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December 30, 2004
Only in New York
My friend Nomi Burstein, who is visiting NYC this week, posted on her blog about being at a restaurant and recognizing an old college friend across the room. When I saw Nomi for lunch on Wednesday, I related the following as a “Can You Top This?” entry and she insisted I share this.
On Tuesday, Deb took Kate and Robbie into the city to visit the American Museum of Natural History. They met up with Deb’s sister Chris and her sons, Stephen and Gregory. After finishing their tour, they were met by Deb and Chris’s brother Jim. The seven of them stopped by DC for a bit and then went off to see the sights.
Later, I was called and told to meet them at Mars 2112, a Sci-Fi themed restaurant that I suggest you avoid. I was subsequently called and told the line was 1.5 hours long and I should come join them when I could.
The line slowly snaked into the building and as Deb took off her hat and gloves, looked over her shoulder and was shocked to see, standing directly behind her family on line, was my cousin Rebecca with her family and her brother Josh with his family. To make this surprise reunion clear, Rebecca lives in Connecticut and Josh is up from North Carolina.
Josh told me they wound up at Mars 2112 (a restaurant I suggest you avoid) because our mutual cousin Marc said their kids loved it. So, for about an hour, I ignored Deb’s family in favor of playing with my younger cousins, including Meredith, Lily and Zach and catching up with Rebecca, Paul, Josh and Janet.
The 16 of us did not get seated together, but that’s okay. It was a wonderful coincidence, a small Christmas season miracle to allow family to see one another under the least expected circumstances.
Posted by Bob Greenberger at December 30, 2004 04:56 PM
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Comments
Hmmn. I guess, going to Mars 2112 is a must now for me:)
Posted by: louiecat at December 30, 2004 10:21 PM
Amateur. Once, after working late, I boarded the subway at a slightly different spot than usual, and I just happened to run into Alan Davis' daughter Pauline, visiting from England with a bunch of classmates. Out of all the subways in NYC! (This is probably more the Davis touch at work, as Alan says this sort of thing happens to him all the time.)
Posted by: Elayne Riggs at December 31, 2004 09:11 AM
One afternoon in downtown Kowloon, Hong Kong, my family was having lunch in a nice restaurant. A man across the room kept looking in my father. We noticed but it didn't bother us especially.
Before leaving, he stopped by our table and inqured as to whether my parents had ever lived in Italy. (My sister was born there.) It turns out that he had been my parent's upstairs neighbor when they had lived in Naples and was just having lunch between flights at the airport nearby.
Of course, I felt it was more surprising when, on the way to Washington, DC after my father had completed a 3 year assignment in Hong Kong, my family stopped for a day in Anaheim, CA, so we could spend the day at Disneyland. Who did we run into? Some neighbors from our building in Hong Kong. They didn't know we were going to stop at Disneyland nor did we know there were going to be visiting friends in CA.
Then there was that time at RiverFest in Washington, DC, when I ran into my friends the Greenbergers who had come down for the day and didn't tell anyone they were coming.
Of course, running into Bob unexpectedly at World Con LA in '85 ('84?) was not entirely unexpected.
It's a small world after all.
It's a small world after all.
It's a small world after all.
It's a small, small world.
Posted by: TAC at January 3, 2005 02:07 PM