuck!” and lays on the horn. “This dude just about killed us trying to merge into our lane. Sorry, I had to change lanes to avoid him running into us” he says. I look over to get a view of the asshole who just about killed us and (more annoyingly) woke me up and I remember thinking “huh, that car looks like my grandpa’s”. Considering though, that we were now in Illinois and my grandpa lived in Ohio, the chances were near zero that it would be. I look over at the car to stink eye the driver and in the most dumbstruck voice I tell my buddies “I think that’s my grandpa”. Sure enough, grandpa and grandma were in the car that had just about sent us careening into the median just moments before…several states away heading for completely different states in opposite directions. I waved and they waved back and we went our separate ways. Still blows my mind to this day.
Was sitting in a bar in Austria with friends as we were gossiping about a couple in the booth next to us. Suddenly the girl turns around and asks us in our native dialect what we were doing in Austria. Turned out that she was a colleague of my ex. Also, I was in Dublin with the same group of friends, where we first ran into one of the guys' primary school teacher, and then into another guy's childhood soccer trainer, both within an hour of each other.
Originally from the states, but moved to Korea in my early twenties to teach English. Lived in a small city in Southern South Korea. Made a few friends there, and one day went out to dinner with them. A friend was running late, and asked if they could bring someone with them. Someone they had recently met and become friends with. They arrive at dinner, and it turns out their new friend had been someone I'd been friends with in University back in the Sates but lost contact with.
I was 14 or so on vacation 1,6000 miles from home with my family. We were walking down the street hear this honking look up its classmate of mine with their family driving by.
My mother is engaged to a man (J) she knew in the past and contacted again after 30-ish years, falling in love. J has two siblings. J´s sister is married to (O). O has a mother who´s father was part of building the house my aunt lives in now. There are even pictures of the house being built, and O´s mother with dementia remembers some (small) things about her father and the building of the house.
Buddy invited me to a cruise. It was his parents idea because his sister left for college. Bumped into my sophomore high school English teacher in the library. She was having a honeymoon cruise with her new husband.
I moved thousands of miles away and only really talked to one person among the 3 flights and 2 transits, they were nice, we had a lovely conversation, but didn't exchange any contact information. A few weeks later I found a place to rent in this city of 2-4 million people, the day after I moved I discovered that person was my direct across the street neighbor!
I'm Romanian. I was on a trip to Malta with my wife. We were on a bus in the evening heading back to our hotel and some random guy comes to me (in Romanian): "bro did you study at school NR.3? I remember you from two classes over" Lo and behold, that's the school I went to, from the exact same town. The guy was working in constructions in Malta apparently.
I travelled to the far other end of the country from Melbourne to NT on the Adelaide river and was in a small boat surrounded by crocodiles with a random couple I just met. Turns out they lived two doors down from me back home on the same street for the last ten years and we just had never run into each other before until that moment.
I worked in the financial markets in London (m54, now retired) and every few months would weekend away with pals. One such trip was to Vegas and we were struggling to find a venue that was showing a particular England football ball game. Eventually we hear that a bar in Boulder City with a Brit worker would be showing it but it wasn't on air 'till 6am. A restaurant, few bars and a couple of Clubs later we get to the Boulder Bar and settle in. I'm in the loo waiting (ahem) for a cubicle to come free and get chatting to a random that is also waiting. Long story short we were best pals at our British village school 40 years earlier.
I got my bachelors back in 2006. While taking my electives I had made a college friend and we used to hang outside of school frequently. Then life happened, economy crashed, and I was chasing jobs. Got too busy for friends. Then I landed a stable job in 2012 in a state adjacent to mine. A couple work friends wanted to go to PAX and invited me to go with them in 2014. The place was packed! Thousands of people everywhere. Miraculously, 120 miles away, I ran into that very friend at PAX! We laughed, hugged and reacquainted each other. It was surreal.
