What's your most profound "small world" moment?

I knew a kid in elementary school, let's call him Brian S. He moved away in the 5th grade. Bye Brian 😢

6th grade. Spring vacation. My family drives us down to visit an aunt from upstate NY, down in North Carolina.

We have our vacation. It's now the following Saturday. We're driving home. We stop at a rest area on 95. I see Brian S and his family just walking from their car to the rest area. Same time as us.

We stop and chat for a few mins. It's the 90s so we can't like trade cell phone numbers or anything. I don't even think we had regular instant messaging screen names yet.

Last I ever saw Brian S.

it would be cool if Brian S reads this now and PM you after all these years.
- Yeah except I obfuscated details, so Tom M is never gonna get it, because we actually grew up in VT.
  
  This is also inaccurate. 😁

One night when returning from a party at work, I've decided to stay a while longer in the tram to escort my co-workers to the tram central hub (which was like half an hour of tram ride), instead of getting out at my home, which was only 5 minutes from our workplace.

When I got into the tram back home, there was an older guy with a carboard robot costume, who was talking to someone about his work in the theater. Because I find people like that interesting, I decided to move closer and sit next to them, so I can listen to their pretty interesting conversation. I've tripped and basically literally fell into their conversation, and the other guy left, so we started talking. It turned out he does a prop-guy on movies and for theater, and we hit it off pretty well. He also lived literally 3 minutes from my place, and we have decided to go have a few more beers at his home, which was basically a storage lot full of random stuff without much furniture - just random props, one bed, and a lot of beer.

I've messaged my GF that I'll be late, since I'm drinking with this pretty cool old guy, and send her a picture of the place. Her reponse was "Wait, isn't that <name>?". Turns out, he was a prop guy on a movie they were filming a lot of years ago at their old family house when she was young, and not only he was the most fun guy to be around there, always sneaking out to drink with them, but also briefly dated her (late) mother, so he's basically her step-dad. Since he's pretty old-school, no social networks, internet and barely a phone, we did exchange contacts and since then have seen him a few times, and it was always a treat, like getting us to the backstage of theater production. But the way we have met is so, so random and the odds of something like that happening are mind blowing. I usually don't follow random people home, but here we have hit it off so well that we wanted to keep talking and it didn't even felt weird.

The fun sociological thing about this is the likelihoods. If he dated your SO's mother, it means same area, same age, same socioeconomic standing. The chances are greater that you'd run into him, than say a 5 year old from Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

Not trying to take away from how crazy, fun, and unlikely it is, just how it shows that "small world" does in fact exist.
- Was talking to a guy about religion. He said he isn't religious but he believes there is "something" that basically works in mysterious ways in people's lives.
  
  To explain, he told the story of when he was at a crossroads in his life, just divorced and unhappy in his job. He wanted to pursue his passion which was metalsmithing but had no shop to work out of.
  
  At a smithing convention, he randomly started talking to this guy who it turns out had a shop and one of their employees just left so they needed someone to fill the spot.
  
  So the guy I was talking to saw that as some kind of pseudo-divine intervention because what are the odds?
  
  And here I'm thinking, you're at a smithing convention, of course you're going to run into people with smithing shops. If he had met the guy while on safari in Africa, then I'd be more impressed.

Oh boy, I love telling this story.

So, back in 2013, I signed up for a now defunct local website, where I met this kid from Aragón. To respect his privacy, I'll call him S. There wasn't much going on at the time and eventually we grew apart.

Fast-forward to 2016, I move to Madrid to start college. In my first year class, there was this guy I'll refer to as L, a trans man from the Basque Country with really chaotic energy, who kept doing really cursed things for the sake of it. One morning he arrived at the class claiming that, the previous day, he cooked a few bean stew ice pops, and hid them across the campus. Obviously the people who found them weren't thrilled and, to no one's surprise, didn't eat them. So, at the end of the day, he picked up all of the bean stew ice pops, and shoved them off into the freezer at his rental flat.

Sadly, the next year, L moved to a different campus and to a different flat. Though he remained involved with a gamedev association at the same university.

