Your "small world moments"

[ivfbabymomma1]

I didn't know where else to post this

But what are your small world stories?

A lady I know from the UK moved to China for a bit and met another man from the uk and they lived together for a bit and then she came home.
I just found that that this man is now the boyfriend of newer friend.

What's are the odds?!

Went away for a few days and was in a beach cafe close to the home of a boy I went to school with and who had shared uni digs with my ex boyfriend. I'd seen him once since the 1980s.
I mentioned his name to my other half, as I knew, through FB, that he lived in that part of the country, 30 seconds later he walks up to my table. He'd been having lunch with his wife on a nearby table and heard me say his name.

About 15 years ago I'd been dumped by the love of my life and was really struggling to get over it. A friend kindly offered for me to tab along on a family holiday to Florida. Wasn't really my cup of tea as a destination tbh but I was very grateful and accepted, thinking the sunshine and company would do be good.
3 days into the trip I saw my ex post on social media. He was 10 mins drive down the road with his new American girlfriend.

Told this before, we moved across country to a town where dfil’s aunt lived, but he’d not heard from her in about 30 years. He tried to find her, but to no avail. I became friends with the dd of the people I bought my house from. After about 10 years one day we work out that her mil was dfils aunt. Sadly by then she had dementia and dfil was too ill to travel.
Also, my dm had to travel to Edinburgh for an operation, df was standing outside having a cig and a bloke asked him for a light, by name. Turned out to be someone he was in Gibraltar with in the war.

My dad worked in a team of four English guys on a secret project on a coral island in the Indian Ocean. 50 plus years later my parents were on a boat trip from Sri Lanka and my mum started chatting to one of the other trippers. Turned out he was one of the others in the team.
Dad was getting transferred from a team in the North to a team in the Thames Valley. Big boss came to his office to wish him well etc. They were talking about where the family was moving to, turned out we were moving next door to his sister. Years after that my mum ended up working for that man who had been dad's boss.

I've had a few.

The best one was my mum had befriended an Australian couple when we were kids. Said couple were young and had no family and my Mim sort of took them under her wing. We're still really close 30 odd years later.
One day this couple were having a BBQ. A second cousin on my NC dad's side had got in touch and asked if he could stay with us for a few days as he was backpacking around the UK from Australia and we took my cousin along with us to this BBQ. We walked in and my cousin leans over to me and says "is that lady's name XXXX?" Turns out our friend had taught my cousin in Australia, when she was a newly qualified teacher back in a rural town in Western Australia.

A few years later I was in Australia visiting the cousin from the above. During that time I met, for the first time, another cousin of ours. A few weeks later I went and stayed with a friend of a friend and was showing her some of my photos from my travels. She instantly picked out my newly aquatinted cousin as her high school best friend.

My uncle also bought a house after he got married, several hours away from where we thought our family had lived for generations and generations. Fast forward 30 years and I got in to family history research. Turns out my aunt and uncle bought a house on land that my 3X great grandparents had lived on and farmed... it's now a yucky 90s housing estate

A friend of mine went on holiday to Portugal, they were in a restaurant, turned round and an old schoolfriend was at the next table with his family.

My children are at their third primary school, the current one being in England, the first two being Forces schools in two other countries. They are the only Army children in their current school.
One of the TAs was a TA at their last school, and the French teacher was a pupil at their first school.

My brother shared a room in his first year of university (normal at that University). Turned out his room mate had lived next to our Grandmother as a child, and there's a photo of them playing together as toddlers.

My PILs are actually third cousins. This was discovered at the wedding, when guests on each side recognised each other. They had to dig through the family trees to get the exact relationship.

Ha, I love these. I have loads, my friends tease me that I know everyone (I don't!).

Most recently - met a woman at networking, went to her house in a hamlet in the middle of nowhere for a meeting. Sitting at her kitchen table with her is someone I went to Brownies with 22 years ago and 200 miles away...

And then more recently, another new friend, we have no connections in common and met through a work group, mentions her childhood best friend. Who turns out to be my second cousin.

It does make the world feel smaller and more connected but it also freaks me out sometimes!

Chatting on Facebook about a rare health condition. Lass sends me a message with a very unusual surname that I knew, as it’s my dad’s .

Turns out she’s my cousin - discovered after I messaged her asking if she knew ‘John Smith’ - ‘he’s my uncle - how do you know him?’

I haven’t seen my dad more than 5 or 6 times in 25 years, she’s hardly met him I think .