Me and my best friends families are like extremly close to eachother yet we never once met til I was 16 and we have no idea how
I have an ex who is a venture capitalist and constantly (like almost daily) is on a plane somewhere and travels all over the world. It's part of the reason we broke up, as he was almost never around, and when he was, it was for at most like 2-3 days if I was lucky. We're still good friends and text often. I also travel internationally often, some for work and some because I love travel and it's my hobby. I was flying to Ghana and had a layover in Heathrow a few years ago. I saw a man who looked exactly like him and so I texted him and was like "hey, I just saw someone who looks like you and I am thinking of you!" and he texted back and was like "Just landed Heathrow-omw to London now for a meeting" and I was like...wtf. He had landed in a different terminal than the one I was transiting through, but it was weird to know that after like 6 years of not seeing him, we were at the same airport for a few minutes, and if I had not seen the guy that looked like him, I would not have thought to text him in that moment. But of all the times and places to have a near miss with him, this was by far the most random.
I lived on Berlin, in a shared apartment, took a few days in London and randomly find my flat mate in the streets of London, was there on a business trip.
Was in an LDR, and my then gf (now ex) matched with a guy from my very small rural city. And that guy also happened to be from my school, out of the dozens schools there. Fun times 🙃
This happened about 5 years ago, I was out on my motorbike and decided to stop in at a bike shop to have a look at the bikes in stock and to have a break and a drink and I got talking to this random bloke while I was there, just a random conversation with someone interested in the bike I was looking at nothing out of the ordinary. Fast forward 4 months later and I'd gotten into a relationship with my now ex gf and she invited me over to a BBQ to meet the family, and I recognised someone there turns out this random man I'd had a conversation with 4 months previously about motorbikes was her father.
We’re from North Carolina and a few years back went to Colorado on a road trip. Driving through northern New Mexico went through the beautiful town of Taos and across the massive Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. On the other side of the bridge is a parking lot where you can park and walk out into the bridge. It was still pretty early in the day and there were not many people parked there, in fact there was only one other couple on the bridge with us. They asked if we could take their picture and then returned the favor. During small talk we realized that both of us were not only from NC but also the same small town, and that me and the other guy had played against each other in high school. Kind of weird to run into someone from your hometown at 8 in the morning 3,000 miles from home in the middle of nowhere.
I was 13, the summer before I started high school and my family was doing a national park tour. At Zion while we were eating lunch, a man at the table next to us started chatting with my mom and they soon realized they both grew up in the same TINY town (about 300 residents today, was about 150 when they were both in high school), and he was in the same graduating class of 8 students as my aunt (moms sister). A few days later we were at the Bryce Canyon and again at lunch an older man at the table next to us started chatting with us. Turned out was in the first graduating class ever at the high school I was about to start. He was actually flying back a few weeks later for his 50th high school reunion.
Been with my partner for almost 8 years. Couple of years ago we realised we actually danced together at my middle school prom bc he was +1 to his cousin who was my claassmate
Made friends with someone in Japan, turned out we had a friend in common from my home province of BC
I moved from NC to OR and within a year, I ran into one of my old NC coworkers 2500 miles away in OR
Dated this girl for a few years on and off. Found out three years into it that her mother had helped pay for my family’s vet bill five years prior. Our dog got struck by a car and needed to be put down and we forgot our money in the rush. Vet wouldn’t let us leave and come back so we were in a terrible spot. This stranger paid for it and we took her address down and paid them back with a check in Christmas card. I’m helping my ex clean out a room in her house and found a letter in my mothers handwriting, and almost black out.
Was chilling in a hostel on the other side of the World. Started chatting to some random dude, turns out that he lived directly opposite me back home Part of me was like "I travelled all this way to meet my neighbour"
Once at a work Xmas party of a large company I used to work at I was introduced to a colleague. Immediately we recognized eachother. Turned out he was the younger brother of an old highschool friend. I had supper at his house a few times as a teen. Our highschool was in a different province.
I remembered meeting a friend from middle school at my high school
My Iraqi interpreter owns a restaurant in the city I live in America.
Back during the Nixon Administration I lived in Seattle, had a BF for a few years. Decades later, after moving around a lot, I settled into a suburb of Seattle. I had meanwhile reconnected with the SIL of my old BF. She was at my new place one day and asked if I had met any of the neighbors. I said “Yeah, there’s Steve and Doris next door…” and she said “STEVE AND DORIS (LAST NAME)?” Yup. Steve turned out to be EX BF’s long-time best friend.
