Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Let's hear your "small world" stories

I'll start:

My Junior high girlfriend and I just became good friends after like 9th grade. Had the occasional make out session but no more. We grew up in small towns, seven miles apart but our schools consolidated.


I graduated 3 years later and went my way and she graduated a year later and went her way.

Fast forward:

I got sent to the Mid America Truck Show in Louisville, KY for work about 10 years later. For those of you who haven't been there, it's HUGE.

Anyway, I was walking shoulder to shoulder through the crowd (the kind of crowd where you have to pick your path to try and go 5 feet) in one of the gigantic buildings and came face to face with her oldest brother and his wife. We talked about how my ex GF/Friend was doing etc. while the crowd made it's way around us and parted ways.

I ran back into the girl in 2001 after she left her abusive husband and we were married in 2003 and are happy to this day.

Ran into a friend from the University of Idaho at the Chicago airport one time....8 or so years after we last saw each other.

I got suck in the ride for 20 minutes once. Had the song in my head for days.

Not nearly as bad as being suck in Splash Mountain for an hour. Had to get 'rescued' and walk out through the back side of the ride. Had Zippity Do Dah in my dreams.

Was standing at the counter of the gun shop I used to work at in Alaska. A gentleman from California in his 70’s came in and after visiting for a while he asked where I was from. When I replied Oklahoma he told me he had a cousin who lived in Oklahoma who he’d been to visit several times over the years. Went on to say that his cousin had a couple old Chevy Nomads and lived south of a town near where I grew up. He about fell over when I corrected him by saying that his cousin George, who he’d not named, in fact lived west of the little town he was talking about. He argued with me for a second about the location of the house until I explained that George’s house was across the highway from my Grandad’s farm!

We had a good laugh over that one.

Lucky sucker.

Well, I hated school as a kid and decided in the 3rd grade to be a drop out. The 4th grade started and mom and the teacher figured out I was roaming the wilderness (outside the edge of town where we lived) all day most days with my N chooter chooting rabbits and rattlers.

They got me and Mom an appointment with my teacher, Mrs Anderson in Big Springs, Texas and she was nice compared to the biotch from hell, Mrs Goodman of 3rd grade. I found out I was smart and she got my life turned around.

Dad worked for Halliburton so we moved every year or two and we soon Ieft and I went on to many other various schools across the great state of Texas.

I eventually became, by the grace and miracles of Mr GOD, an eyedr and soon took a position at a major surgical/medical multidisiplinary clinic in Odessa, about 70 miles from Big Springs.

One day I was examining patients to see what ocular conditions they were suffering from and a little old lady was scheduled to see me. I noticed her name (we sometimes do that, you know) was Anderson with an address in Big Springs, and I asked her if she per happenstance had ever been a fourth grade teacher at Washington Elementry.

Yep, and dayom right, she remembered saving me.

I was sent to a remote missile site in Alaska in late 1974. About a year later this kid showed up that I thought I recognized but couldn't place the location. I am from central Iowa and when I got to talking to this kid he said he stayed the summers with his grand parents in Winterset. I grew up in Winterset. As it turned out he and his grand dad used to come to town for lunch and play some pool at the local pool hall. Which was what I did during my lunch break.

kwg

About 1996, my wife were owner/operator truck drivers. We were on I 90 in Eastern Washington, when a car with a pop-up camper passed us....having Louisiana license plates. Several miles later, we pulled into a rest area with only a few vehicles parked there. There was the car/camper from Louisiana with people standing nearby. I being from Louisiana, struck up a conversation. I discovered that the mans younger brother graduated HS with my brother, and his mother lived right across the street from my father! memtb

There's a near-by, little Italian restaurant that my wife and I go to a couple of times a month. Been going there for 6 or so years, and we usually get the same waitress. We always talk with her and we all know what's going on in each other's lives. Or so I thought. One evening last month, out of the blue, she asked me my last name. I told her and she said, "I knew it. I used to ride the school bus with you!" That was in the early to mid 1970's, and she still recognized me! Next time we went there, I gave her my 1974 yearbook.

The day before Thanksgiving my wife and I made the trek from Iowa to my daughters home in Arkansas. I often drive a shorter route through mid Missouri on mostly 2 lane roads. About 200 miles from home we had a red car come up beside us and and start honking.

I'm thinking what could I have done to cause road rage in these crazy people? Oh, it's our next door neighbors! Oh yeah, they have a son down by Springfield....

Was walking home from class at Auburn and ran into a guy I went to high school with(Orange County,CA).

