My "small world" example is driving from WI to FL for Big Cypress and
the people camping right next to us live 20 minutes away from us.
I have so many of these it gets silly but on one trip to New York my
ex gf went to see a friend from Italy who was working at the NY
Library on an exchange programme or something. We went to see her and
waited ages but it turned out that she'd already left but couldn't get
hold of us on the phone. We decided to go back to the place we were
staying on 64th st and took one of 2 possible exits from the subway
and bumped into her as we came up. She didn't even live around there
but had randomly been to a museum in the area to pick up a book for
her tutor back in Italy. Then about 2 days later, on another random
subway platform she promptly bumped into a friend from London from a
literary agency she'd done some work for who just happened to be on
holiday too. Small world.
12/28/09 - Parked in the lot and made friends with the people next to
us. He was from NC. She was from Wyoming, now living in Florida. We
started talking. She's a teacher. My friend Bill who was with me
coaches HS baseball. Turns out she teaches HS at the same school that
Bill used to coach at. They knew all the same people. Freaky kinda.
Get to my seats, meet the people to my left. Nice guy from NY (I'm
from NY). We didn't talk much. After the show I was so taken back by
the show that I wrote up a liltte review and posted it in a few
places. The next day, 12/29, I'm at the venue getting ready to go in
and I get an email from somebody I didn't know. It said something to
the effect of, "Dude, I sat next to you last night at the show and I
just saw your review on phish.net and I said holy shit I know that
guy!" So I emailed him back. Turns out for the second show, we were
sitting right next to each other again (well to be accurate there were
two seats in between us the second night) in a totally different
section.