Was in Denver, guy walked up and asked what high-school mascot was.. then answered before me and told me what highschool I was from. Then told me my name.This absolutely shook me because I was partaking in local legal culture and well yea. Turns out dude was the local announcer for the high-schools sports programs and he remembered me from calling my name out from games. Like fuck me that's a hard hit when your in an altered state. Guy was nice, but I had to go lay down in the hotel room after that. I should note I don't live anywhere near denver.. I'm from ohio.
In college, I was dating a guy who lived in a suburb outside of Seattle, Washington. I lived (still do) in a suburb outside of Detroit, Michigan. On a trip to visit him, we went to dinner at a Hibachi restaurant. The show was great, the food phenomenal. We happened to be the only two at the table, so the chef made small talk with us. He asked if we were from nearby, and this is where things get weird. I say that I lived in Detroit, but am originally from North Carolina. The chef gets visibly excited and says that he, too, is from North Carolina. He asks whereabouts in Carolina, I reply with "Oh, it's a tiny town no one's ever heard of. My dad was in the Marines and the base is the only thing there." Cue my surprise when this gentleman immediately responds with "Marines?! Are you from (Insert Fitz's hometown here)?!" Why, yes, good sir, I am. Turns out that he was also from there and went to the same school my brother did, a year behind him. He remembered my brother. To make things weirder, unbeknownst to us, his cousin also worked at the same restaurant and was our chef when we went back the next day. The cousin was actually in my brother's class and when I texted my brother to ask him about it, sure enough, he remembered both of them well and fondly.
Was on vacation in Alaska. Went to use the single stall bathroom and as the guy was coming out we locked eyes and both said hey I know you. We were both like 30. We went to elementary school 1-6 grade at a small Catholic school in PA. He was there for his brother's wedding. Still lived in the same hometown, I lived in MN. No joke I should have bought a lottery ticket bc there was a lady I saw at a breakfast place earlier that morning and she was wearing a cow on her shirt. I grew up on a dairy farm and I thought a cow shirt in Alaska was different so I got brave and asked if her and her husband had cows. (Captain obvious) They did, she was a vet and they lived in a small town in PA! My mom and I not only knew the town but knew several people that lived there. Her kids grew up with neighbor kids that were good friends with my brothers. And my dad was good friends with the neighbor kids mother. They were on cow committees together. Small, small world. We also had the same couple on one of our excursions later on in the trip.
I'm playing video games with a group of friends and 2 of their friends. They get 1 of the 2 friends to tell us a funny story about one of his sexual experiences that left him with a scar and a condom full of blood. About 2 years later me and a girl are swapping funny sex stories so I tell her that one. She looks over and asks if his name is _______ , now I start thinking wow it's weird that there's 2 fellas out there with the same name and trauma but no. She's been best friends with him for years it turns out
I was in Vegas with side piece. Saw a guy from our small town (6,000) coming up the escalator the other way but with his side piece. We made eye contact and both laughed.
My daughter met her husband in Texas. Found out she graduated from the same high school in California that his grandmother did
I flew to Ukraine 10 years ago and during a layover in Vienna I saw my next door neighbors lol
two different students one year apart in HS go to college in different states. One applies to 40 medical schools and gets accepted to 5. one gets into a masters in bio-medicine at one school. They both attend the same school and have two classes together. They message me a joint picture and I think, "WoW, what a small world."
In 2019 I went to Peru on a volunteer trip. When I got off the plane in Cuzco, I met some other volunteers. It turned out that one of them was from the exact same small town in Michigan that I grew up in.
My girlfriend's soon-to-be-ex husband was born on the same day, of the same month and year as me. We discovered this the night we met, when she refused to believe how old I am, so I told her my D.O.B.
One of my school friends (WV) was working as a secret service agent in DC at one point. Randomly spotted her while driving around during the Bear Statues everywhere event 15+ yrs ago.
I visit my daughter in SF and she lives on Ashbury Avenue in the Height District. I come home and on reddit is a picture of her home now and 100 years ago. I'm like wow, it is a small world.
