Many. Each paragraph is a separate story so you can skip around if you don’t want to read them all.
I was fourteen years old in Edinburgh, Scotland, on vacation with my family. My dad and I went to the pub right near our hotel and sat at a table. A gentleman sat down with us and struck up a conversation. He asked us where we were from in the states, and my dad said Washington, DC. Even in America we tended to say the DC area, because most people don’t know where Gaithersburg, MD is. He replied, “a brother of mine moved to that area 17 years ago, he lives in Gaithersburg.”
Actually, when we first moved to Gaithersburg my mom was signing up for something connected with my school and a woman asked if we had relatives in the area, the woman knew someone with our last name. Our surname is extremely rare. My mom said not that she knows of and asked if the person spells it exactly like us. Long story short, we met the woman and she had photos of my dad’s family members. My dad’s family is very disjointed and small and that was an incredible coincidence.
My aunt was in Europe with her mom (my grandma) during a college break, and they were walking down an outdoor stairwell. My aunt started to laugh and from below someone called her name. A college classmate happened to be there at the same moment and recognized her laugh. I wasn’t in this story, but I grew up with it, and it was the start of me understanding how small the world can be.
Met someone on Facebook, friend of a friend from my Memphis, TN days. We often crossed paths on Facebook threads. Turns out her stepson lives where I live in Florida! I connected with him and after hearing where he grew up (very close to where I grew up) I told him I know someone here who went to his high school not sure what year she graduated. I connected them, and they were the same year, but didn’t know each other in school. They even went to the same temple as kids.
Just this past Saturday I was at a party and met a woman who is from Mexico City. After mentioning my husband was from Mexico City also, and while talking to her for a minute, I mentioned my husband’s first name, and she immediately asked me if he is Jewish. She admitted she had already sized me up as Jewish. I’m betting once my husband meets her they will know some of the same people. She’s not Jewish, just lives in areas that are heavily Jewish; in Mexico the Jews are a fairly tight-knit group. My husband was raised Catholic, but his dad was raised Jewish, long story, some of you know it.
The more people you talk to, and the more you talk to people, the more connections you find. I have many more stories.