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this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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I was thirteen, visiting Ireland with my parents. We were staying in a hostel somewhere in the area of the cliffs of Moher.
My parents went out for a drink in the pub and met another Dutch couple. They were staying at the same hostel. At breakfast they joined our table and my parents introduced me.
Now I do have a very uncommon first name (the only way I'm part of the 1%). This guy says 'i once met a bit by that name before, it was in Croatia, some ten years ago.
Turns out that was me. The guy had helped dive up one of my swimming shoes that had sank to the bottom of the bay, an act of heroism for the very young me.
So we met this bloke twice, in two very different parts of Europe. The bizarre thing though: if I had a slightly more common name we might never even have known.
I was in the US Air Force and stationed in England. In the military you use your social security number (SSN) for pretty much everything. There was a girl I worked with whose SSN shared the same first 8 digits as mine. Turns out we were born in the same hospital a few hours apart, but never met until we were in our 20s in a foreign country.
For non-Americans, the first 3 numbers are assigned by the geographical region. Then the next 2 numbers are a smaller grouping inside of that area. So, two people born in the same small geographic area have a good chance of having the same first 5 digits the same. In my case it was the first 8 that were the same. They are only 9 digits long.
The laughing stops when you meet someone with the exact same SSN as you.
Somebody should do the math on those odds!
My brother traveled to New Zealand and met another Germans there. After talking a bit they discovered they were from same city, the same district in the city .... and the same street. He randomly met our neighbour from 2 houses down on the other side of the world.
That's brilliant!
Uncannyly I have a similar story. When I was in the African country of Benin, I met a Dutch couple, one of which was an architect who studied African architecture.
My home town has a museum on that exact subject, so I asked him if he knew that, he was like 'of course, we live in that town'
Turned out he lived around the corner of where I lived.
Was in Ireland a while back and I hit a guy with my rental car. Just a love tap. Nothing serious and no one was hurt. I was pulling out of a lot and it was really hard to see and I was looking for traffic and inching (centimetering?) out. And I look and there’s suddenly a bloke there, getting pushed a little. He smacks the hood of the car and yells something, then waves his hand at me and keeps walking.
In the States that would have been a lawsuit.
Centimetering lol
Yeah litigation is no joke. It's wonderous to see the lengths people go to to get one up over somebody else. I think it has to do with the lack of social security or something.