So yesterday I called a guy from CL about some wheels for my new-to-me Miata. Turns out he's an autocross friend (and his dad is a friend and co-worker).
Then in the evening Ashekyun comes by to drop off some keys and while we're talking he lets me know that the wheels on the Rampage are my old ones from my last Miata (he bought them from the guy I sold it to).
Back in the early 1980’s I’m in a KOA Kampground in remote Wyoming and I run into a guy that looks familiar to me but I couldn’t place him nor could he.
Later I’m back to my college part-time Kmart job in the Chicago ‘burbs and he walks in the back door into Building Materials to buy some stuff. HA!
A Chicago hotrod club hosted a car show called the Hunnert Car Pile-up. There I made good friends with a guy named Chris Stroud. We would only get together at this one car show, once a year.
Fast forwardto 2010. The Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup. When the obligatory rally cones to town, I decide to go downtow. The closest town has two commuter train stations. The new station's parking is wonky, so I go to the old on instead.
There is a few Hawks fans there, including this one 6' 9" dude. I ask him where the head is, and he perks up. Turns out he is a retired Marine and he notice my use of a Marine Corps term for toilet. We begin talking, and decide to watch each other's backs downtown.
When we get to the river bidge by the Oglvie stop, Matt turns to me and says, " Hey...do you know Chris Stroud? " WTF? Turns out they were in the same platoon in the Corps. I don't now what made him put those clues together to ask me that question, but that's one game of chance on coincidence I'll never win again.
I used to work in Ohio for a company out of Irvine, CA and as such would have to go out there often. While out there in CA I would do some sailboat racing. After a Thursday night race at The Seal Beach Yacht Club we were in the bar area have a few post-race drinks with a lot of people. I see a guy wearing a race team shirt that says Red Dog. I mention to him that back in Cleveland, OH we race against a boat with the same name. He answers, "yeah, that's my boat."
Turns out he was in CA for business and does some sailboat racing when he is out there.
My dad was good for that. He was in outside sales for various lumber companies, so he did get around the area, but where we'd run into people through the years was always strange. Walking out of a bar in Moorehead, KY, a gas station in Toronto, along the pier at Pearl Harbor, commenting on a random boat in Chincatique(sp?), MD.
Another crazy sailboat story...
Me and some local Ohio buddies were out in CA for some sailing. We had been moving this 39' boat all around Southern CA for the better part of a week. We got the boat back to where it belonged in the Port of LA area. The plan was then from there to get a cab to take me to get a rental car for some other vacation activities and to get us to the airport. We strike up a conversation with a "local" who was living on a decrepit boat in the marina. Turns out he was original from "one town over" back in Ohio; he was from Port Clinton, OH. He had a car so we offered and he agreed to drive me to the rental car place.
Step 1: odd to randomly meet a guy from your home town area half way across the country.
Fast forward to just this year, 8 years from this event. My good friend and one of the guys on this original trip owns a boat building business in Port Clinton, OH. A "customer/guy" came in the shop that looked strangely familiar to my friend but could not place him. As conversation grew, the guy mentioned he had just moved back to his home town and had been in CA for the past 20+ years. Sure enough, that exact same guy!
My buddy who owns the shop called me immediately afterwords and said, "you'll never believe!..."
I used to live in a one of a kind loft in L.A. built by a guy who converted an old mission building into 5 lofts. I moved out in 2004.
In 2016 I took a trip to Costa Rica. Walking down the beach I encountered a bonfire and started chatting it up with a lady... WHO NOW LIVES IN THE SAME LOFT.
Of all the millions of people in Los Angeles, its enough of a mind-berkeley to meet someone who lives in my old loft, but to meet her on a random beach in an uninhabited part of a Central-American country is pretty odd.
Ok here is a good one. 1980 I purchase a watch in Germany. Fast forward to 1989 and my brother in law was living with us. My watch disappears. Never figured it out as life was going sideways and a watch was the least of my worries. Fast forward to 2015 and I have been on and off searching for a replacement on eBay for the last five or so years on eBay every now and then. I finally found one but it is Italy. I purchase it and communicate via email with the seller using google translate. Turns out it was being sold by a woman who recently lost her husband. He husband had told her that he got it in the USA when he was an exchange student.
A couple weeks go by and I get the watch and on the back of it is engraved my initials and 1484. Yep it was my old watch. Then it clicks. My brother in law was in high school when he was living with us and one of his friends was an exchange student from Italy. I can only assume it was the one and the same person. Kind of sad he is gone now but what are the odds I get my watch back 25 years later.
I was waiting to board a plane from Newark to Boston last winter, and started chatting with a British guy (or at least I think that was his accent) who were in boarding group 17 or whatever with me.
Another guy walks up who looks incredibly tired, and brisith guy comments on it. Turns out this new guy was a doctor traveling home from 6 months of volunteer work in Africa. British guy asks about ebola, doctor says it's not the big focus anymore.
Next, the British guy mentions he used to live in a house he was renting in DC from a guy who's son or nephew was the first american to contract ebola. "The name was Collins* I think, or something like that". The doctor blinks at him, and then turns around his boarding card to show us his name. "I'm John Collins," the doctor says, "and yes I was the first known american case of ebola. That was my dad and the house I grew up in."
* Even though I should remember stuff like this, I don't remember the doctor's actual name. So I made one up for this story.
