To ask for your small world/degrees of separation stories?

[Kolo]

Reading the unexplained thread and a post reminded me about one of my own small world stories.

I lost touch with my best friend from school during university. It was a time before mobiles/Facebook etc. We used to write to each other, but frequent address changes at that time led to us losing contact.

Some (probably 8-10) years later, I was now working and I was driving with a new friend who I’d made at work. We were talking about her small world story, and I told her that it was unlikely that we’d share a small world story because I only know one person who ever lived for a time in Wales (where new colleague was from, and the last address I had for my old best friend was in Wales). New friend asked who that was, so I told her my old best friends name. Turns out, with further questioning, my old best friend was the girlfriend of my new friend’s cousin. New friend called my old best friend from the car and put me on the line - really freaked her out!

I also had a weird moment when I went to visit my brother at university in his 2nd year. He’d moved into a shared house and I was meeting the others for the first time. One of the girls was talking and I thought (and said out load) “my gosh you sound exactly like one of my friends back home”. Their syntax, their accent was so similar. My friend back home grew up with my brothers new house mate and they were best friends as children.

Anyone fancy sharing their small world freaky coincidence stories?

A few weeks ago I was some 100 miles from home and in a shop when I heard the voice of a former colleague, I turned round to look and it was my colleague but she had two boys with her instead of two girls. Anyway, she saw me looking at her and came over and said "You must know Jane" (Name changed) - it was Jane's identical twin that I didn't know she had.

I'm from Glasgow. I was in an English city with my Mother when a man overheard us talking and asked if we were from Glasgow. We confirmed that we were. He then asked us if we knew X from Glasgow. I certainly did. X is my Father/My mother's husband. I'd never seen him in my life before and I still don't know who he was but that was weird.

DC went to uni in the capital of a different country to the one we live in. On her first day she was walking down the busiest shopping street of that city when a stranger approached her to ask ‘was she Mr Whyohwhy’s daughter’.

This person had known DH when he was a little boy before moving overseas. They had added him as a FB friend the day before and looked through some of his photos that night. The next day they made the 200 mile trip from their rural home to the capital for a wedding. They walked of the train station and recognised DD passing by from the photos they had seen the night before. They chatted for a bit then my confused DD headed off to uni and we haven’t seen or heard from the person since.

Probably outing but still funny ...
Many years ago -early 90’s -I (Scottish ) went to live in Spain .
A friend from Canada ( her first time in Europe)came to live for a few months and had a lovely romantic time with a guy from another part of the Uk who was on holiday for 2 weeks ...
he departed back to the UK with promises to write etc ...
2 weeks later a friend from Ireland calls me to say her cousin ( from the UK )has been let down with accommodation in the town in Spain that I am living in and as she will be on her own ..would I mind putting her up ?

Not at all ...
said cousin duly arrives ... myself , Canadian friend and the UK cousin head out to a little bar for a drink and a chat to get to know each other ...
Cousin mentions the small town in the UK she comes from , my Canadian friend says ... wow ... do you know xxxx ( name of romantic encounter guy ) ... eh yes says UK cousin ... actually he’s my boyfriend... !!
How do you two know him ..... ???

Awkward silence .... then Canadian friend confessed and apologised ....

Chances of all the people involved who all lived in so many different places getting in the one room must be very random ....

I live in US and am from down under. My friend around the corner that we spend a lot of time with is friends with my xH and his wife . They met in another country they were working in. I haven’t said anything. She probably knows as I’m tagged sometimes in her FB and they are as well which is how I found out they were friends

Someone I currently work with went travelling 30 years ago and in a country far far away met someone I used to share a house with 25 years ago. I only found out this year...

When I was a student nurse one of my placements was a in the community, district. I was sent completely out of my area, so already the area was somewhere I had never been. Then me and my mentor got drafted over to a neighbouring town because there was some crisis with their staffing so we helped out. One of the ladies we went to visit was an absolute love and she was always trying to get me to take a particular very small ornament that I adored but couldn't accept. On my last day though she put it into my hands and wouldn't let me say no.

Years later, I'm living with my now DP and one day he says his mum has asked if we would go and visit her 'auntie marion', because she had recently had a fall and needed company. I was a bit wary coz I had never met her but thought oh sod it she needs the company. Well guess who's house we travelled miles to get to and rocked up to... the woman I had taken care of who had given me the ornament. I was so shocked. And all this time that ornament had been sat looking at us and none of us ever knew the connection to my partners family

We were on the quay waiting for a ferry in Cornwall and the queue included 3 people I used to work with. One had recently left. One had long since retired. One was from the way distant past.

@brizzle it’s amazing how people growing up together can sound so alike.

@babbi shiiiiiit. Had they been together long? Did the relationship survive? How was the rest of the holiday after finding out from Canadian friend?

When I was in primary school, a new teacher asked me if my Granny still lived in X Town? She had not lived in X Town since before I was born. I was too young to wonder at the time, but now I think how the hell did he know my Granny and furthermore, how was he so sure we were related?

