Unexpected/Unlikely Meet-Ups

[Rowan Sjet]

So I'm walking home from work last night and I'm just coming up to my house when a guy, walking in the opposite direction but too far away and too shadowy to see properly, asks me for the time. "That's odd," I thought. "That sounds like..." And sure enough, as we approach each other, I realise it's one of my old mates from my University course. He actually lives a couple of cities away, near to the Uni, and he's only working in my hometown for a couple of weeks, going around the houses as a kind of salesman for charity I guess. And he wasn't actually scheduled to visit my house, so if I hadn't ran into him on the street, I wouldn't have actually known he was about.

I don't know but I'm guessing the odds of running into him practically right outside my house have got to be pretty damn low. Anyone else have a tale like this? Did anything result from those meetings? If you want, feel free to include stories involving celebrities.

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

I was once waiting for a table at one of my favorite little hole in the wall restaurants. I thought i recognized one of the people also waiting. I kept staring at him like, "I know this guy, but from where?" Finally, he approached me and, it was my god father! I was like, what are you doing here? He was waiting for a table too. I was just gonna get some take out, but he invited me to sit with him and we ended up catching up. It was cool.

 

[Guartho]

I'm pretty sure I saw Michael Jeter at the airport once. He had on a Jurassic Park III jacket. I didn't know his work well enough to know his name though so I couldn't say "Hey, are you Michael Jeter? He died almost exactly a year later.

The same day, in the same airport (Laguardia) I think I may have also seen Liev Schreiber, but I wasn't sure where I recognized him from until I saw something with him in it later. I just thought he was some guy that looked really familiar.

 

[Luckyflux]

I had something like that happen to me recently. About 15 years ago I worked for a moving company in Chatham, NJ. That moving company regularly hires seasonal temp work. One dude that worked there one summer was a guy named Jesse.

Cut to present day (15 years later), I am now working for a post production company in LA, and this dude comes walking down the street and sees me smoking. He approaches me and asks me for a cigarette. I looked at him for a minute with a weird look on my face and I say, did you used to work for a moving company in New Jersey like 15 years ago. I responds with a puzzled yes, and then I realize that it is that same guy Jesse! I couldn't believe it! 15 years later and 3000 miles away, I run into this guy, what are the chances!

Now why can't I bump into that super hottie I once knew many years ago.....that would be much better!

 

[DonIago]

I once once on Long Island with my parents. Went out to dinner and our waiter was someone I knew from college...7 hours away.

Shortly after moving to where I live now I went to the local Borders and ran into two friends of mine from high school...located 6 hours away. The weird part of that is I'd run into someone else I knew (a local person though) earlier...if I hadn't run into them I might not have run into my high school friends.

The world's smaller than it seems.

 

[Gary Mitchell]

In high school, I was in love with one of my best friends, Heather. I never got up the nerve to ask her out. In our junior year we didn't have any classes together so I hardly ever saw her and then suddenly she dropped out of school.

15 years later my next door neighbor died and a family moved in shortly after. The wife was pretty hot but we were never introduced. Several months go by and the neighbor's 7 year old son lost his ball in my yard. The woman came over to ask permission to get it out of my back yard. It was Heather. I couldn't believe it. She had dropped out because she got pregnant with her first kid.

Her husband was a real jerk so I didn't get to see Heather very much. One day she kicked him out of the house. We talked and she told me that she was getting a divorce. 2 weeks later she and her kids moved out and I haven't seen her since. My timing really stinks.

 

[Lindley]

My mother used to teach religious ed in Massachusetts. One time we were on a trip to France, and she bumped into one of her students in the Louvre.

 

[thestrangequark]

I am always amazed at how, in a city of nearly 8.5 million, I can always run into the same people all over the place. Not too long ago I was sat awkwardly across from a hipster I danced with at the Bowie Ball, but whom I gave the brush-off because he had horrible BO.

My ex boyfriend and I actually started dating because of random meetings -- we met first in an ice cream shop in the East Village, chatted, and went our separate ways. Then, a few weeks later we passed each other on the sidewalk in Midtown, acknowledged the coincidence, and parted. A month or so after that, we found ourselves standing next to eachother on the train platform in Brooklyn. At that point we decided we might as well make a date, since we would likely be running into eachother anyway.