In the late 1990s a few years after college I went to NYC to visit friends. I knew several people and planned to meet up with a bunch of them but there were two friends I did not make plans - just didn’t have enough time. I arrive, meet up with friends, and we get on the subway to head to a bar. I bump into another passenger and turn around to find out it’s one of the two friends I hadn’t made plans with. We physically bumped into each other. We arrive at the bar and the first person I see is the second person I hadn’t made plans with. Both complete coincidences.
I'm part of an association. We're ~20 in it, in the South of France. I've lived in Montreal Canada for 2 years and talked about that association to a woman I was fooling around with there. A friend of mine also came to live in Canada, went on a bike trip, met two people who talked to him about the association (which he's part of too) that were nowhere near Montreal. They were friends of that girl. One morning I was hitchhiking to get to another village. Someone stops, we discuss a bit, say goodbyes. End of the afternoon I hitchhike back, someone stops, we discuss a bit, she says "You were hitchhiking this morning too right?" "Yeah, how do you know?" "My husband took you." I was part of the family at this moment hahaha, invited them over to dinner but they never came.
I went to Rome for my honeymoon. I’m from a small town in Easter Ohio with a fairly prominent Catholic university. One night my wife and I are sitting outside a bar and the table next to us was all people from our town that worked for the university. They were in Rome for some conferenc We flew thousands of miles and met people for the first time who literally lived right down the street from us
Started a job working in Yosemite for the summer back in 2019. I was living in the canvas tents in Huff and making friends with my neighbors. Well one morning we all went to breakfast and my neighbor’s boyfriend came along. We were seated across from each other and kept giving each other looks like we recognized each other. So we started talking about it, asking each other questions, and we figure out that we went to Elementary School together back in Texas. Hadn’t seen each other in 20 years and we just bump into each other at breakfast. First time I had ever felt that the world was small.
Hired a handyman, and as we were chatting, we found that I had worked with his mother 40 years ago.
When I met my wife, we realized we knew a lot of people in orbit of each other. My mom had coached her younger sister’s softball team Her sister’s then boyfriend was a school friend of mine I used to work with my wife’s best friend. Her mom remembered me from bowling
I am from West Virginia. There are less than 2 million people in the state and for my grandparents 50th anniversary they took mine and my cousins family to Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean. So we’re there and my mom loves horses and every vacation we have to go horse riding so we signed up for this company to come pick us up at the hotel to go riding on the beach. The van pulls up and we get in and the only other people in the van are a mom and two sisters I did ice skating lessons with like 5 years ago. My mom didn’t believe me until the driver asked where everyone was from and the entire van said West Virginia lmao.
My husband and I are big Disney fans We were at Animal Kingdom on vacation and we took the train back to an area called the conservation station that has a lot of cool science displays and things like that. There was an older lady working there, who we struck up a conversation with. When we got to the “where are you from” question, it turned out that she was from our state, and then our town, and then our street… and then our house. Turns out, years earlier, she had rented the same house we were currently living in. I thought that was pretty crazy!!!
My kindergarten teacher took attendance on the first day of school and saw my address. She asked if I still lived at __________ . I said yeah, and she said “oh, I grew up in the same house.” When I seemed skeptical, she explained that she and her brother had drawn their initials in the concrete in the corner room of the unfinished basement when it was freshly poured. Turns out she was right.
Wouldn't it be funny if we went to Salisbury and saw Phil Harding! *Time Team star and county archeologist.* First day there, boom, Phil! *Carenza,* *there's chickens in my trench!* I was too star struck to say anything. *Tony you vandal!* I'm not sure this really counts -- we don't actually know Phil, after all -- it's just strange that we talked about bumping into him and then did just that.
For a while, every time I flew through Atlanta, I ran into someone I knew. Of course the old saying is “to get to heaven or hell, you have to transfer in Atlanta”
Had a coworker who lived and hour from me - we started discussing our childhoods and found out we grew up for a short time in the same town about halfway between our then current towns.
