Upon moving to Richmond 5 years ago, we quickly learned that “Oh, that’s Richmond for ya” is the appropriate reaction when one of those small world coincidences takes place. It’s meant to reference that despite being a fairly legit city, Richmond has a small town vibe where everyone seems to know everyone else through no more than a degree or two of Kevin Bacon friends and acquaintances. So when, for example, you find out that the girl at your favorite lighting outlet rents an apartment in the backyard of a house that you’ve crashed (and where your sister got married) you say “That’s Richmond for ya.” True story, by the way.
Well, we’ve got a new story that confirms that this phrase has some real truth to it. Here it goes.
Last week we got new neighbors. Like, right next door (the other side of the patio fence). Not knowing who they were, what kind of neighbor’s they’d be or what kind of house/yard they’d keep made us a bit nervous. They closed right before Memorial Day but were having some things done to the house before moving in last week, so we didn’t get to meet them right off the bat. Suspenseful.
So recently my cousin was in town and we had her over to BBQ on the patio. At some point my dad wandered off with her 5 month old son (not in a creepy way, but in a “let’s go look around” way). Upon his return, my dad said “Oh yeah, I met your neighbors.”
Sherry: “No way, who are they? What’s their story?” (Yes, our curiosity had turned us into gossips)
My Dad: “Well, they’re Brad and Angelina…” (Names have been changed to not put the new neighbors on blast – plus it’s more entertaining this way)
Me: “Wait, they sound familiar.” (Note: had their names really been Brad and Angie, I’m sure I would’ve placed them more easily)
My Dad: “…and they have a young daughter named Viv.” (cough… NotHerRealName… cough)
[LONG PAUSE, then picture light bulbs going off above both of our heads]
Me & Sherry: “No way! We know them!!!! They almost bought our house!”
Remember last year when we were selling our old house? And how we did For Sale By Owner? Well that meant we met all of the prospective buyers face-to-face and Brad and Angelina were not only the first people to tour our house but they also seemed to be the folks (out of a total of 16 showings) who appreciated the house the most (which of course made our hearts swell with pride). We could totally picture them lovingly moving into our first baby. Weird sentence, but you know what I mean.
Obviously they didn’t buy our house (they just weren’t quite ready to pull the trigger and sell the house they had yet). But as much as the 2010 John & Sherry wanted this nice couple to buy our house, the 2011 John & Sherry are much happier to have them as next door neighbors. Especially since their daughter is only 11 months older than Clara (hello playdates) and, like Clara, already seems to have a thing for Burger. Not that we’re getting ahead of ourselves or anything, but they’re basically destined to be BFFs. (Sidenote: their daughter already has a nickname for Clara, which is “dolly” which is just about enough to make a grown man melt).
Oh, and the other night I spotted Brad wearing a Mountain Dew t-shirt. And you know how well I get along with guys in soda shirts (that’s Jeremy Bower, btw)…
When we re-met them (as neighbors, not prospective buyers) we all laughed at what a small city world it is. They added that our old house even turned up as a comp on their appraisal when they finally got around to selling their house six months later, so they were just thinking about it recently. And, to complete the hat trick of weird coincidences, we learned their movers were the same folks that moved out the previous owners of our house (they showed up and started laughing as soon as their realized they had “done” the house next door less than six months prior). I guess that’s Richmond for ya…
Okay, now your turn. What’s your best or latest small world story? Do they happen as often in your town as they do in ours? Also, does the video at the beginning of this post make you want to dance? Me too.
Psst- One of our favorite ever it’s-a-small-world stories is when the original owners of our first house contacted us. Check out that story here.
Lylas Momma says
I have half a dozen or so of the “that’s Richmond for ya” stories from the decade or so since I moved here. My favorite was when I was standing in line at a Hallmark store and the cashier looked awfully familiar. When I got up to her, she thought the same thing. We bandied about a few possible ways we could know each other, when I realized we had been on the same highschool bus, back in Connecticut. Small, small, small world.
