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

This refers to when two or more people encounter each other in completely coincidental fashion. You might notice your old classmate from three countries away is now your waiter in a place you had no reason to expect them in, and you might say “wow, what a small world”. You might notice two people who you know from completely different spheres miraculously know each other. You might recognize by chance that your penpal has made a cameo at a venue you’re at.

But what was your most profoundly coincidental encounter?

thouartfrugal ,
@thouartfrugal@lemmy.world avatar

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.

kplaceholder ,
@kplaceholder@lemmy.ml avatar

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.

merari42 ,

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.

EfreetSK ,
@EfreetSK@lemmy.world avatar

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

Martineski , (edited )
@Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

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.

Martineski ,
@Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/0c43e911-e256-4fa9-b70d-ac8de8f511b4.webp

Beryl ,

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

Iapar ,

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?

tiredofsametab ,

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

DudeDudenson ,

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

TexasDrunk ,

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
Nomecks ,

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.

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