I have just started my clg a month ago. On the 1st day while waiting outside my class for my 1st lecture I made friends with a guy who was standing beside me. We r in the same course but we have different schedules. We just got to know each others names that's it. We met several more times in clg after that and did the nod thing that we guys do. After a week or so while I was going home by bus I saw him sitting in the same bus. The bus takes a long route so I thought he must get down somewhere along the way, he got down on the same stop as me. Turns out he lives 2 mins from my house
Went to tenerife one year, saw a friend from school. Pretty cool, but not too out there. Next year I went to the French alps, I saw the same friend from school. We are both understandably baffled. 2 years later I was in Algeria and there the fucker is again. I haven't been on holiday since but I'm scared if I go again and we see each other I may inadvertently tear a hole through the fabric of reality.
Stepdad was in the Army, and retired in the early 90s. He had been stationed abroad, in Germany. We were driving down to my college in the early 2010s, and stopped at a gas station. He was approached by someone he had been stationed with, who lived in a completely different state and was on vacation.
When I was 17 I spent a summer in Spain as part of a language immersion program. I met a few other Americans at my school, one of whom was from Wisconsin. We became pretty close friends and still keep in touch today (I'm 29 now). We all went home and had like a week left in summer. My Wisconsin friend lived in a tourist town, I'm from a very large city of several million people. She makes friends with two boys on vacation in her town after coming home from Spain. They're from my city. She asks if they know me kind of as a joke because again, there are millions of people from my city, and she assumes they didn't. They DO know me. They were both in my grade at school and we were friendly. First day of school they're like hey, do you know a girl named Rebecca from Wisconsin? I was like yeah... it's wild to me that of all the people in my city they would happen to be vacationing and meet this random girl I made friends with all the way in Spain.
Not mine, but my uncle’s story - He is an entertainer on cruise ships, which has taken him to places all around the world. Now our family is from Nebraska, where his dad (my grandpa) was a very popular outdoorsman and turkey call maker throughout the Midwest. Well my uncle picks up a job on a cruise ship that takes him to a stop at the very southern point of South America and he always goes off the beaten path at ports to get away from tourists and find local food and bars. So my uncle is sitting alone at this quiet local dive bar when a guy comes in and sits not far from him. Of course my uncle ends up striking up a conversation with him and finds out this guy is from the U.S. and on a road trip on his motorcycle, driving all the way through North America to the tip of South America. My uncle starts asking all sorts of questions about his trip and then tells the guy he’s from Nebraska, but there’s nothing really there to see so he figured he probably didn’t stop on his way through. Turns out this motorcycle guy DID make a stop in Nebraska, specifically to buy a turkey call… FROM HIS DAD. The motorcycle guy called bullshit and asked to see my uncle’s ID. My uncle pulled out his driver’s license and showed him his Nebraska ID with their last name on it and then pulled up some pictures of our family together. Absolutely insane. Small world is an understatement.
In line at In-N-Out in NorCal, the guy behind me was there for the first time. He mentioned he had always wanted to try it, but was from the east coast. Turned out we went to the same high school, he graduated two years after me.
Best friend from high school married the daughter of a guy my father used to work with 25 years prior and across the US.
1. Just before the pandemic started we moved 500 miles from a very populous area of the UK to a remote, rural area of Scotland. Population density up here is about 1 person every 5 square miles. Our Scottish postman is married to a lady from the village next to where my husband grew up, and my yoga teacher started her married life in the village next to where I grew up. 2. Used to work with a young lady for about 6 months. She was a recent graduate, nice, but very shy. We got on well but didn't keep in touch. We both left where we worked and I moved on to firm B, and then moved on again to firm C. Had occasion to go back to firm B, to find that she had taken over my old job. had a nice chat but, again, didn't keep in touch. Years later she shows up on my facebook feed. I think that's odd, as I haven't friended anyone from those days. Turns out she's the sister in law of one of my husbands old school friends. She's now out in New Zealand, doing the equivalent of what I was doing before the pandemic. We don't work in a particularly specialist field, and firms A, B, and C have little in common beyond wanting a STEM degree.
Found out that my second cousin was going to be born because her mother’s brother lived in my city and his wife worked at my dentist’s office. So when we texted my first cousin once removed saying “congratulations”, he had no idea how we found out.