 

[Kestra]

In undergrad, I went to U of I to stay with a friend from high school and visit. I woke up on his couch the next morning to see some dude wandering around the apartment kitchen in his boxers. I realized that it was my roommate's ex-boyfriend. I was tempted to have a few words with him because he dumped my roomie over AIM, of all things, but I figured it'd be better to keep my mouth shut.

More interestingly, I met Muhammad Ali in an elevator once. We were staying at the Ritz in Phoenix and my sister and I were together. I was pretty young and had no idea who he was, but he got into the elevator with a bunch of people and smiled at me and patted me on the head. Apparently I was a cute kid.

I didn't like being touched though, so I remember giving him a mean look. My mom was waiting on our floor when the doors opened and I remember her being all "That was Muhammad Ali!" later to my dad.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I am always amazed at how, in a city of nearly 8.5 million, I can always run into the same people all over the place.

That reminds me of the time I got lost in...frack, I can't remember what this area of town is called...oh well, let's just say I was not in a familiar area. So I wander into a Starbucks and who do I see.

Note to readers: I was too shy to say anything. She was talking to someone else. So I finished a coffee while staring out the window, and left.

This was odd. I usually go to the same places in New York, and I rarely get lost. But sometimes I get cabin fever (or in my case, F train fever ) and want to go exploring. And it is sometimes hard to find your way back to the same subway station you got out at, given how haphazard the streets tend to be in some places. After I left the Starbucks I just started walking until I found another station. I think it was a different *line* even.

 

[The Grim Ghost]

^ Who did you see??? You left that part out. I'm confused.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Who did you see??? You left that part out. I'm confused.

It was tsq.

It was probably just as well that I didn't say anything. I mean, what the hell was I gonna do, say "Hi, I'm Babaganoosh"? (that's the TrekBBS name I was using at the time) She and her friend would have probably gone to loggerheads over who would be the first to call the cops on me.

seriously though, I am a very shy person by nature, and especially when trying to talk to someone who is already talking with someone else. I am not a master of awkward introductions involving third parties.

 

[Shatmandu]

This is more of a coincidence, but it kinda fits.

In November of 1999, my wife and I were on our Honeymoon. On some sort of booze cruise off the coast of Bermuda, we had someone take a few pictures of us.

Last week, we dug out our Honeymoon pictures and showed them to our daughter. In the background of our booze cruise pictures is a guy who just started working with me about a month ago.

I took them to work, and he confirmed that he was there on vacation.

Joe, spooky

 

[Maestro]

Monday after I finished my Psych Tests for the ELCA, I decided to have lunch at a place in Madison that I didn't frequent enough in college, and found my old music methods professor sitting at the bar enjoying lunch himself. 90 minutes later we parted company.

 

[ed629]

I was in Boston in '97 visiting my brother, one night I went out to a club there and wound talking with a girl I met there. 12 years later, she is living 15 minutes from me. We both were "I know this person", it wasn't until she mentioned living in Massachusetts and talking about that club that we both were "Were you the one..."

 

[sojourner]

Flew from Orlando to LA on business for a week. At the end of the week I am at the LA airport waiting for my flight when up walk the parents I knew of a good friend of mine - from orlando. Turns out they had gone to washington on vacation and on the return they ended up connecting on the same flight as me. Niether of us had known about the other's trip, and even then, they had been in Washington and I in California. What were the chances we would end up on the same flight home?

 

[TheBrew]

For me it probably isn't that surprising since most of these are people I meet at the poker tables in Vegas. There have been times where I have sat at the same as a guy I played with one night years ago. I don't let on that I remember them (as that would probably not be good for my table image), but it's always a kick for me.

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

Just today actually! I was at Target with my friend and i ran into someone i hadn't seen in well over a year. It was the mom of my former friend. It was really cool seeing her again.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I keep meeting up with people I thought I had long left behind at University everywhere at work. This week it was a meeting with a radiologist whom I knew from medical school.

 

[Omnius]

I was on holiday in Spain when I ran into my sister at the Sagrada_Família (Barcelona). I knew she was on a holiday there too, but I didn't know she'd be in Barcelona at the same time and place as me!