Suni says
My husband always gives me hell about my hometown. He tells me it’s 6 degrees of my-home-town. Everywhere we go I know someone frome my home town, or through my home town (you know, “Oh, that’s John Doe, he’s the boyfriend of my HS classmate, Jane!” Somehow, Salina connects us all. We even see someone from my hometown almost every time we go on vacation. Even when we are traveling across borders. Sometimes those not-so-small towns can feel like everyone knows everyone. …it’s just a reminder to me that there is no safe place for gossip!
Nicole S. says
Here’s mine. I went to college at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. I studied abroad for a semester in Prague, Czech Republic. My husband (boyfriend at the time) studied in Finland that semester, and was visiting me in Prague. We were hanging out in the student club at my dorm, when he looks at a guy across the room and says to me “Hey, isn’t that ‘crazy-hair Japanese guy?” (Long story on the nickname.) Turns out, a Japanese student that had studied abroad in our program in Kansas a few years before was visiting friends in Prague, same time and same place as us. We had to say hi.
Ellen says
We’ll be traveling from Indiana to Beaufort NC for vacation later this summer. Last night my hubby was working on his family geneology and discovered his 5th great grandfather was born and buried in Beaufort. How ironic is that?!?
Meredith says
I live in Baltimore, also known as Smaltimore. I attended the University of Maryland, about an hour away from Baltimore, and met my fiance there. After we met I was talking to my mom and told her I met a really cute guy, and she asked what his last name was. When I told her, she said, “Omg, I think his dad is my accountant!” Turns out she was right! So now we’re engaged and my mother and my future father-in-law have known each other for over 10 years.
Micha says
Yay for nice neighbors – they should definitely become part of comparables and appraisals :o)
Kyle says
For starters, my wife and her cousin both married guys from northern Indiana even though they’re both from Tulsa, OK. To make the situation more interesting, we just found out that…and try to keep up here…my wife’s cousin’s husband’s sister is marrying my cousin’s best friend…in Indiana. Another quirk of our family is that I met my wife’s aunt while I was living in Anchorage, AK for a summer, two full years before I met my wife. We didn’t figure that one out until the wedding rehearsal. Somehow our families are so intertwined even though we are from two completely different states.
Sarah says
We have the same (almost) story! Our current neighbors actually came through our 1st house when it was for sale. And to make it even more small world-ish, we also “know” 2 other couples in our neighborhood (went to high school with one and the other was a student of my mother’s).
Melissa says
Totally have a great small world story, I actually live in a fairly small city, and everyone knows everyone here. My husband grew up here and manages to not only know everyone here, but he also runs into people he knows on absolutely every out of town trip we go on, no joke. Anyhoo, my brother recently went to a wedding in Cabo and when he got back he told me he met a great girl and was really into her, so I started asking questions and he finally told me her name, which I know her by a nickname and he calls her by her full name but when I finally put two and two together I said “SHUT UP!” Of course he asks “what?” and I said “remember that blind date I tried to set you up on a year ago, well that’s her! What are the odds you would meet and fall in love at a wedding IN CABO!?” Now they’ve been seriously dating for almost six months and I think there might be a proposal soon! :)
rosita designs says
when out for dinner in a hip seattle ‘hood, a girl approached my husband asking if his name was ‘mr man’ (it is), and if he went to a certain college (he did), and if he ever talked to me anymore (we’re married, duh). he obviously didn’t recognize her, but when she told him her name, it all came back to him.
best part – we grew up in new mexico and had gone to college with this girl, who was in seattle looking at places to rent!
also, a friend i knew when i was in elementary school in texas/NM got in touch with me when she followed her now-husband here to seattle.
we’re still great friends with both of them (and their now-husbands). it is such a small world!
