Story #1

I have a girlfriend who goes to a church in Surrey...she has often spoken to me over the past year about how helpful the pastor and his wife and their family have been to her and her husband.

I went to my girlfriend's little girl's birthday party and stayed to help my girlfriend. While I spent quite a bit of time cleaning the kitchen, washing dishes, etc...the dad of one of the little girls at the party also helped bring some of my girlfriend's garbage out of the kitchen and down to her main garbage cans outside.

I realized eventually when he introduced himself that he was the pastor my friend spoke of. He had very short hair and was quiet..but he kept looking at me strange.

After wondering over an hour and a half why I sensed he seemed to want to say something to me.....he'd asked me my name, I told him, and he'd seemed put off at my response when I responded, "Alisande".....there was a moment later when we both stood together by the stove and again I saw him look at me...

I turned and looked at him full on and in that moment of clarity, my youth history flashed by in my head and my jaw dropped as I stared at him and said, "Vince from Grade 10."

He said, "Michelle." (Alisande is my middle name)

All this time my girlfriend had told me about the pastor and his wife (who I also went to high school with) and it was the very two people I had gone to high school with for 3 years, who had written in my annual as well as me having some distinct memories of...

All of a sudden we were now not strangers and the words spilled fast as he told me he'd recently seen at least 5 former classmates of mine a few months back. I'd thrown him for a loop when I used my middle name...as well my hair was short and pink coloured...but he was so sure I was who he'd suspected I was.

Story #2

The day before Story #1, I got a Funwall post on Facebook from an acquaintance friend (mother of the daughter who was an old preschool playmate of my daughter). We were on each others friend list but we didn't correspond very often. It had been months since I actually had said anything to her. I decided to go to her profile to see what she was up to.

I was puzzled when I saw on her funwall, frequent posts from someone who was on my friend list. It was a lady painter who I had once commissioned art from and we had connected on a personal level at the time and so Friended each other on Facebook.

How did they know each other when they were in different spheres of my life and I never introduced them?

My acquaintance mother friend listed the painter as "extended family" and as she later told me...they had met years back and had got quite close and just kept in touch...to the point that she considered her like family.

I told her my connection and she was excited....we'd connected with the same lady at different times in our own separate worlds..and yet she was a mutual friend unbeknownst to us.

How about that! The World is So So Small..

What kind of Small World stories do you have?

Alisande