Fast-forward to 2020, I'm almost done with my degree and the pandemic hits. My old friend S and I reconnect over Discord and tell each other about our lives, then share some funny memes. At some point we begin discussing cursed food, and S proceeds to tell me this: «I had a friend who went to Madrid for college, and when he first arrived at his rental flat, can you guess what he found in the freezer? bean stew ice popsicles».

What were the odds? How many flats in Madrid would have bean stew ice pops, of all things, in the freezer?

Bonus: S and I shared this story with a common friend, call her C. C stated that she wanted to greet L. After all, she was involved with the same gamedev association, and she did know of a trans guy from the Basque Country with that name and degree. But when C greeted him and told him about the ice pops, he had no idea what she was talking about.

It turned out to be a different trans guy from the Basque Country with the same name and degree that was also collaborating with the same association.

At that point I'd be tempted to celebrate the revelation/reunion by trying one of those bean stew ice pops.

(hey I've had weirder things before)

I have a common first name for my age. And common middle name. But my last name is pretty unusual. Based on previous research I'd be shocked if there are over 1000 people in America with the same last name.

My wife and I were traveling out of state to a very niche convention. There were maybe 200-300 people there. And we ran into trouble with the hotel because also attending the convention was another man with my exact same first middle and last name. And his wife has the same name as my wife.

We are similar ages and work in roughly similar fields. This convention had absolutely nothing to do any of those similarities, though.

Whoa! This really blows my mind. Did you keep in touch?
- We both volunteered in future years of the convention until it fell apart. So we didn't stay in touch, but we ran into each other maybe 3 or 4 times over about 8 years. We lived quite far apart so that was about it.
  
  I do get emails from his bank, though, because I got first initial last name @ gmail.com.

I was in Ireland with my parents in 93. My parents had been out to the pub and met another Dutch couple that stayed at the same hostel.

At morning we joined them at the breakfast table and introduced me: 'this is our son, x'. Now you must know that my name is quite uncommon, as it is the only way I'm in the 1%.

The guy said, I once met a boy with that name in Yugoslavia, in 84. He had helped that boy get back his swimming shoes from the bottom of the bay. That boy was me. If my name was more common we'd never have known that we met before almost a decade ago.

That's one. The other one was in Africa. Somewhere in the middle of Benin I met a couple from my country. We chatted a bit an the guy was an architect who studied African architecture.

As my home town has a museum in African architecture I asked him if he knew that. He said, of course, we live in the same town. Turns out they lived just around the corner from where I lived. We were practically neighbours.

Someone gave me a book on local birdwatching, I flipped it open to a random page and the page I landed on had my name on it because I had made a report of a rare bird sighting.

That's amazing. My closest story is similar to this actually. I have a couple of friends who have a photobombing hobby, to the point where they're the equivalent of world record holders for it (and turn it into a charity thing), (what they're known for when they're not spelunking). They know all the hotspots for it and whatnot. It got to the point that facial recognition would go haywire, even though it's only when they're together that they're unmistakable, while, individually, they're quite generic for spottable people. So anyways, a few times I might have been looking at pictures somewhere like a dictionary or maybe footage, and at first if I think "oooh this looks exotic", there they are in the background, peeping out from behind a fence or something. Most endearing part is I made myself my art hobby separately from this or knowledge of it, and it intertwines.
- Oh wow!

I lived for two years in Cameroon when I was a kid (around 4-5 years old), we were regularly spending time with another family who had kids and the same age.

Fast forward 15 years later, I'm 19 entering university in a totally new city in France. The first day every student is sitting in the amphitheater and they call the name of every student.

When they call the last name of the person close to me I recognize the name so I use it as an ice breaker to start a conversation saying that I knew a family with his name in Cameroon when I was a kid ... He says that yeah he lived in Cameroon as a kid at the same time as I did, so here we go we found each other again 15 years later !

My parents emigrated separately in the 1950s from a large city in Europe to Australia.

My mother didn’t know anyone in Australia and went to stay with her sister (who had previously immigrated) until she could find somewhere to live.
My father went to stay with his best friend (who had previously immigrated) until he could find somewhere to live.
Coincidence 1 That friend had been the best friend of my mother’s older brother back in their city of origin
Coincidence 2 My parents grew up around the corner from each other in their city of origin, within a few hundred metres of each other. They went to the same school, knew the same teachers, but had never met
Coincidence 3 My parent’s fathers worked at the same company and were friends at work, but didn’t socialise together outside of work

There were 3 ways my parents could have met each other, but they didn’t meet until they moved to the other side of the world, when they discovered that they had so much in common.