This past summer Tiger Mom and I were on vacation in Cancun. We left our hotel and walked down the beach a couple hundred yards because there was a neat spot to walk out into the ocean a ways an TM doesn't swim. So we're maybe 200 yards out into the Gulf of Mexico just playing in the swells when a woman and her daughter get near us, conversation ensues and we discover that not only is the woman from Kentucky (enough of a coincidence, there are people from all over the world at this resort) but that she lives in the same SMALL town that I grew up in and is friends with my mother.
i wonder how many of those sorts of coincidences occur every day but don't get discovered because people don't (for good reason) ask every single person they encounter their life story.
We moved out of maryland in 1998, and 2 years ago i was at advanced auto parts here in van wert ohio and the new delivery driver comes in. She was my neighbor for 2 years in maryland. Shes since moved back but it was weird running into someone 500 miles away in this small town.
We used to live over an hour away from work and daycare. When my daughter first started going she became very close friends with another girl that started at the same time (both infants). Fast forward a year and a half, we decide to move a lot closer to work and daycare, better neighborhood, schools, etc... We looked at over 16 houses within a 1 week span, and picked one.... which I find out a few weeks later happens to be in the same neighborhood as my daughters "best friend". It also turned out one my previous coworkers that I also had been keeping in touch with over the years lives there too.
Another daughter coincedence, back before we moved we were up in this area visiting family, we went out to lunch with the kid maybe about a half hour away from here in Reston. She was probably only 6 months old. We were seated next to another family whose daughter was maybe 14 or 15. The dad just loved our little girl and they were making faces with her all through lunch. He of course says something to the effect of "Enjoy every moment, they grow up so fast". So fast forward again, we moved last year, found a church that was a good fit for us, and we are at church walking out, and a guy approaches us and says the same thing while I am carrying my daughter, now 2 years older. Its the same guy and his family. I don't think he made the connection but my wife did.
These probably wouldn't seem like so much of a coincidence but this is Northern Virginia.
Back at Thanksgiving I stole one of my sister's garden gnomes. I've been taking pictures with it all over. Yesterday I went to an old local courthouse and asked a passing couple of they would like to take a picture with the gnome. I explained it was from Ohio and planning to travel all over. She asked where in Ohio and I said just north of Cincinnati. She said oh, I'm from Hamilton. I said no way, the gnome and I are from Hamilton too.
What are the odds that we'd run into someone from our hometown in a small Texas town. Crazy.
About a year after we started dating, DW took a train from the Gettysburg area to Boston. On the train some guy chatted her up. They started talking and she mentioned that my family came from NEPA. Turned out he was the grandson of the family that used to work for my grandparents.
I don’t have many small world stories about myself, but some friends of our family seemed to run into someone they knew no matter where they were.
My best is seeing a former boss at the San Francisco airport in the middle of the night. He was there with his family catching a connection, probably to Taiwan. I was on a layover between Seattle and Cincinnati on a work trip with my new job.
I moved into a new neighborhood. In a new state.
Last weekend, I was working in the garage, and I heard a car pull in the driveway. A woman's voice calls "Hello?". I answered as friendly as I could. She said, "Are you the new owner?" I still didn't see her because she had not rounded the corner. I answered in my nice and friendly voice, "Hi, I'm Paul". She responded, "Paul Fenner?"
I'm wondering now if this is the police, or someone I owe money or something. I answer dubiously, "Um...Yes. I am Paul Fenner". She says, "My husband's name is Paul Fenner! We live 2 houses down. We keep getting your mail".
More than a half a century on this rock, and I have NEVER met a single person (outside of my immediate family) with my last name. And now, my clone lives almost next door! 
Oh, another one...
2 months ago I was at my daughter's house warming party in ATL. Lots of people. One of her best friends from ATL was a young lady in her mid 20's who kept staring at me. She finally approached me and said, "You don't recognize me, do you?". I confessed I did not.
After introductions, I realized my daughter had befriended my college roommate's only daughter (over 1000 miles from where we went to college). I had not seen her since she was 4, over 20 years earlier.
Mine was on the way the to the challenge this year at a rest area in goraiga i meet a person that use to work with one of the racers that I sponsered this year at the local dirt track and the other guy that was with him, his other half was going to the shop to get her oil changed that the racers family owned later that day.
I'm loving these stories. I don't really have any to contribute - although I have noticed that if you get two Newfoundlanders together, they will immediately begin to whittle down the degrees of separation until they have established how they are connected.
Keith Tanner said:I have noticed that if you get two Newfoundlanders together, they will immediately begin to whittle down the degrees of separation until they have established how they are connected.
My old boss used to call that "Jewish Geography" (he was, in fact, Jewish himself). Different criteria, same idea.
Years ago my Dad asked me to keep an eye out for a 64.5 Mustang. One day I noticed a customer had a nice red Mustang and sure enough it was a 64.5. I told her about my Dad wanting one and got to talking. Turns out that she went to high school with my Dad in a small SC town 600 miles away from where she and I now live.
I have a fairly unusual last name, locally I don't think I've seen anyone with my last name outside my immediate family .
House I was renting sold and I moved to a rental around the corner. I started getting mail at the new place for Ted MyLastName.
Turns out the guy who bought the house I was renting had the same last name and first initial as me. Apparently it was pretty confusing for the post office.
Talking to a guy I've worked with for almost two years last week.
Him: "So are you from here?"
Me: "I'm originally from southern CA."
"You ever go to northern CA?"
"My aunt and uncle live in northern CA. I've been to their town."
"My wife is from that town. Born and raised."
Normally this wouldn't be that spectacular, except that the town in question has a population of about 500. And the city I'm in now is not particularly big either, though its a fair bit bigger than 500. Turns out him and his wife know my uncle. CA to UT and we both end up in the same town.
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