> I didn't realise it was *this* small a world. I stop into Rinkchat for a couple of minutes, and whom do I find there? Some Pommie newbie unknown to me. OK, not so amazing.
>
> Turns out to have lived in my town for a couple of years. Slightly amazing.
>
> Turns out to have been at the beach down the road from my house for last New Year's Eve. Slightly more amazing.
>
> Turns out to be into sailing and flying, same as me. OK, unbelievably amazing.
>
> Asks if I know a guy called _ _ _ _ who worked for the America's Cup website. I do. *I* worked for the America's Cup website. I sat *next* to the guy for six months and listened to him play his Gypsy Kings CD until you could see daylight through the disk and all our brain waves started to oscillate in the same rhythm as "Volare". Turns out he's now in the UK and is a friend of this guy.
>
> Is it just me, or is this X-Files material?
>
> Brunnen-"oh yeah, and the soundtrack from Pulp Fiction, too :-)"G

I met the girl who is now my best friend about six years ago in a little neighborhood pub here in LA. About six months into the friendship, I mentioned something about being from Toledo. She said, "Yeah, Perrysburg" (a very small suburb of Toledo, which is my actual hometown). I said, "What? Did I tell you that before?" She responded no, but that she had left Texas to go to college in Indiana, and married her college sweetheart, who was from *Perrysburg.* I said, "Wow, that's funny, I left Perrysburg to move to Texas. I lived in Richardson, which is a small suburb of Dallas." Turns out she went to high school in Richardson.

So as if it weren't enough that we moved from each other's hometown TO each other's hometown, about six months after that, we were lunching one Saturday afternoon, discussing our families, both of whom lived in Florida. I asked which airport she flew into to visit her parents, and she said, "Tampa." My parents live in Tampa. I asked what her father did, and she said, "He's in the glass industry." My stepfather is in the glass industry. I asked what company her father worked for, and she said, "[The name of the company my stepfather worked for.]" Wow. So we each get on a payphone at the restaurant and call Florida. Turns out her father and my stepfather worked two doors down the hall from each other, and our families had spent Thanksgiving together the year before at my parents' house.

The topper might be the fact that another Rinkworks regular graduated from high school with my friend. His picture is in her yearbook. And now she lives next door to me.

Mou"kinda makes you believe in fate"sie