Bumped into my brother's ex GF on a Grand Canyon trail, when we both live in Europe.

Meeting my neighbor in another country in some obscure location. Still don't believe that it was a coincidence. I mean what are the odds?

Profoundly nightmarish was mine, here are the highlights:

Go to take LSD for the first time with some friends at the seller's house. Just about the time the effects are taking over I realize I met the guy once about ten years earlier, when as a stupid kid I accidentally shot him in the face with a pellet spring pistol.

Bit later, on top of feeling ashamed, regretful, worthless, helpless and out of my mind I'm becoming very nauseated so I go to the front porch. In a brief moment I see another guy I hadn't seen in years walking by on the sidewalk, and reach my hand up to wave at him. As my stomach empties he freezes in his tracks, mid-wave as his smile of recognition turns to shock.

One of my best mates is someone who I've worked with, at a few jobs, over the past 30 years. We met in our first ever technical support job then, over the following decades, kinda landed at the same places around the same time. At one point, I even hired him as a contractor into a team I was building.

We've helped each other move houses, we've been there for each other's weddings, and our kids have pretty much grown up together. We get together for pub meals and barbecues as often as we can - sometimes just he and I, sometimes with the wives and kids.

My point is, over those 30 or so years, we've discussed a lot about our respective histories, families, school mates, hobbies, etc. There's probably not much we haven't shared about our lives with each other.

Literally two weeks ago, he randomly sends me a picture of the back of a family photograph that was taken when he was a little kid. Had the name of the photographer and the photographer's phone number stamped on it.

Turns out my grandfather (a professional photog at one stage in his life) had been my mate's family's photographer all those years ago. Used to visit them once a year to take all the family photos. My mate remembers him quite well - just funny that we never connected the dots before now.

I was on a work trip back in the 80s that took me to one of the northern islands of Vanuatu. Our plane landed on a football field, that's how remote our destination was. After we set up camp, someone said they'd heard there was a teacher from New Zealand in the nearby village. Well I'm a New Zealander too, so off I went to meet her. Within the first few minutes we had worked out that not only were we originally from the same small town... she was my older brother's first girlfriend.

But actually because NZ has a small population and we all travel a lot, it's not as mad a coincidence as all that. It sometimes feels like we are all just a couple of degrees of separation from each other. "Oh you're from Oamaru? Do you know XY?" "Not really, but one of my cousins works for his sister, ZY."

Y'all have interesting names.
- It's a factor of the way we print our phone books. We still use metal type, and the letters have to be ordered from overseas. It's expensive, so we add new letters as often as the national budget allows. The next generation to be born will be able to use letters like Q and P.
I have family in Vanuatu and they run into scenarios like this a surprising amount. Maybe it has just the right demographic when it comes to relations.
- Vanuatu is one of the best places I've ever been. Really interesting people.

The person who bought the cottage next to my parents lived in the same neighborhood I was living in, 4600km away. She was just some random person who bought it.

Not mine, but my dad's that I was there to witness.

It was summer (90s) and we were all camping at a lake. My sister and I were playing with some kids while my dad was chatting up the other kids' dad. Just as I was getting out of the water I hear the other dad exclaim "you remind me of a guy I used to know called [name]!" My dad laughs and says "I am [name]." Turns out they used to go to school together decades before.

It's stuck with me all these years, and has somewhat been turned into an inside joke within our family.

Permanently Deleted

Met a girl while being an English teacher in China. She was originally from New York. She had a very distinctive voice, very hard to forget.

Fast forward 10 years. I'm at the Santa Monica Pier playing Pokemon Go with my brother. Suddenly, THAT VOICE. I'm like... No... That isn't possible. I keep on walking.

We reach the end of the pier, and turn around. And BOOM. There she is. We make eye contact, and are both like wtffff.

Turns out she moved there to do a podcast or something.

Anyway cool shit

It sounds like she’d either be very good or very bad on a podcast.