Kristy says
I grew up in a small town in San Diego County and currently live in Oakland. A couple of months ago I was chatting with a coworker at lunch about San Diego and he asked if I’ve ever been to a town called Fallbrook. I laughed and said, “Yeah, that’s actually where I grew up.” He said “No kidding, my girlfriend made a really good friend from Fallbrook while attending UC Santa Cruz. She’s actually visiting her in New York right now. Do you know so-and-so?” Turns out my coworker’s girlfriend was staying with my best friend from high school. Definitely one of those small world moments.
Colleen says
I’ve got a couple of small world stories but this is my favorite. I’m from DC and went to a small private high school in nearby MD. 10 years after graduating, I was living in Kuwait and flying home for Christmas. On the shuttle bus at Heathrow Airport in London, I ran into my high school English teacher (who had since become a college professor in MN) and her husband who were on their way to a conference in Scandinavia. We had a great chat and have been internet friends ever since.
Sara says
My weird story is that my husband’s grandparents and mine lived two houses apart back in the 50s & 60s. My grandparents ended up moving away and both my husband and I were born in a different state than our grandparents lived. However, both of our families moved back the area of our grandparents and we ended up meeting in school and eventually getting married. We found out later on that our grandparents had been neighbors and our parents even knew each other as kids!
jess says
ok — so was studying abroad in France during my Junior year and ended up going to Prague over the XMas break… wound up at a pizza joint, and ran into a fellow American. Our conversation went something like this:
Me: Oh excuse me (in butchered Czeck-German-ish)… are you in line?
Him: (In English) No, I am just looking at the menu (him detecting my terrible accent & mish-mash use of language)– are you American?
Me: Yep (relief that I didn’t just unintentionally insult a local’s mother.) I’m from Texas, you?
Him: Me too! What part of Texas?
Me: Well I’ve been going to this really small school in this really small town… you have probably never heard of it…
Him: Hmmm… whereabouts? (because for Texans, “whereabouts” is one word.)
Me: It only has like 1000 students in the whole school. It’s in Sherman. Au…
Him: Austin College? Oh my gosh, I totally go there too?
Me: Holy crap! I thought you looked familiar!!! What’s your name?
…
…
…
Anyway, turned out we had a lot of the same ffirnds and vaguely knew who each other were.
Funny though that we had to travel to another continent to meet when we had been going to the same tiny little college for two years and had never really met.
Emily says
How about a “small internet” story? Just as I was finishing up reading this very post, my husband IM’d me the same video you posted here. CREEPY.
YoungHouseLove says
Haha- that pooch gets around.
xo,
s
Kenley says
I have lived in Richmond my whole life (and so has my family since coming to america a LONG time ago). My husband is also from Richmond and when our parents met for the first time they immediately said “I know you”. It turns out that my brother and my husband (now of ten years) played on the same pee-wee soccer team! So that means that I used to watch my husband play soccer when he was a kid, that is if I was not off somewhere playing with my sister :)
Also my husband saw ya’ll in HomeDepot a couple of years ago and was so “star struck” that he just stared and could not say hi, but I told him if I ever saw ya’ll I would atleast take a picture with ya’ll(if that is ok) :)
We are long time fans and followers, keep up the great job!
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man he should have said hi! Home Depot and Lowe’s are like our home away from home- so funny that he saw us there. We’ll just have to wait to pose for a pic with you instead. Hah.
xo,
s
Rachel Tatem says
It is amazing how small Richmond is and isn’t. I have some friends that live there and I love to go visit: such great architecture and such amazing friends! I’m glad you got a set of amazing friends right next door
Lee says
I have a good story. I lived in a small town of about 25,000 in Wyoming at the time and my cousin lived in Texas. I found out that my cousin was engaged to be married and that the person she met (they met in DC) actually lives in my little town in Wyoming. That is my moment. :)
Cair says
Two small worlds…
3. I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland. When I was a teen my family did a road trip to visit family in Colorado. While there we visited the Air Force Academy, and one of the other two families on the tour was my brothers best friend. Small world for sure.
