I was talking to one of our management team as he was stuck in Europe due to the Volcano and while waiting in the airport someone from his past found him and gave him a little punch in the shoulder. How strange it is to have such encounters. It happens to me too and the most astounding case was back in high school.
I was a checker at a grocery store for my high school job. Some German teachers were coming through our store and I was taking German in high school and saving my pennies to go visit my cousin. I finally found the courage to speak to one of them, a man teacher. I said hello in German and told him I was going to visit my cousin there in a few months. He asked me which town. I said, " Andernach." He replied he was from that town. I was thinking he was pulling my leg. Then he asked me who my cousin was. I replied. He said, "She is my student." I was shocked. He waited until my grocery line was still and asked to take me to dinner. I was thinking this was a very creative pickup line...and I was young, only 17 and ill equip to handle it well. I said well I would have to ask my parents. So, I called them. They asked to speak to him. They approved of him. I think I picked him up and took him to the local dive for seafood. The one where we fed catfish through the floor of the pier upon which the restaurant was perched. HE loved it. I learned that prawns and shrimp were the same thing.
Later that summer, I went to school with my cousin. Sure enough he was her teacher. He was showing the students his slides. School goes longer in German than in the US. Students applauded by knocking on the desks and not clapping their hands...it was so surreal. What are the chances of me meeting someone like this? Turns out, they were more than teacher and student <grins>.
Last night, as I was working on my business in second life a fellow I know IM'd me and invited me to come sit with him and some friends. I was just finishing up and so figured that could be fun. When I arrived, three of his friends where three of my friends that I know from three different places in Second Life. I was blown away. I like all of them very much. As community gels in Second Life I am always amazed because it is a very large meta-universe. Part of my goal there is to build a community, as one that connected many of us closed a year ago and has been sorely missed. Connections in life happen in many ways. Have any of you stories of freak encounters?
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