One of my (otherwise random) WoW guild members had my grandma as his kindergarten teacher.

One of my former WoW guild members and I worked for the same company and had coordinated a job for me out of state (couple day install) a week before I met them at our first guild meet. Huge multinational and we had never interacted prior nor worked in a situation that we would.
Oh man I didn't think I had any small world stories, but that reminded me:

I was in the military long ago, which I hated, and hated myself for joining, and played WoW as an escape from reality every waking moment I wasn't deployed or training or working. I was in a competitive raiding guild of <40 people on an expansion server, none who I knew IRL. My unit had to go to another base a state away to do basically a week-long competition/training with other units, so I let the guild know I wouldn't be able to make raids that week. Someone asked me where I was going to be and when I told them, my class officer in the game said, "no way, I'm stationed there. Give me your NCO's information and I'll try to get you out of it."

That week I didn't have to do any of the training or stay in the transient housing with the rest of my unit as I was assigned to a "detail" with my WoW class officer, who was several ranks higher than me and had his own place with an extra bedroom, extra gaming computer, and who took great joy during the raids giving me "lawful orders" to do more DPS. That was a great guild, and a rare good time during a bad period of life.

I'm not saying the achievement medal I received at that time was for playing WoW, because the wording doesn't say that, but I'm also not NOT saying that.

While doing groceries on the other side of the city I saw a friend from high school in front of the entrance. We said hello to each other and were just about to go our own way, as another friend from uni walks up to us and says hi. We all know each other, so I thought the two of them were meeting. But we all were thinging that about the others and after a short while we found out that none of us had made any plans of meeting. It was pure coincidence that we all three were there at the same time. Only happend once to me.

I was in the US Air Force and stationed in England. If someone left their ID out we would hide it or freeze it in a block of ice. Your ID also happens to have your social security number on it. One of my coworkers left her ID on the table and when I grabbed it to go hide it, I noticed her social security number was only a couple of numbers off of mine. The first 8 numbers were completely the same.

For those not from the US, our socials are 9 digits long. The first 5 digits of your social security number indicates the part of the country you were born in. The last 4 digits are assigned from 0001-9999.

It turns out we were born in the same hospital 1 day apart, and met halfway across the globe 20 years later.

I have a cousin who lived in and grew up in South-East Asia. I'm Canadian. A guy from my (small, rural) high school class was randomly at their wedding. Apparently they became roommates in college.

Did you marry your cousin, did she marry South-East Asia or was the guy from your high school randomly at his own wedding?
- Huh, I looked hard and still don't get how this is unclear. The "their" isn't me because it's third person, and it can't be the region of South-East Asia or high school guy himself because that doesn't make sense. That should leave one possibility. Singular their is a thing, if you're unfamiliar.
  
  I'll just clarify. My South-East Asian cousin married someone not in the story, and their college roommate, high school guy, was present as a guest, which was highly unexpected. Hilarity ensues.

I lived in Spain for a while. I was in some random city in Andalucía, walking with some random person I met in the hostel. We’re walking to the beach, and we pass a group of students coming the other way. Kinda passively scanning the faces, I see this kid I went to high school with. We weren’t friends, but it was a small school, 100 kids or so to a class. We both just kinda laugh, shake our heads, point at each other, share a dap as we pass and both just kept walking. Neither of us said anything except maybe “what the fuck”

lol neither of us stopped, just passed each other in disbelief

Another time, I got in a hit and run accident. When the guy hit me from behind, I looked in the rear view and saw his weird headlights. We go to pull off the road and he booked it. I couldn’t catch him. Like six months down the road, on my way home from school, I look in my rear view and see those headlights on the same color truck. He’s driving like a dickhead through traffic, but I start obviously following him, he’s kinda trying to shake me. He pulls over into a parking lot, I come in behind him. He and his douchey friend get out, all douchey-like. Comes to my window, trying to intimidate me, his friend to the passenger window to intimidate my friend. Starts yelling, and I’m just like, “yeah, like six months ago you rear ended me and I got a description of your truck for the police report, but didn’t get the license plate number.” He was immediately shaken and started stumbling on his words, trying to say he just bought this car, blah blah. I’m like, “oh. They kept those Ron Jon stickers on the window when they sold it?” lol at that point they were already retreating. I yell, “you can expect a visit from the cops pretty soon!” And they got out of there. I didn’t really make a police report, but I hope I made the next few months of his life really anxious.