2. My bro’s and I were visiting Prague not long after the velvet revolution – at a time when not many American’s went to Czechoslovakia. While buying tickets for the train another customer asked my bro about his Indians hat — a person who ended up being from our same suburb of Cleveland — the wife of our Jr. High band director, who came around the corner right after all this had been discovered. Indeed it is a very small world.
Now, whenever I’m somewhere away from home I almost expect to run into someone I have a connection with. The only place it hasn’t happened was when I went to China.
Jenn says
This isn’t necessarily a small town story, but a great house buying story anyways. A couple of years ago we were preparing to put our brick cape house on the market. We were waiting for job news to make it official, but had met with a realtor to talk about price and what we should do to make it really ready. One night our neighbor was walking his dog when a car pulled up and asked him if he knew of any houses on the street that would be going up for sale. He mentioned our house and the next day the eager buyers came by and spoke with me while we were outside. They came and saw the house before we were really ready and wanted to go under contract ASAP. We needed to find a house and were not having any luck. Our realtor said, why not check out your buyers’ house, they need to sell it. Well, we went, we saw, we fell in love! So in the end, we house swapped! We used to same movers and did a simultaneous close. We run into them at the farmers market and check in with questions about the houses from time to time. A fun story and in the end, we were both in love with each others houses.
KKM says
We live in Richmond as well and I have many of those stories. The latest happened a few days ago when my 7 year-old daughter was having her tonsils removed. The anesthesiologist turned out to be the dad of one of my daughter’s classmates at school who she plays with. (Her doctor of course, we already know from church–that was sort of planned). This is why I love living here! (I have yet to bump into you guys but there is no doubt in my mind that will happen one day soon!)
Kayla says
Hi! I just have a quick pillow question : Do you use all of your pillows? I have seen where some people have pillows that are only for decoration – like on the couch or bed – and whenever they use the furniture the pillows get thrown out of the way. I come from a house where if it’s there, it is meant to be used, so it’s hard to wrap my mind around that.
YoungHouseLove says
We use most of our sofa pillows (all of them if people are over, just most if it’s just me and J since we don’t go near some of the corners of our big sectional if it’s just us). They’re cozy to sink into (we don’t toss them on the floor or anything, we lay on them or prop up a laptop on them, etc). We do toss the accept pillows from our bed onto our chair every night before bed since we don’t sleep on those (but they’re great for sitting up and reading but not for actual sleeping.) We don’t have pillows that are always just moved or tossed on the floor or anything (that would probably feel kind of odd- like they were in the way).
xo,
s
Kayla says
Oh, and to keep on topic with your post – my fiance works for Southwest, and just the other day, one of the passengers happened to be from a small town that a family friend of ours lives, and she knew him!
Heidi S. says
So does this mean you will have to put a window in your new fence? :)
YoungHouseLove says
Haha- I think we’ll just walk around it for now…
xo,
s
Liz says
Okay, I have one, although not quite as good. My husband and I sold our old house and moved into a newer home. We bought it from a guy named Matt. At the closing of our old home, the seller’s realtor ended up being the realtor that sold Matt his new home and thus we were able to buy his old one. Funny coincidence #1. The day we moved in, some friends came over to celebrate. Our friend Kath was walking through our new house and thought it was familiar. Turns out, she and Matt’s girlfriend are best friends and she helped them pick out this house when Matt bought it two years earlier. Funny coincidence #2.
I just started a blog and I hope you check it out – I ADORE yours!!!
~Liz
Jessika says
The best one I ever heard (though I have several myself) was a friend of mine’s. He was seriously dating this girl. She was over at his parents’ house, and they were flipping through photos. She met him in college, both were from California, but different areas completely (it’s a big state). Found a photo of him in Disneyland, thought he looked adorable as a tyke. Then she saw a girl, IN LINE (not with his group) behind him. IT WAS HER! IT WAS HIS NOW GIRLFRIEND! They happened to go to Disneyland on the same day and they happened to be in line next to each other. They didn’t interact at all, but a photo was taken of him in line, and just happened to capture her standing behind their group.
