Old friend in new places?

[DannyD]

Friday I was driving down the highway. I was about 200 miles from home. Along comes my former jiu jitsu instructor and passes me. He didn't stop or anything. It got me thinking to when I met a guy from my high school on spring break at a beach in Florida. We didn't know each other in high school. Start talking about the girls, then ask where we're from, that kind of thing. Then all of a sudden find out we go to the same school.

Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone's had a chance encounter with and old friend in a place a ways away from home that was unexpected. Or maybe met someone from your hometown in a distant location?

 

[layoutshooter]

I ran into a guy I went to high school with at Oakland Army terminal on my way to Japan. He was on his way to Vietnam. I also was stationed in Japan with a guy who lived across the street from another friend of mine.

 

[Ragman]

It's more common that you think.

I ran into the owner of the company I worked at in Atlantic City, and my doctor in Las Vegas.

 

[paullud]

When you start running around the country you really start to realize how small it is.

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[21cExp]

Happens all the time, in various ways.

I was driving around the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton. Nova Scotia, a fairly remote place when I did it in the 70's, and pulled off into this tiny little gravel overlook, not really an official pull off or anything, and there scratched into the guardrail were the names of two brothers I went to high school with, some 1700 miles away.

One of my high school teachers was vacationing in France and ran into two students from back home on the streets of Paris.

What I have happen all the time when I'm on the road, is that other people swear they know me. I get looks, people finally coming up to me at restaurants, stopping me at public gatherings, and saying things like:

"We went to high school together, remember me? How you doing?"

"Um, nope, sorry. I didn't go to high school around here."

"Yeah sure, don't you remember?"

I came out of a store in a small town one time on the East Coast and heard a voice above me say "You look just like my grandson!"

I looked up to see an older lady leaning out a window and said, with arms up all embracing like, "Grandma!" She about cried.

Dude at a music venue one time sidled up to me and said: "You're in the movies, right?"

"Nope, not me, brother," I said.

He looked quickly to either side, then leaned in and whispered "Really man, you can tell me..."

My own confusion happens when I see someone I absolutely know I know somehow, but can't place them. I don't know if I know them from the last town I was in and saw them in passing, or from a place I visited as a consumer, or what. I know I know them, but I'll be ****ed if I can recall where or how.