Was on a family holiday in Europe when I was about 9 or 10. We went out for the day to a massive water park in the capital city of the country, and we were queuing for one of the slides when my dad heard a familiar voice behind us. Turns out it was my godmother’s ex-husband who we had once been really close with, but lost touch when they divorced and he moved away. He had remarried and had 2 DCs with his new wife. The plot thickened even more when we had finished on that particular slide and he wanted to introduce us all to his wife - turns out she worked at the same salon as my mum when my mum and dad first came to the U.K. in the late 1980’s.
They got their stuff and parked themselves on the sunbeds next to us, and my Dsis and I spent the rest of the day gallivanting round the water park with their DCs, having a mega time, while the parents chatted away about old times.
Was weird that we’d not seen this man we had once been so close to for years and then we just happened to be not only in the same country at the same time, but at the same tourist attraction on the same day

Kolo - they had been dating 3 years !!!

Both girls handled it really well ... agreed he was a total git and enjoyed a great holiday together ... as they said “ we must have similar tastes “ - I really commend them ....

My Canadian friend subsequently made her first trip to the UK a couple of weeks later ... hastily arranged in view of the “ shared love interest “ situation - she stayed with English cousin - and both of them went together to his house unannounced 😮

To this day both of them still howl with laughter at the horror on his face when confronted by both of them together 😂

It “ did not compute “ .... long term girlfriend in small hometown.. aside Canadian National never previously set foot on UK soil 🤷‍♂️

He was promptly dumped ...

We have all kept in touch , it taught us that girls / women need to be on the same team ....

A little bit of me thinks .... poor sod ... I mean he must have thought the chances of getting caught were nil 😂😂

@whyohwhy fb is a bit weird for that now. I have a few times bumped into people I ‘know’ only to realise I don’t actually know them, they’re a friend of a friend from fb whose photos keep coming up on my feed, but I don’t actually know them!

@prequelle I love that story. That’s really lovely. Could be made into a film, that.

I spent my entire teens denying I looked like my mother.

I moved several hundred miles away, had changed my first name from the stupidly 'unique' name my parents gave me and started work. At the end of my first day my supervisor, who only knew my first name, said "Do you belong to X, Y or Z?" X being my mother, Y my uncle and Z my aunt.

Turns out he used to stay with his aunt and uncle in the school holidays and knew my Mum and her siblings. Hadn't seen them for nearly 20 years.

My favourite small world story though was a woman I worked with getting caught out in an affair when her husband got chatting to the AA guy that came when he broke down something like 100 miles from home. She worked away Mon-Fri and AA man was her boyfriend and had no idea she was married. The chances of that AA guy getting her husband's call out, and them getting chatting enough to the point that the AA guy mentioned knowing someone from there must have been tiny!

@babbi amazing! So glad they became friends - perfect revenge for the guy 😂.

Thanks to you all for sharing these stories. I love them!

When I stayed in my flat i used to have wrong number calls asking for a lady called ruby.when I was in having my daughter in hospital my midwife asked for my phone number after telling her she said that's very like my mother's number yep her mother was ruby

My mother is from a city 300 miles away from where we lived. As a child I made friends with one of the children in the road, her mother was from the same city as my mother. We didn't really think or talk much of it as we were young and by this point my mother had left us.

As we got older I happened to be talking to friends mother about my mother being from the same city, it turned out they weren't just from the same city but lived two doors away from each other and mine and my friends grandmother were friends!

@herroyalnotness I have a bit of a thing about looking at ‘mutual friends’ lists on fb and realising how some of my worlds collide.

I actually have a friend from a decade or so ago, who runs a business down south. I’m not too good with the geography down there, so it didn’t click when a local friend of mine relocated down south that they were moving near to my friend. Even if I had, what’s the chances of them meeting? It wasn’t the same town or anything. But my local friend started using the business that my old friend runs and started posting on her fb page.

@master I’m guessing they weren’t all together?

I've told this one before...

First dh died in his early 30s. I subsequently re-married, had dc etc.

Through all this & multiple house moves, I'd hung on to a photograph of dh1. It was actually taken years before we met, when he was in his teens & at a massive rock festival. His mum liked it so much, she had multiple copies framed & he ended up with one in his flat. I used to tease him about it as he had a spectacularly silly 80s hair do in it!

Nearly 10 years after his death, I was packing to move house & came across the photo on a shelf in the spare room. Bear in mind this picture had been in my life for 15 years & I'd probably seen it every day.

For some reason, as I glanced at it I noticed an extra, never before noticed background detail...

There are two teenage girls sitting on a rug behind dh1. Their backs are to the camera but they both also have very distinctive bonkers 80s hair & band tshirts which I remember rather well.

Because it's me & my then best mate.

Many, many years ago, I was back from (faraway) uni and had one of those nights where drink flowed and I hooked up with this gorgeous bloke. We ended up having an intensely hot night of passionate and very adventurous sex, on a mutual "this was amazing fun, see you never..." basis.

Week or two later, I popped into the union bar and..there he was. With his girlfriend (certainly not mentioned one single word about her!)

I have never drunk up so quickly, and at the time I could down full pints.

When my mum and auntie met up with some of their cousins about 10 years ago I realised I had worked with one of their daughters for 4 years previously!

@purple that’s given me goosebumps. Is his mum alive? Did you ever get to show her? X