YoungHouseLove says
Woah- that’s a pretty crazy one! I love all these stories guys!
xo,
s
Julie says
I live in LA which is definitely not a small town, but had a house-related “it’s a small world” moment recently.
We bought our house at the end of February, and I’ve kept in touch with the buyer’s agent who helped us look for and buy the house (she’s awesome). Last weekend she e-mailed me saying she had an open house in our neighborhood and that I should stop by. I typed the address into google maps and…it turns out it was the house directly behind ours, which actually shares a fence with our house!
I guess the house has been vacant for a year or so, which explains why we thought the neighbors were so quiet. We checked out the open house, which was very informative because now we know exactly what parts of our yard/house the new neighbors will be able to see from their place (and where we need to put up curtains). We also got permission from the agent to fix a few fence boards that were broken on the neighbor’s side…score!
Now I’m just nervous about getting new neighbors. The house is cute but a major fixer so it’ll be interesting to see who it draws.
Eates-A-Lot says
Favorite small world story…. The new Pastor at my mom’s church, went to college & was a really good friend to my Aunt. The college was in a different state. It’s really funny to hear college stories of your Pastor. :)
Jen says
I love these sorts of stories. One of mine goes like this:
I went to H.S. in a small Midwestern rural town of @ 4,000 people. A couple of years ago I moved to a very large big city in the Southeast and now attend a huge church w/ an avg wknd attendance of 10,000+ people. A few months back I got an email asking for my assistance with a women’s event at this church from……a girl I went to high school with 14 years ago in that little bitty hick town!! What is up with that?? Crazy how we never saw each other one single time after graduation, but now both end up involved at an event for a church twice the size of the town where we grew up!
Cydney says
My mom took an aerobics class for 10 years…it was a small class so everyone knew each other really well! Well this one lady (probably everyone’s least favorite member of the class) plus she did not like kids one bit! My best friend and I would run around and play while they did aerobics (we were about 11 years old at the time) she would yell at us non stop to quit running and laughing! Heaven for bid laugh I tell ya! anyways…long story short, my family went to a family reunion and guess who we found out was my dad’s cousin!!! yep! the woman that hated kids!! such a small world! “That’s Richmond for ya…” (or Oklahoma!)
Allyn says
Yay small world!
My former roommate and I were both looking for new places to move with our then fiances (now her husband, still my fiance). My fiance and I were looking at one condo in particular, only to have in snatched out from under us by, you guessed it, my old roommate. Sigh. It was a total blessing though, since they got the one bedroom condo, and we wound up with an adorable three bedroom house for about $300/month less! Score!
Tiffany S. says
I love coincidence stories because I’m not sure there’s really any such things, these are just reminders that we’re all connected.
I have two that I’ll make quick: I knew this super crazy girl in LA when I was single, didn’t know her well and kept my distance cuz she was NUTS. 8 years later I’m meeting LA friends for brunch with my husband in NY and the crazy girl was invited b/c she now lived in NY. She walks in and the first things she does is say hi to my husband! She’d met him at work after she left LA and moved to NY! (He turned to me and said “Oh my God, she’s nuts!” and I was like, “I know!”)
Recently, my mom was garage sale-ing in Tahoe, and she bought a cookbook. When she got in the car, my brother opened it and there was an inscription to the owner (who was having the sale) from the author. Well, my mom knew the author (which is why she bought the book), but she also knew the person to whom the inscription was made out to, so she got out of the car to confirm it was the woman having the sale. It was! This woman had been married to my grandfather’s best friend, and I remember going to her daughter’s birthday parties when I was like 5 or 6. Anyway, they both cried and hugged each other b/c they hadn’t seen each other in at least 20 years. Very sweet.
