The last time I was visiting a friend in Montana, we were walking around her neighborhood and saw that someone was moving into a nearby house. We stopped to chat, she made welcoming noises and asked him where he was from. “Small town in Connecticut no one has heard of, its only claim to fame is that it has the corporate headquarters of (fast food company name).” That’s my town. We knew a few people in common.

My dad was from WV. and someone I was very close to was also from WV. but I am not from WV.

My son rode a motorbike across country when he was 23. At a gas station in Encino, CA, a man who saw his license plate asked if he was from New Jersey. Son said yes and the man asked him what part and son said, “The Jersey shore.” Man asked where on the Jersey shore and son said, “Near Asbury Park.” Man asked what town and then what street. He had grown up on the same street we live on!

70 years ago living in California, my father and mother were from Boston area, we were driving on a Sunday to visit someone he worked with. We came to a stop light and my dad noticed the car in front on us had a Massachusetts license plate. My dad lays on the the horn and waves at the car in font of us. . . .the car pulls over and the guy gets out of the car . . . he graduated from high school with my dad.

Many. Each paragraph is a separate story so you can skip around if you don’t want to read them all.

I was fourteen years old in Edinburgh, Scotland, on vacation with my family. My dad and I went to the pub right near our hotel and sat at a table. A gentleman sat down with us and struck up a conversation. He asked us where we were from in the states, and my dad said Washington, DC. Even in America we tended to say the DC area, because most people don’t know where Gaithersburg, MD is. He replied, “a brother of mine moved to that area 17 years ago, he lives in Gaithersburg.”

Actually, when we first moved to Gaithersburg my mom was signing up for something connected with my school and a woman asked if we had relatives in the area, the woman knew someone with our last name. Our surname is extremely rare. My mom said not that she knows of and asked if the person spells it exactly like us. Long story short, we met the woman and she had photos of my dad’s family members. My dad’s family is very disjointed and small and that was an incredible coincidence.

My aunt was in Europe with her mom (my grandma) during a college break, and they were walking down an outdoor stairwell. My aunt started to laugh and from below someone called her name. A college classmate happened to be there at the same moment and recognized her laugh. I wasn’t in this story, but I grew up with it, and it was the start of me understanding how small the world can be.

Met someone on Facebook, friend of a friend from my Memphis, TN days. We often crossed paths on Facebook threads. Turns out her stepson lives where I live in Florida! I connected with him and after hearing where he grew up (very close to where I grew up) I told him I know someone here who went to his high school not sure what year she graduated. I connected them, and they were the same year, but didn’t know each other in school. They even went to the same temple as kids.

Just this past Saturday I was at a party and met a woman who is from Mexico City. After mentioning my husband was from Mexico City also, and while talking to her for a minute, I mentioned my husband’s first name, and she immediately asked me if he is Jewish. She admitted she had already sized me up as Jewish. I’m betting once my husband meets her they will know some of the same people. She’s not Jewish, just lives in areas that are heavily Jewish; in Mexico the Jews are a fairly tight-knit group. My husband was raised Catholic, but his dad was raised Jewish, long story, some of you know it.

The more people you talk to, and the more you talk to people, the more connections you find. I have many more stories.

^I read them all because stories like these fascinate me.
I was in Tulsa, OK at an Indian jewelry store shopping a few years back. The Indian that owned the store came over and started talking to me. He was in his 80’s. He asked me where I was from and told him WV. He said his wife was from WV. But she was from a small town I probably never heard of. He said my hometown! Very small world.

I have a few:

A guy at work and I were joking around about our high school rivalries. He called to another guy named Chris and said, “Pete’s making fun of our school”. We exchanged info, Chris and I lived on the same block back in the early 70s.

For about 5 months in second grade, I would walk with my older brother and sister to catch a bus to cross San Francisco to go to school. 25 years later, I am talking to a woman at work about how I took the muni bus to school, and picked it up in front of the Castro Theater. She said, “that was you?”. Turns out, she would see us walking down the street every morning, and saw us at church on Sunday, and was always curious about these three kids.

I was at the Avis rent a car counter at the Nice, France airport. A voice behind me said, “you better drive here more carefully than you do in California”. It was my fraternity big brother that I had not seen in years.

One more.

I was early to a ballet class here in The Villages where I live. I started talking to the instructor and somehow it came up that I mentioned my husband is Mexican. Turned out she was a prima in Mexico City for many years and her husband is Mexican. I asked her what her husband did in Mexico, and she told me he was a motorcycle cop most of his career. I told her my FIL was a motorcycle cop for a few years in his late 20’s. Her husband has a fairly common last name, so when I asked my FIL if he knew him, and he said yes, I didn’t even really believe it. We decided to all have dinner together, and they did know each other! They knew a lot of mutual people too from back in those days.

This Q kind of connects back to the small talk Q.

When I was an exchange student in southern Japan in the early 80s, I hitchhiked to Tokyo with friends. We met other friends there who also hitchhiked up. On Sunday, we went to see the takenoko dancers in Ueno Park. They dressed in 50s attire, and the young men had pompadours. (Is that the right term?) We met some other westerners, and of course chatted and exchanged pleasantries. My friend who had hitchhiked separately from me was talking to one young woman and figured out they might know people in common. As they talked more, my friend showed her a picture in his wallet of his girlfriend. She gasped, “I sold her pot brownies!”

^^Lol.

We have a huge family portrait from about 100 years ago hanging in my parents living room. All lined up nicely in suits and dresses and whatever they wore back in the 1920’s.
One day, my little sister had her new husband over with his parents and grandparents.
My new Brother In-Laws grandmother was looking at the photo and proclaimed –
“Hey, why do you have a photo of me and my family here” !!

I was working for a firm in Bethesda, MD. Among my clients was an incorporated local business, owned and operated by a lovely couple.

During one of our meetings, the wife and I spent some time casually chatting. She mentioned that, some years earlier, the couple had lived in a small Connecticut town. Said town turned out to be the place where my husband had grown up.

We started swapping notes. This woman was a close friend of my mother-in-law! They had lived in the same neighborhood, and their children were close in age and had played together.

Both ladies were delighted to be reconnected. Going forward, we 3 couples would have lunch or dinner whenever my MIL/FIL visited the area.

I went 2000 miles from the Bay Area to my brother’s wedding in Minneapolis. Met some couples around our age who were very compatible to our lifestyle. Turns out they lived 2 miles away from us. After we got back from the wedding we got together quite a bit, had kids, did stuff with their kids, etc.

Ok, not sure if this counts.

The parents of a close friend of mine did the DNA test. On their list of relatives it turned out one of her mom’s close friends was related. Also, her mom and dad are cousins! Lol. I think it was third or fourth cousins, I don’t remember exactly.

A friend and her mother, who both have rather unusual names, were shopping at some tiny store, when in walks some random girl who asks the store keeper.
“Hey, is [unusual name 1] around?”
“No, she’s out today.”
“Oh, okay… how about [unusual name 2]?”
“No, she’s out as well.”

@Forever_Free Wait, so were they related, or was it just some random old portrait they had?