AIBU to ask for your small world stories?

[Weston14]

Shamelessly posting for traffic

I'm a long, long way from home atm on business and met someone over here who is friends with one of my old friends I've not seen in about 15 years! For context neither me nor the lady are from the same city (opposite ends of the country in fact.)

Anyone got any similar stories about it being a small world?

My dad's cousin was evacuated during the war to live with my mum's family.

My parents met later, in London, not via the cousin.

But I don't think these things are as unlikely as people tend to think they are. Similar people cluster in certain places, or there are subconscious influences on people's choices they don't remember (e.g. posts of mutual friends on Facebook, or adverts mentioning a place they then both go, etc).

My mum lived in Sydney. She was in Inverness (Scotland, not Queensland) for her first time ever and got talking to a local who had never been to Australia. Turned out his daughter was the physiotherapist she saw a week before she left for the trip.

We were visiting family in Niagara Falls and someone heard our English accent. The man proceeded to introduce himself and said he was originally from Kent. He had an unusual surname which had a local connection for us.

He then went on to tell us that there was a hotel and road in the Midlands which were named after his family.

The road and hotel are 2 miles from us and we’d passed there two days earlier on the way to the airport.

I live in Ireland, years ago went on holiday to China, went in to McDonald's and got chatting to a guy in the queue who turns out lives like 100 metres up the road from my home house!

Not a huge "small world" story but you did ask...

Once, as I was walking home through Earl's Court, way off my usual route and nowhere near where either of us live, DP, who works across multiple locations, pulled up at a Give Way in his van just as I was trying to cross the road.

There was a brief wave/honk before the traffic went apoplectic.

Holiday on Australia, get on a wine tasting tour coach. Introduce ourselves to the tour leader (names, where from etc) for him to guesture to the back of the coach to another family and state they were from the same city. Turned out they lived around the corner from us and their daughter was in dbs year at school.

Ooh I always win these threads. Right: DH and I met through OLD. DH graduated and moved to London, and took a job out of uni at X company. 3 weeks later, I interviewed for and was offered a job at X conpany which, if I had taken it, would have meant we sat next to each other at work. I didn’t take the job, and if I had we would have met 10 years earlier than we did. A year later, DH decided the job wasn’t for him and he was going to take a late gap year and go travelling. Off he went to, to a country on the other side of the world. My parents then decided to move for work, and moved to the same far flung country. I went to visit them with a friend, and whilst there decided to take a road trip to a destination on the other side of that country. Our first night there, we went to a dive bar and got very drunk. Getting drunk in that same bar on the other side of the world that night was my DH, and you can actually see him in the background of my holiday photos, 9 years before we met.

When we eventually did meet through online dating, it turned out we lived 2 streets apart and drank in the same local, went to the same gym, GP and supermarket, and worked 2 streets apart in a different part of London and got breakfast at the same coffee shop each day but 30 mins apart
and drank in the same work local but were using different doors so sitting at different sides of the bar.

I met my DH at a work away, hours away from where I lived. He also came from hours away, the complete opposite side of the UK to me. We'd never crossed paths and had grown up in completely different areas, knew none of the same people.

Until I turned up to a family bbq after we'd been together a few months and realised I knew his brother in law. I'd had a bloody one night stand with him about 6 years prior... on holiday... in Spain!!! You couldn't write it. What were the bloody chances. It still annoys me how unlikely it is but that it had to happen to me. Still cringe every-time we see BIL (thankfully not all that often)

Not in Fenella's league but still...

Grew up and went to uni in small Australian city. Was working in London 10 or so years after uni, rushing through Charing Cross Station on way home in evening rush hour one day. Ran into someone, looked up to say sorry and it was my uni boyfriend from Australia who I hadn't seen in 10 years.

I live in the USA. One of the older receptionists at work heard me talking to a colleague about Switzerland and asked me why. I said I used to live there many (25) years ago. She said she lived there too and was married to a Swiss guy. I said she would not know my village, as it was too small. She asked me the name and was shocked as it was the village her husband grew up in. I told her I knew she did not live in the village, as there was only one black person who lived there when I was growing up, and he was a man - a Nigerian refugee. She was amazed I knew that but confirmed they lived about 3 villages away.