Katherine says
Awesome story!
In Paris two years ago, my friends and I (in the middle of a crowded sidewalk) ran smack dab into a bunch of friends from our university who we didn’t even know were traveling. It was by the Sacre Cour, crowds were tight, and we nearly walked right past one another. It was pretty hilarious!
Alisa says
When I was younger my family lived in California. We went to Hawaii on vacation and as we were walking off the plane in Hawaii, we ran into my little sister’s dance teacher who was waiting for her flight to go back to CA.
My parents lived in a tiny Iowa town for a few years. When they retired, they moved down to Texas to an even smaller town. Turns out, their new neighbors in Texas are the aunt/uncle of the woman that bought their house in Iowa.
Katie says
My state is small (well, the 2nd smallest)..hello, Delaware! I consider it a “one-degree of separation” state. Literally, if you meet someone else from the state that you do not know, you will be able to find at least 1 person that you both know (if not a handful more). But the weirdest coincidental meeting yet took place about a month ago….
I was showing a client a space for an event, and we were joking about old buildings (the event facility is a very old building) and I mentioned to her that I’m so used to the quirkiness of old buildings because I live in a historical town in the state (our house is 160 something years old). And she said, “oh that’s too funny, that’s the same town I grew up in…what street do you live on?” So, I told her, and then she asked what our house number was. I gave her that information, and she said, “oh my goodness, that’s my family’s house!” My mother was born in that house.
No lie. Her mother was born in what is now our laundry room 80 something years ago. I still can’t wrap my head around it…
YoungHouseLove says
That’s so crazy! What a good story. You guys are totally entertaining us. Thanks for sharing!
xo,
s
Kim says
Too funny – it IS a small world! And so glad you have great neighbors next door with a playmate for Clara – such luck!
My husband is the one who always seems to know someone wherever we go. He and his 4 brothers played softball and his dad coached a men’s league (and they would travel with him), so they seem to know EVERYONE from their old neighborhood and surrounding area. Well, our best story ever is we’re on our honeymoon in Disney World. We are going to the Polynesian for a luau and get into a compartment on the monorail and there is a man that my father-in-law once coached! I mean, what are the odds – first of all that we’re in Florida and then to be in the same compartment on the monorail! But that is my husband’s luck :)
Jen says
I literally bumped into my college roommate once, after losing touch with her. We backed into each other in a shop. Another time, I was talking to a woman I’d just met at a social function and something came up about growing up with dads in law enforcement. It turned out that they’d both been agents for ATF and knew each other, her dad was even mentioned in one of my dad’s books. What made it really weird was that we were both living in Europe at the time, our husbands working for NATO. The topper was that after they moved to DC, I was in DC for a few days and while traveling on Metro, had to get off of a train that was being taken out of service. That same woman’s husband was on the same train. Turned out that they were living on the same street of a nearby AF base that my husband and I had lived on 10 years earlier!
Rachel H. says
That video made me laugh so hard! Hilarious.
meredith says
I live outside of Phoenix. Setting: a special “during school day” lunch date with my 7 year old and her friend & mom that I have met casually during the school year. At Chick fil A, we are chatting, getting to know each other more, realize we not only have friends in common here (not unheard of thru church, communities, etc) but we BOTH grew up outside of Portland OR, 5 minutes apart, separated by a school district boundary. We are the same age DID attend the same private kindergarten though. I mentioned that my mom had passed away 6 years ago and she asked of what…I said a Brain tumor…her mom died 6 months ago of a brain tumor! I asked her if it was a GBM (type) and her eyes got wide – it was the same! (If you are a TV geek, which I know you guys are, it is the same kind of tumor as Mark Green from ER…and Ted Kennedy recently.)
As Kari and I realized all these things we had in common, we laughed and cried, and the 7 year old daughters sat there eating waffle fries trying to figure out why their mommies were crying.
It is a small world, for sure.