Another time a guy who tried to stab me like three nights before when I was living in Colombia came up and started talking to a group of me and my friends on the street.

I moved to a smaller city in South Korea in 2004 to teach English. A short while after I got there, I met a couple who were from a small town down the road from the small town I grew up in in Eastern Canada. Apparently we even went to the same small university (3000 students total) together and I somehow managed to never see them there.

One from MMO. I got accepted to a guild and after some time I hear somewhat familiar voice in voice channel. Turned out it was guy from the same village I grew up in, I knew him and he was my sisters classmate.

One from RL. I went to second biggest city in my country and accidentally bumped to my friend (also elementary school classmate) at random street whom I haven't seen for years.

I grew up in a very small Ohio town. I moved to Houston, Texas and met one person from the same town and later one from a town over at a bar.

I quit Facebook/etc. not long after moving to Tokyo. I ran into a guy from Columbus, Ohio that I knew from when I lived there.

I've also run into friends of friends randomly in Tokyo.

Now, I love away from Tokyo in the countryside, so I'll be super surprised if I meet anyone again, but who knows.

Edit: for context, on a business day, there are more than 30 million people plus tourists in the Tokyo metro

My current car was bought 2 km away from my house when I was 13, then it was sold to someone 40km away that happened to be the next door neighbour of my aunt before he sold it to an used car dealer who I bought it from.

I figured all of this out after buying it and it really felt like a small world

I've got two related to my military service, and one related to my grandfather.

A guy I vaguely knew because I competed against his brother in sports in school ended up being stationed at every base I was stationed at. We even ended up being deployed together and are still good friends to this day. I've told stories about him on here. The way our lives have gone it looks like I'm his crazy stalker because after school I was just behind him doing almost the exact same things as him for both hobbies and careers. I promise I'm not, it just turned out that way. I did beat him moving to Houston, though.
After I was discharged I was on a road trip with my (at the time) fiance. We stopped at a restaurant in the middle of nowhere a thousand miles from home and 600 miles from the last place I saw him a little over 6 years after the last time we saw each other. We were seated at a table next to a guy I went to boot camp with.
In the spirit of the last one, I was on a road trip with my grandparents when I was young. We ran into my grandfather's cousin. This shouldn't be weird, but my grandparents lived down the road from me in Texas, his cousin lived in Alabama, we saw him at a rest stop in Tennessee, and neither had any idea that the other was on a road trip.

I have a few:

back in University I overhear some classmates I was not very familiar with talking about a girl playing Street Fighter IV competitively. They say the nickname. She was a girl I was flirting online with. I never played that game, she was from a completely other part of the country, she had no connection with my uni or the discipline of the uni. I asked her for confirmation and she said she knew the two guys, so it was actually her.
recently: I'm talking to a girl I met after being in contact on Facebook for 10 years. She's living in Paris, I'm living in Germany but we are both from Italy. Talking about an ex of mine, I ask her if she knows X because X and my ex have been together for a while. There was a slight chance she would have some kind of connection to him, but she says no, never heard of him. Then I start describing the guy, because he's the most toxic guy on the planet and there are a few very clear identifying informations. She says: "Ah, yes, I know the guy, I matched with him on a dating app when I was on vacation two years ago, he was nuts".
one time I was hanging out with my friend G. I'm talking about my political activity as a general mutual update on how we are doing, and I mention among other things how I was trying to reach out to a few very specific publications which cover labor stuff in Italy. G is a painter, not really active in politics except very local community stuff. They say: "wait, you said xxx media? The editor-in-chief is my sister. Mind=blown". To add to this, I have known G for like 10 years and I never really registered they had a sister.

My second daughter saw her middle school French teacher in CDG airport when she (my kid) was on her way to visit Italy with my mom. The teacher was leading a bunch of the students from her school on some school trip. One of the pricey ones my kids couldn't ever go on, lol.

