[AtYourCervices]

<p>Today I was talking to the mailman and discovered he grew up just 5 blocks away from where I grew up... over 900 miles away! Last month I met a mama at a playgroup whose mother grew up in the same neighborhood as my mom (also over 900 miles away). </p>
<p> </p>
<p>It really is a small world! </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Please share your "small world" stories.</p>

 

[woodchick]

<p>I grew up in a small town in Masachusetts. DH grew up in Ohio.  We met at college, started dating...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>...which is when we realized that I went to high school with his cousins.   Weird.</p>

 

[GardenStream]

<p>I'm going to make up names here because it's just too confusing if I don't. <span><img alt="winky.gif" src="http://files.mothering.com/images/smilies/winky.gif"></span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>This all happened about 4 years ago.  DH and I were eating in a restaurant in Germany.  There is a big group of German people sitting at the table next to us.  One member of that large group, Helmut, leans over and asks us if we're American.  We say yes.  Helmut asked where we were from.  We said Ohio.  Helmut then says that he has friends that moved to Ohio 30 years ago.  We continue talking and it turns out that Helmut's friends in Ohio are the parents of our good friend Mike.  Mike's dad is the vice-president of the company DH works for.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Months later when we were back home in Ohio we went out to dinner with Mike and his wife.  Mike then says, "Oh, you were the Americans that Helmut met in Germany."  It turned out that Helmut had contacted Mike's parents and told them about a "nice American couple" he had met while out his friends after work.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It still blows my mind that it happened.</p>

 

[*jeanine*]

<p>When we were planning our (secular) wedding, DH wanted the officiant to be someone meaningful (I was just gonna get someone out of the phone book).  He wanted to ask his religious studies professor who's also a retired minister.  Turns out this guy's step-mom (?) was from the same tiny town (800 people) in WI as me, and he'd been to the town.  (We were all living in CA.)  I didn't know her, but my parents and grandparents did.</p>

 

[goinggreengirl]

<p>It is a small world!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When I graduated from college in the midwest I moved to Alaska to work. I was out with a group from the church I'd just started attending and they were asking me about the school I attended. I told them about my roommate from Texas and one guy asks me her name because he lived in Texas for two years. I'm thinking- yeah, right, Texas is a huge state, like you are going to know her. Turns out, her parents were the pastors at the church he attended and she and his older sister were good friends!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A few months later, I was on one of the toughest hikes in the area and we stopped at a lookout point where there were a few other people sitting. We started talking to them and it turns out they grew up in the same town I was from and knew my dad and uncles!</p>

 

[Ellen Griswold]

<br><br><div class="quote-container"><span>Quote:</span>
<div class="quote-block">Originally Posted by <strong>woodchick</strong> <a href="/community/forum/thread/1284757/it-s-a-small-world-after-all#post_16107386"><img alt="View Post" class="inlineimg" src="/community/img/forum/go_quote.gif" style="border-bottom:0px solid;border-left:0px solid;border-top:0px solid;border-right:0px solid;"></a><br><br><p>I grew up in a small town in Masachusetts. DH grew up in Ohio.  We met at college, started dating...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>...which is when we realized that I went to high school with his cousins.   Weird.</p>
</div>
</div>
<p><br><br>
I can top that! <span><img alt="winky.gif" src="http://files.mothering.com/images/smilies/winky.gif" style="width:15px;height:15px;"></span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>I grew up in Indiana.  Dh grew up in Connecticut.  We met at college, started dating...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>....which is when we realized we WERE cousins.  (Not close, clearly, but, um, the family tree doesn't branch a lot......)</p>

 

[savannah smiles]

<p>I was at a bar in Copenhagen w/ a friend and there was a group of Japanese guys at a table next to us. When they heard us speaking English, they asked us where we were from and we chatted some.  Turns out that, like my friend and myself, they all went to the University of Georgia and they lived in the same dorm as my friend's boyfriend.</p>

 

[wookie]

<p>heh. small world stories are quite funny really.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>2 yrs ago we moved from calgary (canada's midwest) to halifax (east coast). at one of ds's (he's 4) summer camps i met a mom w/ 2 daughters (older one 4, in the same camp as my son, younger one 6 months older than my younger son). we got to talking and it turns out she'd moved from calgary to halifax the same month we did.  then we realised our older kids were <em>1 DAY apart</em> in age. turns out we delivered in the same hospital, on the same floor, the same OB doing both our c-sections! we were probably in adjacent rooms, she laboring, me with a day-old babe.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>AND we both bought houses on the same street so we're practically neighbors. our kids now go to the same school and we're good friends. </p>

 

[rhianna813]

<p>My FIL loves to travel and hike. A few years back he went on a trek in Nepal with a group. Most of the trekkers were retirees, but from all over the world. The other American lived a hour from him here in Oregon LOL They are now friends.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Rhianna</p>

 

[goinggreengirl]

<p>Oh, when I was a work study in college I got to know a secretary in another department. When I got the job in Alaska, she said her sister in law lived in that very town and attended the church I was planning on going to! When I arrived, I met her and went over to their house for dinner a few times. Come to find out, her husband (who has the same last name as my mom's maiden name) graduated from the same college in the NW a year before my mom was there. They majored in the same field and had all the same professors!</p>

 

