What's your best "small world" story?

I don't know if this is the right context, but at 14 I became a huge fan of the M*A*S*H TV series. My second duty station in the Army was Camp Red Cloud, which was in Uijongbu, Korea. I saw the final episode of the series while I was stationed there...it was pretty surreal!

1. I grew up in the middle of nowhere. After my divorce, some good friends of mine had really pushed me and this guy together. He and I hit it off from day 1, but he just wasn’t what I was looking for. We were really good friends for a while, but then went our separate ways.

Fast forward 3 or 4 years later…I’d moved to the city about 2 hours away. A friend and I had lunch and then were walking down the street after, exploring the different businesses when all of a sudden I hear my name called out. I turn, and it’s him! He was working in the area temporarily for a few days and we just happened to cross paths.

2. So the man I’d been married to, we’d met and lived in the middle of nowhere previously mentioned. We had a very amicable divorce, but we didn’t stay in touch once we moved into new relationships out of respect to our partner's.

About 8 years after we’d lost touch, I’d moved to the city, but worked in a place outside city limits NO ONE I knew from back home would ever be. You had to have a membership and everything. Well, on days I’d come in before we opened, I’d have to be buzzed in through the back door. Private access and all that. One day, they let me in and imagine my surprise when the first person to greet my eyes was my ex husband! I instantly just said, “what the heck are you doing here?!” 😂😂 I was sooo caught off guard! Apparently he’d started working for a delivery company and we were one of his stops for the day. Surprise to us both! Lol

It'll be long, and I'll connect dots through my brother's stories. My brother used to go to a nightclub with his friend named, Leon in a small city. This was in the 90s. So a lot of alternative bars existed, catering to a subculture that was amongst the most popular culture then. There was this man there, at the club, who would only dance with hands. They called him, 'Hands'

My brother spoke to Leon years later after Leon moved to Hong Kong. So move on about 5 years. Now early 2000's. Leon attends one of the very many nightclubs in Hong Kong and there he sees this man dancing with his hands. He knows those hands. He approaches the man. You have to remember they never had met. Leon walks up to him and says, 'Hands'? The man puzzled, Leon, just says the word, Trasheteria (the name of the club).

Since I was not there, these parts in response I am missing, but yes it was "Hands"

I asked my brother what his friend was doing for a living in Hong Kong. He says teaching English as a second language. That's one way to travel the world. And I thought inside myself, Leon would make a good teacher.

15 years or so past. I'm sitting in a quiet pub in the same small city reading a book. I see this man, of small stature, like Leon held. Could only remember Leon from when I was about 10. Yet I'm convinced it's him. He's with a friend. And how do I know it's him? Can I go by memory of when I was 10, and he was all about 17? And I'm still convinced. I wasn't going to interrupt whoever this was while they were with his friend.

Then his friend leaves the table. I assume to excuse himself to the washroom. I see Leon come to me. Think to myself, this is interesting. Did he recognize me?

He leads with a question, I used to work as a teacher and one of my fellow teachers loved going to bars to read, and I'm just curious what you find from it? I only answered, I don't know Leon.

My wife and I went on a cross country trip when we lived in CT. After we had visited Devil's Tower in Wyoming we drove up into Montana on the way to Yellowstone.

We always liked to drive on side roads, rather than the interstate. So we were on a lonely road in Montana and literally hadn't seen another car for an hour. As we drove, I saw a blip of a car in the rear view mirror. Over the next 15 or so minutes the car got closer and closer. When the car was within a few car lengths the horn started beeping and the people put their hands out the window and started waving. They passed us and we saw that they were also from CT. 2500 miles from home and we run into the only other car on a lonely road and they were from the same state. And CT is a small state.

I would go with one of the guys on my high school chess team was later at my Navy Reserve Center as staff, 10 years later!

Pretty much exactly that. I moved from Arkansas to California, and the first week I was there exploring downtown I ran into one of my high school classmates.

My wife and I were in a Laundromat in Paris. Another American heard us speaking in English and started talking with us.

We discovered that he and I graduated from the same high school in New York. (But many years apart.)

I'm from East coast and was visiting California in my 20s - and 1st day with jet lag got up at 5am to run on beach...I saw a guy running toward me, and when we got closer, it was a person that I often saw at the gym at home, but did not really know - but we both stopped and went, wow this is nuts!

I stuck out my thumb and the driver of the first car to approach knew my sister. He drove me to my door hundreds of miles away.

Is that small world or caused by lack of experience due to shortness of life thus far?

Don't have one, never left the country.

I experienced serendipity once in this regard it was so surreal … the coincidences around it

I went to the Gym and he was waiting there.. 😒 boring love story.