My DH was on travel in Botswana with the British Army and went to a party. There he met some people who came from Malawi, where I was born. He told them about my family and one of the guys told him he went to school with my uncle. He then proceeded to tell my DH of how my uncle used to smuggle Malawi Gold (marijuana) to London in the 60s in leather footstools. Normally you would expect to ship them flat and fill them on arrival, but my uncle shipped them stuffed. Dear uncle was not pleased to hear how much his image had been tarnished.

Within a one year period I had three events proving to me anyway, it is in fact a small world.

First one happened in a major U.S city where I was living with my new husband. I was waiting in the car and while looking in the wing mirror I notice a man walking away from me wearing a distinctive style jacket that was very popular in London a few years before. I thought the man walked like my friend, who I knew had a jacket like that because I was with him in London when he bought it! By the time he was out of sight I remembered he had family in that city. I hadn't heard from him for two or three years and the last I heard he was based in Taiwan. Thought nothing more until that evening when he phoned the house I where I lived pretending to be calling from Taiwan. He'd tracked me down through my friend in England. I told him I knew where he was because I'd seen him walking down ...and named the street. He came to visit and we had a great catch-up.

Second one happened when, still living in this city and I called a business and recognized a English accent. I told her I was from England as well. Anyway, not only was she from my home town but we also knew some of the same people!

The last event was just after I moved out of the city by about 20 miles. I was riding my bike along a quiet suburban street when I saw a car suddenly stop near me then take quickly take off. The next day while riding my bike in the same area I saw the same car only this time the door opened and a man got out. It was my best friend's (in England) ex-boyfriend. He told me he had seen me the day before when he was with this other guy I knew, who was visiting him. It was them who stopped the day before but decided it couldn't be me. 'What would she be doing riding a bike in America' they asked each other. Deciding it couldn't be me they took off.

Funny thing was they both knew the guy I'd seen almost a year before walking along the street. They had all been in the same band.

Earlier this year I was in a shop with my in laws whilst they were visiting us in the country we now live in and I hear FIL chatting with someone. Turns out it was a former colleague of his who was visiting too. It wasn’t a particularly touristy area. I think he was visiting his daughter who was going to university here.

My mother’s father and father’s father played pickup tennis against each other as young adults whilst they lived in the same area, but didn’t really know each other. My father’s father moved away before they got married and had children and my parents grew up a couple of hours away from each other.

I moved to France. Within 2 years I had made friends with not one but two people (neither of whom knew each other previously) who had lived within a few streets of me in London.

Went to Spain on a rock climbing holiday many years ago, bumped into two people I knew in the street, walked into a local restaurant immediately afterwards and met someone else I knew. (This one isn't quite so random as if sounds, as climbing was a small world in those days, and this was the only restaurant in town open at 7pm on New Years Eve in a prime winter climbing location).

Also where I live in France there used to be a local restaurant run by Polish-British couple. Turned out that my mum, who lives in rural Wiltshire, knew the family.

But I don't think these things are as unlikely as people tend to think they are. Similar people cluster in certain places, or there are subconscious influences on people's choices they don't remember (e.g. posts of mutual friends on Facebook, or adverts mentioning a place they then both go, etc).

I agree - and similar incomes and so on when people live in the same area means they will have the ability to travel to similar places. It's still pretty amazing when you do come across people in the middle of a massive city or somewhere, because just a few seconds difference in leaving a shop could mean you miss them entirely, but it does increase the odds of it happening.

Someone I know had a nephew who was put in care as toddler. Lost touch as she was only young herself. Flashforward 20 odd years and her son comes home for christmas brings his mate who has no where else to go with him. Mate hed met working away who grew up entirly differant part country. As he was his boss. Yes it was that nephew. Once she worked out why he seemed so familiar.

I nearly alwaysbump into someonei know on holiday.