[Aeress]

<p>We decided to get  a second dog and picked one out that was from the same shelter we got our first dog. We went and met him and decided to adopt him. I posted his pic on facebook,and a friend said, "isn't that so and so's dog"? Sure enough, we adopted a friend'd dog. I knew they had to give up the dog but never would have dreamed we would adopt him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When I was in high school, we went on vacation with my grandparents and extended family to Vriginia. After being at the campground, my grandparents, who are KY transplants, met a couple they knew from their years living in my hometown.</p>

 

[HeatherAtHome]

<p>DH is always running into people he knows when we're out. Couple years ago we went on vacation in Maine. "Everyone" seems to go to Old Orchard Beach so we picked another town along the coast, googled it and thought it looked good. The last day there, we're walking in town and I hear DH say (in french of course so it seemed so out of place) "Hey, how's it going?!" Are you kidding me? Someone from his shop went to the same town as us and, turns out, <em>was even camping at the same campground</em>! (there were a bunch to choose from) He didn't know this guy well and it's not like he really broad casted his plans at work... I think it was really a coincidence. </p>

 

[barefootbabies]

<p>I think I may have posted both of these stories before, but I'm not sure.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I'm from MA and DH is from Peru.  We met there and dated long distance for 2 years before getting engaged and him moving here.  One day my dad took me into Boston to see this musical group he had seen that played traditional Peruvian music.  My dad is really chatty and got to talking with one of the musicians, introduced us, etc. and we became friends.  He moved back to Peru a year later, and one day when I was down visiting DH the two of us went to his house.  He had his own band in Peru, and we met them.  Turns out his lead singer is the niece of one of DH and I's best friends.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The other one - one time I was flying home from Peru and started chatting to the older lady next to me.  Over the course of the flight I learned that she was American, but had lived in Lima for 30+ years, raised 3 kids there, but they had all moved back to the states.  She was flying home for her grandson's graduation.  Her 2 daughter's both lived in the town where I grew up, and her granddaughter and I played on the same basketball team in middle school.  She was actually at the airport to pick up her grandmother, it was so funny!</p>

 

[starbuckmom]

<p>A friend of mine here is St Louis is a friend on facebook with a sister of my classmate in Iowa!!  I asked him how he knew my classmates sister and he said they went to college together.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There is a lady in our church (big church) here in St Louis that went to the same school as my dh.  She was in the same class as my dh brother.  It is a small town Northern MO.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>3 yrs ago, we had our kitchen floor redone.  The guy who installed the floor had a coworker who knew my dh family.  My dh family is from a small town in Northern MO. </p>

 

[mommaof3boz]

<p>Lyn what part of St L do you live in?  My dh grew up  in Chesterfield on hwy 109.  Was the country side back then.  His grandparents land bordered babler park.</p>

 

[crabbyowl]

<p>My mom's cousin's husband went to law school with DH's grandfather. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>I studied abroad in Dublin my junior year in college, and during my travels I often had "small world" moments.  A guy who sat with me for breakfast at our London hotel also lived in my native city, as did some people in line in front of me to get into Notre Dame in Paris.  My mom came to visit me in Dublin, and on the bus one day we were talking about one of her cousins who married someone from Ireland.  She mentioned the last name, which isn't a common one, and the guy sitting across from us said that was his last name too. </p>

 

[sweeetpea]

<p>I spent the summer in Spain one year, and had THREE small world encounters.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>1. Leaving a disco in Madrid at 3am, I heard someone call my name and call out to me in English.  It was a girl from my dorm at college.  We were friendly, but not "friends", so I had no idea she was in Spain that summer, too.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>2. A month or so later, in Salamanca, I saw a guy I knew from my hometown in California.  Just walking down the street.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>3. Toward the end of the summer, I met up with my sister in Barcelona.  We were sightseeing and took a shortcut down an alley behind a church.  We were walking behind a girl who has very nice, long wavy dark hair.  Suddenly I realized that I recognized that hair - it was a girl from my Economics class the previous semester, who always sat in front of me and I always admired her hair.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There was some confluence of energy lines or something in Spain that year!</p>

 

[*jeanine*]

<p>A number of years ago DH worked at a hospital.  He got into the elevator with a woman.  She looked at his name tag, saw that his last name was Last Name, and told him her son is also a Last Name.  She said DH and the son have the exact same green eyes.  So far it's not very convincing - anyone could make that up.   But then she started relating some family lore about one of the ancestors kidnapping a Native American chief's daughter.  This happened in CA.  DH's father is from IL. </p>

 

[starbuckmom]

<br><br><div class="quote-container"><span>Quote:</span>
<div class="quote-block">Originally Posted by <strong>mommaof3boz</strong> <a href="/community/forum/thread/1284757/it-s-a-small-world-after-all#post_16111479"><img alt="View Post" class="inlineimg" src="/community/img/forum/go_quote.gif" style="border:0px solid;"></a><br><br><p>Lyn what part of St L do you live in?  My dh grew up  in Chesterfield on hwy 109.  Was the country side back then.  His grandparents land bordered babler park.</p>
</div>
</div>
<br><br><p>We live in Maryland Heights.  I was a nanny for a family who lived not far from 109.  I took the kids to Babler part many times.  I know exactly where your dh grew up!!</p>