But we have the exact same health condition - genetic - and that discovery has meant the hospital have been able to diagnose, and help me . Very funny coincidence !!

Years ago I had a stall at an antiques centre - I used to call in every 2-3 weeks - which also frequently coincided with another stall holder who did the same - we always made small talk but I never knew her name
Then I started bumping into her at auction house viewings and other antiques centres
I found it strange that I saw her so often and we picked the same times or days to be at these venues
I gave up the antiques business 15+ years ago so saw her less often
10 years ago I saw her again whilst on holiday in Venice, 5 years ago exactly the same but in the Alps
Last time I saw her was in January in Krakow!

Walked into the office on my first day working in the Middle East. First person I met was a man who used to drink on our local pub in the UK, who had moved to Texas about 3 years earlier.

Went to Hong Kong for a very last minute weekend away. That night I got chatting to a man at a bar. He’d just moved there that week from Dubai. My best mate had just got a promotion at the bank she worked at because her boss left. He was that boss.

Chatting to a guy in the lift of my apartment block. Had spoken to him a few times, and we got chatting about work. The girl I sit next to in the office used to be his next door Neighbour in conwy. A few years later, XH was interviewing someone for a position. It was the same guy. The following week, I boarded a plane to Singapore and guess who was sat next to me. He turned up in more random places too. One day I was telling my friend in the office about seeing this guy at weekend, and another colleague pipes up ‘oh, D from conwy? He plays for our football team’. It’s now been 4 years since I’ve seen him. I’m a bit concerned about him to be honest 😆

Not my story, but my sisters. She was looking through old photo's as one does sometimes when you're having a clear out of stuff, and in the background was a picture of her now husband, with his daughter.

@Suckmyfatone that's insane!!!!

I met someone at church in far Eastern Russia who knew someone from my home church.
I also bumped into someone in a mall in the US who I used to live near in England. Then the next day we bumped into each other again at a tourist attraction.

Walking through a market square in Cuba. Heard someone shouting my name. A boy I went to school with was teaching English there.

Had a pen pal through child’s magazine (this was the early 80s). Went to uni and she lived in the room next door. Interestingly, on paper we got on like a house in fire. In person, not so much. After first year we went into separate house shares and ai can’t remember seeing her again.

I went to view a flat which was still occupied by the previous tenant. A year later I started dating this random guy who I met in a bar. Eventually went back to his house and recognised his furniture - he was the previous tenant of my flat.

I lived in a uni house share and after 3 years me and another person discovered that our dads had worked together in the 70s..... completely different part of country, unusual job and no contact since then.

On a tour in The Gambia 20+ years ago , only four people in one jeep at a time , I sat next to a couple who lived in the same town as us , which at the time was not very big!

First boyfriend at school age 15, nearly 40 years ago , my mum meets his parents and says 'oh hello ' to his mum , they gave birth next to each other ( me and first Boyfriend ) in the same hospital, we were born five days apart and new mums used to stay in hospital longer than they do now.

DH came to visit me 14 years ago in the town we now live over 250 miles from his home town. First day of walking through a town he'd never been to before we bump into one of his oldest friends of 30+ years who has also never been to the town before!

Total stranger sitting next to me at a work lunch some years ago. He got progressively drunk and decided to tell me about a sex act he’d really wanted to perform on me. I changed the subject and asked about his wife (as he was wearing a wedding ring) and he talked about her and how they didn’t want kids because he found his niece and nephew hard work. The children had unusual names so I wondered out loud if their parents might be my best friend from school and her husband. Turns out they were. And this guy’s nephew was my Godson. 😮

Thank you for all your stories they fascinate
Me!!!

Went on a night out in london, wasnt from london, had a photo done in a club all pissed up, my group of mates and a couple of women!

Fast forward 5 years i met my ex girlfriend, after being together for about a year and half we was looking through old facebook pictures, turns out one of the women in the photo was my ex, spooky

I have three all school related, I went to school
In Sydney then moved to UK as an adult. My secondary school headmaster was British.

Not long after I arrived in UK I was invited to a new colleagues house as her BIL had recently got engaged to a Australian woman and they thought it would be nice to get us together. The new fiancée was the year ahead of me in my high school.

Then I got married and new DH invited me to a work jolly because one of his clients wives was Australian. She'd been in my sister's class at primary school and both her parents and mine still lived around the corner from each other.

DH and I bought our first home together in UK, only 60 houses in the road. In the first week we moved in I saw my former headteacher walking past, he lived at the other end of the road. I never quite got over that one! We've both moved away since then!