It's a Small World

When you're overseas and people ask you where your from, they'll inevitably ask you if you know so-and-so from your country.

"Mike, from Canada? Ya, I know him."

Of course, there's really a one in a million chance that you'll actually know the person that your fellow traveller is asking about (one in 33 million, actually). However, every so often, on a much smaller scale, when people ask if you know someone, you will actually know them.

This happened to me this week when a colleague's roommate's brother (try saying that ten times fast!) is actually someone I went to Europe with eleven years ago. I said the requisite, "Wow, what a small world" line and my co-worker responded that it wasn't that surprising since we only live a few towns apart... quite true... but I still am amazed by those kinds of connections.

My favourite "small world" story occurred in my first year of university: it turned out that one of my buddies from my residence, who was from South Africa and who I just met that year but I'd been hanging out with for months, had gone to a special month-long French Immersion Program in Nice when he was in his teen years with one of my closest friends from high school. My uni friend's first name isn't common, and he came to visit me in my dorm room when I was on the phone with my friend from high school. When he knocked, I yelled out his name, and my friend said, "Huh... so weird. There was someone with that name on my Nice French Immersion Program in high school. Low and behold-- same guy.

I don't know why I love those moments so much... maybe it's because it makes one realize how interconnected we all really are. It's a pretty cool phenomenon.