I have friends who, as children, lived in the same town, grew up and got married. They knew each other in school, they’re from a small enough town that it isn’t hard to find yourself in someone’s orbit pretty regularly from an early age. As they were dating, they realized through the course of many conversations that they’d attended a lot of the same events — circuses, plays and so on — not together, but at the same time. It is a cute story, but a little less impressive than this:
Thirty years ago, when they lived in separate countries long before they met and married, a family shot of little Donna at Walt Disney World captured Alex in a stroller in the background.
[…]
That fateful realization came just one week before their wedding eight years ago. Alex and Donna had been going through old family snapshots. There, in the blurry background of a picture of 5-year-old Donna was 3-year-old Alex being pushed down Main Street at the same moment in 1980 by his father. The senior Voutsinas’s distinctive jet-black hair with its white tuft caught his eye.
If you read the comments you’ll find a handful of similar type stories. Some of them from people who grew up near each other, like my friends above, and others from different continents. It isn’t fate or destiny, but a curious quirk. Given how many millions of people are in relationships it would be more improbable to not hear stories like this.
Want mine? The Yankee and I actually worked at Clear Channel at the same time. Clear Channel is a big, big company, but we were actually in the same market at the same time, working for the same stations, but in different buildings. We just didn’t know each other. We met after we’d both moved on to different jobs, me to al.com and her to television.
Some such instances are obvious, others can be easily explained away, but sometimes the connections defy easy description. For an interesting academic discussion on the matter I point you to Jon Kleinberg. There was an informal Email experiment of Stanley Milgram’s small world theory a few years back.
I have about 230 friends on Facebook. I rarely visit the site, but I feel confident that everyone I know in real life on that site is my friend there. I do enjoy seeing how my friends know each other. Some of them make no geographical sense whatsoever, to the point I’ve had to write strangers and ask “How do you know these two separate, distant people?” The answers usually make a great deal of sense when you hear them. Usually.
They are neat stories, part of many families’ lore. It only helps that the Small World theme song is now stuck in all of our heads.
I recorded this one last December.
Pretty neat, right?
Nothing else to report. I’ve been editing photographs again this evening, having now published 298 from the honeymoon. That gets us through Ephesus, which was amazing. There are more here. Still a few more stops to edit, too!