Alison U. says
Thank you thank you thank you for sharing that video! It makes me so happy :)
Alison U. says
Also, you guys spelled Sandiego kinda funny. Thought you might want to know :)
YoungHouseLove says
That was such a weird typo. All fixed now. Thanks for the tip!
xo,
s
Heather @ REOlisticRenovation says
That is hilarious! How come you guys get the good neighbors and we get all the freaks? :)
Maggie says
That video?
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
It just kills me! Love!
Stacey says
I’ve discovered just how small one’s world becomes when you’re married to a man with 7 brothers and 4 sisters. Nope, your math isn’t wrong. My hubster is the 11th of 12 children! On almost a monthly basis, I get, “are you related to _____ Hastings?” and, typically, I am. It even happened to us on our honeymoon in Key West! The guy at the end of the hotel bar overheard where we were from and asked if we knew my b-i-l! Too funny! Now it’s a running joke whether or not my hubby will run into someone he knows no matter how far we are from home.
Kristen says
This weekend I went to a family reunion in Missouri from PA and there were a lot of relatives I hadn’t seen in years. I started talking to one of my cousins and some how it came up that he had a friend from high school that goes to college where I go, 1200 miles from their home in Florida and 400 from mine in VA (whatup Richmond!?!). I go to a big school, like 40,000 people, so I knew there was no chance I would know her. Turns out that not only did I know her, but she lived in the dorm next to me my freshman year! Now we’re planning a trip together. Wooo family!!
josie @ couponing made simple says
what a hoot! (and i loved the video.)
anywho, i have a small town/big city story. i live outside cleveland, ohio. the daughter of a woman who frequents the gym where i work married a guy who lives close to my teeny tiny hometown. the daughter ended up teaching at the high school i attended. (you still tracking?)
so the lady from the gym was visiting her daughter and was walking through downtown (the entire block that makes up downtown) and stopped in a random shop. she asked the woman behind the counter if she knew a josie. and in fact, she did know me. i went to school with her daughter.
Taylor @ TheProposalEnthusiast says
I don’t have a small world story but I am only 3 degrees of separation away from William and Kate. And as a huge Royal Wedding lover it makes my heart so happy!
Suzanne says
I used to work as a librarian at a local grade school. One day, one of the 1st grade teachers came into the library between classes and was wanting to watch a video she had just been given. She couldn’t get TV/VCR to work in her home (alwasy a crap shoot anyway). So, she came into the library where we had media galore to ask if she could watch it on one of the TV’s in there. Sure. So, I fired it up and just casually started watching the video with her.
The teacher, who was deep into genealogy, explained that it was a video she had compiled of her family. A bit more watching on my part, and I’m thinking, “Geez, these people look sorta familiar.” As it goes along, I’m like, “Hey, that’s my husband’s grandma!” and “Whoa, that’s my mother-in-law!”
Somehow we had managed to work together and never knew we were related. It was a hoot!
L.Eliz says
This isn’t related to houses, but oh well. Sooo my husband (who is Australian) and I were going to visit his family and attend a wedding overseas. We were in LAX walking to our connection in the international terminal. I see this woman walking in front of me and I say to the hubs, “This may sound weird, but that lady walks just like a woman i used to work with (in Australia).” So I decided to try my luck and say, “Jules?” The woman turns around, sees me and says, “Oh. My. God.” It was her! She still lived in Australia, but was on her way to NYC to visit family and we had recently moved back to the US, but were on our way to see his fam back in Oz. It really did feel like a “small world” kind of moment!
Sheryl J says
My hubby and I live in DC at the moment, but we grew up in TX. When chatting with my mother who was visiting us from Dominican Republic she told us that my Dad’s cousin’s wife (who also live’s in D.R.) was at a baby shower in Houston and was talking to the ladies in attendance and she happened to mention my wedding in D.R. Come to find out one of the ladies she was talking to was my Hubby’s mother! (who was not able to attend the wedding, so they had never met before)