Got off a Train in Xian China in 2004 and a very high ranking communist party member walked up to me and said he knew me. It was my first time to China and they were watching our every move back then so I thought he was mistaken or it was some kind of trick.

I told him he must have the wrong person that I'd never been to China before. He then said he met me in Hawaii in 1999 and that he was taking his only daughter there for college. He said he was very nervous because it was his first time to the states and he was very worried for his daughter. He said I spent a few hours showing him and his family around and reassured him his daughter would be fine. I guess I gave him my phone number so they could call me if they ever needed help with something. He then pulled my old phone number up in his phone and sure enough it was my old phone number from when I lived in Hawaii in 1999.

He said he always wished he could thank me because I put his mind at ease with leaving his Daughter at an american university. I didn't remember any of it but he took me to dinner that night with what was basically the governor over the whole province and the mayor of Xian.

I was a little nervous because these guys were old school communist leaders and after dinner part of the entourage told me I made a mistake a dinner and offended the governor. I guess I took a dumpling off a plate that he had not already taken one from. The big wig is supposed to get the first dumpling for each plate. I said I must have been thinking it was my job to sample it first and make sure it was safe for him. They all laughed.

I never could remember showing them around Hawaii but I was glad I treated them well and it led to a pretty unique dinner experience 5 years later.

Bb

Was skiing in New Mexico with some friends and left my jacket pocket unzipped and lost my cell phone. A Few hours later I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in years, as luck would have it, he found my phone. He knew it was mine after looking through my contacts (back in the day before passwords) and figured we'd run into each other at some point in the day.

My wife and I just got off the plane at the Miami airport and she had to hit the bathroom. While waiting there the wife of a coworker walked by on her way to catch a plane home. Luckily, for both of us, she was alone.

Another time I was out hunting and ran across a gal laying in the field. Thinking it was a body dumped there I kind of jumped when she woke up when my dog ran up to her. We talked and I found out she lived on a resort in Canada that I had canoed past a couple of times. That blew her mind and even more so when I told her I would be back the following summer. Unfortunately, she was off somewhere else but her parents were there and we shared a beer waiting for the rest of my party to catch up.

Me, the wife and DD were standing in line at a restaurant waiting to be seated...... in St Marys GA....

Waitress says we have a table for six, if you want to sit there......

OK............... two guys were waiting behind us, never met them before!!!! .... we asked them if they would like to join us................ they did!

They were in town working on some project, got around to the where you from, grow up and such....

I said I grew up in a little town in West Central FL.... Lecanto....

One of the 'strangers' said, I used to visit my grandmother in Lecanto......... played with some kids across the street that had pigs in their back yard..............

UHHhhhh! That was me......

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

We were getting new photocopiers at work so the female president of the small company came to give her spiel. When she was done we were chatting and she says “John (my name). My grandfather was named John.”

I said “So was mine.”

She says “John Smith.””

I said “So was mine.”

She says “ I’ve only known about 5 Johns in my life. My grandmother was named Mary.”

I said “So was mine.”

As we talked, it turned out that her grandparents emigrated from the same small village in Transylvania that mine did, in the 1930’s. Mine settled in Smallville, her’s settled in Smallerville, about 50 miles away.

There were only about 6 surnames in the whole village, John and Mary were common first names, so we were probably related 5 or 10 generations back.

Crazy stuff! Keep going!

Once had a lap dance in Vegas and commented on that sweet little blonde's accent. I asked her where she was from. She said Broken Arrow.

Turns out she's my cousin's daughter's best friend.

These things happen to my wife all the time. We are from Huntsville but were living in Hong Kong at the time. I went on a trip to Japan and Sherry, my wife, came with me. Waiting at the hotel for a bus back to the airport, the guy in front of us turned around and said "Sherry". She replied, hello Dominique. She is a dental hygienist and cleaned his teeth when he worked in Huntsville for a couple of years. Happens all the time with her.

Was in vegas at a concert and noticed the guy at the table next to mine looked familiar, we had played in a pool tournament here in NC several years before.

Guy that moved here to NC a few years ago just down the road where i grew up, grew up just down the road from where I worked in WV.

I managed a project in Ft. Saskatchewan AB working closely with a Bechtel VP. Some years later I am in an elevator in a hotel in Atyrau Kazakhstan and here a gent speak. I knew that voice and sure a s hit we met again and had dinner that night. Same Canadian project where a Korean guy worked QA. Years later he worked QA for me in Korea. There is more in my former project world.