I've had a few things happen that made me wonder about the nature of reality, honestly. Had a ridiculous sex dream about a friend of ours who we hadn't talked to in years and he called the next day (he is not someone I wanted to have sex with) and I also told my best friend I was pregnant in a dream (I hadn't told anyone and this was pre social media) and she called me the next day to congratulate me. Prophetic dreams when I used to record them. I'm not sure any of that stuff is coincidence though.

I was in Iceland for vacation, so I was waiting in line for a rental car. I hear a very familiar voice in front of me and I realized it was a good friend from high school I whom hadn't seen or really talked to in years.

People go to Iceland for vacation?
- Yes, too much of them. That's why I haven't been there yet myself. It's too touristy nowadays.

I live in NYC, which I describe as the biggest small town in the US. I frequently run into people I know out and about. Since most people travel by public transit, it's only a matter of time.

Public transit in NY moves literally millions of people per day, so the chances are still pretty low.

A friend from high school reached out to meet up because she was going to her honeymoon in Japan while I was there. I hadn't seen her in 5 or so years because we lived across the country from each other, I didn't even know she had gotten married in the first place. Husband was weird, but kind, and she seemed happy.

Was transiting through the Iceland airport once and had a random thought about how I was quite far from anyone I know there. No sooner do I finish the thought I look about 20m in front of me and an old university classmate of mine is walking towards me.

I’m from the US and I live in Germany, studying German (nothing to do with English). I once had a professor who was from 12 miles away from me and who went to the elementary school my mother taught at.

I got into a fender bender with someone I knew from college. Spun out on ice so we meet front to front when we bumped. Once the cars stopped I swear we both practically did the cartoon eye rub of disbelief lolol.

Not mine but old school crew story. Couple of lads bumped into each other in a bar in Europe - we from the States. Neither knew the other was traveling. Heard a distinct laugh across the pub and rest is history.

Twice in games.

Once in a mmo type game I just started I spammed guild join requests to a bunch random guilds and by the time I came back I've been accepted to a certain guild. I vaguely recognised the guildmaster and after a while I asked him if he played that one game in the past AND HE DID! I've met him in a different game on some game server year earlier just as he was phasing out from playing this game and happened to see him a few times. It was a huge brainfuck to me that something like this even happened.

The second time was a few years later where I've been playing this one waiting simulator, city building/raiding game from my childhood. After a few weeks of playing I happened to mention it to my classmate and he mentioned that he plays it too. After he showed me his nickname I rocognised his nickname from an opponent clan my clan fighted some time ago.

This was the moment when I realised that nothing is real.

A classmate of mine from elementary school is a professional voleyball player. She traveled the world, played for teams in Europe, Middle east and Asia. Eventually she settled in the exact same village as me on the completely oposite side of the country from where we grew up. I didn't even know until my wife told me that one of our neighbours was born in the same town as me

I met my first primary school bully two decades later at the Estonian consulate, who coincidentally also has the name of a local politician.

Well, people have always said that is the type of person to get into politics.
- (they are, in fact, two separate people. He became a youth pastor. I also remember he stopped bullying me in year 3 when he found out I could draw dinosaurs pretty well)

I was on a holiday in the Cinque Terre in Italy with my wife a few years ago. Because of a rainy day we decided to take a train to Genua and visit some museums. At the maritime museum I randomly met an Italian coworker/coauthor from my research institute in Germany, who was visiting his family in his hometown with his wife.

Move out west to BC from Ontario. My new doctor had same last name as my boss in Ontario, so I'm like do you know any "blah blah" in ontario? He says yeah that's my dad.

My now partner for more than 15 years both met face to face (online dating worked for me) in a smallish town in Portugal for the first time (she was living in the UK, I in Germany) and on the first evening we both met former clasmates of ours that we hadn't seen for years, it was kinda wild.

Small world ia a scam! When I was on vacation in London my father and I heard the "fact" on the tourist bus that you couldn't be on Picadilly Circus more than 43 minutes or so before meeting someone you know. We sat there for over an hour and didn't see anyone.

But then again, we were at an airfield for a pilot meeting earlier during that vacation. And it turned out that the guy who owned that airfield was stationed in Germany at the same town and at the same time my father lived there as a child.