I recently had a pretty neat "holy fuck what a coincidence" experience so I thought I'd revisit the three craziest ones in my life:

Last week - I had just done some grocery shopping at Whole Foods and I was walking back to my place. As I walked down the sidewalk there were two girls headed the other way. Much to my surprise, the one girl was Carolyn, a girl that I had graduated college with.

Carolyn was in my 22-person college program and I hadn't seen her since graduation. I had seen, via Facebook, that she had been teaching in South Korea since graduation (2 years ago). She was just moving home from SK and was stopping by Chicago to visit friends before heading to Cincinnati. She was literally coming home from the airport and ran into me.

7 or 8 years ago - Freshman year of high school, I rode the school bus. During this time, I met a girl from my neighborhood named Jamyl. Over the course of the school year, a group of us became friendly since we spent about 20-30 minutes together each day on our way home. After all of us got our licenses, we mostly lost touch since we hung with different crowds in school.

Fast forward to (I think) my senior year. I was working at a local Chinese restaurant and Jamyl happened to stop by to get a carry-out. We hadn't talked to one another since probably the last school day of my Freshman year, but we chatted for maybe ten minutes while she waited for her food. It was pretty cool to catch up with her and hear what she was doing as she had graduated all ready.

Unfortunately, this story ends in tragedy, as Jamyl was with a friend that night. That friend was speeding in excess of 100mph and lost control of his car a few hours after I had seen her. They both lost their lives. It's pretty crazy to think that I was one of the last people to ever see her.

3 years ago - I was studying abroad in Eastern Asia and ended up running into a woman who was a regular customer from the aforementioned Chinese Restaurant. She was wearing a Dayton Dragons hat and she somehow recognized me at the Great Wall of China. Funny she recognized me, given that there were Chinese people everywhere. Our student-group had made a last-minute decision to go to a lesser populated section of the Wall and so had she.

Anyways, no real rhyme or reason for this entry, other than that I am constantly amazed at some of the ways things work out in life. I'd love to hear some of your 'small-world' stories.

Edit - I just remembered that a kid I played with at the casino yesterday (in Chicago) was at the same final table as me 2 years ago at the Venetian. Somehow he remembered me...