As I was nearing the entrance to the Randolph Station of the Chicago Metra, I suddenly noticed a man who closely resembled a friend from my fourth year of college. I called out to him, and as he turned I was pleased to see it was in fact DR.
DR had come to Chicago from UVA for Spring Break 2008. We stood alongside each other in the cold, exchanging stories from our lives. Here’s the most surprising part of our exchange:
DR: “You’re famous in Charlottesville.”
DC: What? Charlottesville?
DR: “Yeah. I was in a coffee shop near University of Virginia with another grad student studying math. And I saw someone who looked a lot like you. So I said to my friend, ‘That guy over there looks just like David C., a friend I know from Chicago.’ Well, it turns out, the grad student I was sitting with met you in Ohio six years ago and we were both thinking of you, David, as this doppelganger manifested before us.”
DC: Wow. Matt Z? I haven’t heard from him in years. We met at summer camp.
DR: “Yeah, he told me. But that’s not all. I put up an advertisement for a roommate to share an apartment with me, and one of the respondants (and the person I chose as my roommate) knows you from classes you took together.
DC: KB? He’s at UVA?
DR: Yes, he’s living with me.
DC: What a small world…
DR: Tell me about it.
I’m tagging Part 1 (MZ & DR) as “remarkable coincidence”, and Part 2 (KB & DR) as “serendipity”.