But strangest example. I was on a hen do in edinburgh woman at bar crying. Went check she was ok. Her and her bf had huge row. Anyways turns out she was my next door neighbor in london id never met. Become friends after that.

I was on holiday in Florida a couple of years ago. A few days before I went, I served a customer (tesco) who mentioned she was going to Florida in a few days and I said I was going 2 days after her.
One of the days we were in Disney, just walking off one of the rides, when I hear behind me "excuse me are you the tesco girl?" 😳 we had not only managed to be in the same park on the same day, we had been on the same ride at the same time! Thousands of miles away from tesco where we met a few days earlier. So weird

DP and I got off a plane at a small airport in France, and saw two familiar faces - a couple who'd lived up the road from us and moved away several years previously. We had no idea they'd gone to live in France.

@happinessischocolate Agree on the Facebook front. I've found out that friends from the other end of the country I met at university know people I went to primary school with and all manner of bizarre things through that.

@FenellaMaxwell I can confirm you've won the thread

In my mid teens, I chose to follow my dad halfway across the world when his company gave him the option to take up a posting there. First day in my new school and there in my maths class was this girl who used to be on my lacrosse team back home!

I’d split up with my boyfriend and decided to up sticks and move to another continent for a fresh start. We were not on speaking terms by this point. Anyway, a few months in, one of my new colleagues asked me if I’d like to go to a conference in another part of the continent as he had to drop out at the last minute and didn’t want to lose the place. I was delighted and two days later turned up at the hotel for the conference. Was going great, meeting lots of new people.

I’d run back to my room to freshen up before dinner on the first night and as I opened the door to leave, I noticed the man on the opposite side of the corridor was coming out his hotel room too. There was probably 2 feet between us. Yes....it was ex boyfriend! We were both stunned and horrified and spent the next 2 days skulking around and studiously avoiding each other.

We worked in a similar field but the conference was on a topic quite unrelated to either of our jobs. We still have never spoken since and that was about 10 years ago.

In my second year at uni my friends moved into a house and there were two large boxes that had been delivered to that address with no name on them and no return label. Eventually they opened them up and they were full of Chinese dragons and decorations so they used them to decorate the house.

Years later I'm out at lunch with my new boyfriend meeting some of his friends (from the same city) and they are telling stories about their travels. They went to China and loved the Chinese dragon decorations so much that they packed up two boxes and sent them back to themselves in the UK but the boxes never arrived. Their address had been next door to my friends!

When I was twelve, I became friends with my best friend's mate Ellie, as we all often hung out. Her dad was from Liverpool, like my mum. We live down near London now and have done since we were little.

Last year my great-aunt died. At the funeral I was asking my aunt how our family in Ireland were, as I'd not seen them for years. On a whim, I look up a cousin in Ireland on Facebook and add her. I then see she's friends with my friend Ellie. Odd.

I ask cousin how she knows Ellie, and she says Ellie is her cousin!! Which means my friend of thirty years is my cousin too. Albeit distant.

Turns out Ellie's dad is my nan's first cousin. Even weirder, Ellie was in Liverpool at another funeral that I wasn't at and sat with my nan at the funeral and wake, knowing she was her dad's cousin, but not realising that she was my nan!

Ellie was working in Ireland a few years back and her dad encouraged her to contact family there. Which is why she met our cousin and was connected on FB.

I saw my then BF's foster brother at a theme park when my family were holidaying on the Isle of Wight.

On the way back from Crete I saw a couple who were regulars at the pub I used to waitress at.

At Butlins last December we saw a family who had been staying at the same hotel we stayed at in Malta in the August.

A 'Canadian' man helped my Dad in Paris work out the ticket machine. He recognised Dad's accent as the place he grew up...turned out to be same school.. Asked my Dad his age... Oh you might know my younger brother.... Yes he was my Dad's best man.
He had lived in Canada for over 20 years just popping back to Europe less than half a dozen times.
More bizarrely he was staying in the same accommodation... In the next room to us so from then on we saw him daily