haapai
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Post by haapai on Jan 24, 2019 17:03:08 GMT -5
In 1979, my mom, my brother and myself were leaving an unstable country in a hurry. We had bulkhead seats on one of the extra Pan Am flights. The toilets were overflowing, the A/C was not working and there were negotiations ongoing regarding the refueling of the plane.
As we took off, my mom got to talking to one of the very young and extremely stressed-out stewardesses on the jump seats. She asked us where we were headed after JFK. We landed up describing the paint scheme on the house that we were headed to. She knew it, she had spent summers in a place five houses down the road.
Unfortunately, she had married one of the boys that were in the habit of putting oversize motors onto aluminum rowboats and then racing them until they flipped. My mom disapproved of these guys, so she changed the subject.
ETA: My other story in the same vein took place when I was 21, not out to family, and shopping with my girlfriend. We ran into my cousin when the only thing in the cart was a box of strawberries, a canister of whipped cream, and a bottle of bubbly. I was mortified and immediately turned around my cart and bought food that I hadn't intended to buy.
My cousin handled things with considerably more aplomb. He hasn't mentioned it once in the thirty years since.
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andi9899
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Post by andi9899 on Jan 24, 2019 17:03:29 GMT -5
Almost every year we've gone to the Iowa State Fair we run into my parents. No clue they are even there. Once on the skytram I joked about my parents probably being there. DH looks down and responds "they are right below us." what are the odds. Several years ago I was at lunch with a guy I had recently started seeing. I made a comment that I had family all over the city and that they were always with me or not far away. He said surely it wasn't as bad as I was making it sound. I said "Really? Because my aunt and uncle are walking over here now." He turns around and they're at our table. My aunt is like "So, who id this?" I looked at him like "I told you so."
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Tennesseer
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Post by Tennesseer on Jan 24, 2019 17:52:06 GMT -5
]In 1979, my mom, my brother and myself were leaving an unstable country in a hurry. We had bulkhead seats on one of the extra Pan Am flights. The toilets were overflowing, the A/C was not working and there were negotiations ongoing regarding the refueling of the plane.
As we took off, my mom got to talking to one of the very young and extremely stressed-out stewardesses on the jump seats. She asked us where we were headed after JFK. We landed up describing the paint scheme on the house that we were headed to. She knew it, she had spent summers in a place five houses down the road.
Unfortunately, she had married one of the boys that were in the habit of putting oversize motors onto aluminum rowboats and then racing them until they flipped. My mom disapproved of these guys, so she changed the subject.
ETA: My other story in the same vein took place when I was 21, not out to family, and shopping with my girlfriend. We ran into my cousin when the only thing in the cart was a box of strawberries, a canister of whipped cream, and a bottle of bubbly. I was mortified and immediately turned around my cart and bought food that I hadn't intended to buy.
My cousin handled things with considerably more aplomb. He hasn't mentioned it once in the thirty years since.
Why do I get the impression your flight was originating out of Tehran. Yes?
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andi9899
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Post by andi9899 on Jan 24, 2019 17:55:22 GMT -5
[div ]In 1979, my mom, my brother and myself were leaving an unstable country in a hurry. We had bulkhead seats on one of the extra Pan Am flights. The toilets were overflowing, the A/C was not working and there were negotiations ongoing regarding the refueling of the plane. [/div] As we took off, my mom got to talking to one of the very young and extremely stressed-out stewardesses on the jump seats. She asked us where we were headed after JFK. We landed up describing the paint scheme on the house that we were headed to. She knew it, she had spent summers in a place five houses down the road.
Unfortunately, she had married one of the boys that were in the habit of putting oversize motors onto aluminum rowboats and then racing them until they flipped. My mom disapproved of these guys, so she changed the subject.
ETA: My other story in the same vein took place when I was 21, not out to family, and shopping with my girlfriend. We ran into my cousin when the only thing in the cart was a box of strawberries, a canister of whipped cream, and a bottle of bubbly. I was mortified and immediately turned around my cart and bought food that I hadn't intended to buy.
My cousin handled things with considerably more aplomb. He hasn't mentioned it once in the thirty years since.
[/quote] Why do I get the impression you flight was originating out of Tehran. Yes?[/quote] At least it wasn't condoms and KY. It could have been really awkward.
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TheOtherMe
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Post by TheOtherMe on Jan 24, 2019 18:12:22 GMT -5
Iowa State Fair may draw at least 100K people per day, but I've never been there when I didn't run in to family. I don't go any more, but sister and BIL still do and they always run in to family.
Used to take us hours to get through the Varied Industries Building because of family. If we didn't see them while walking through the building, we'd see them in the line for the bathrooms in that building. At that time, those were the nicer bathrooms on the grounds.
I haven't been there since most of the buildings have been remodeled.
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haapai
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Post by haapai on Jan 24, 2019 18:49:59 GMT -5
Nope, not Tehran. I can understand why it strikes some of the same chimes though.
There definitely was an era when if the US embassy told you to leave, you'd leave via Pan Am. The airline would schedule extra flights and everyone left via US carrier. Things had to be bad for you to leave via British Airways or KLM. You might have an easier time getting on one of those flights but if you didn't have a dispensation to travel on a non-US carrier due to an emergency, you might have to pay for the whole trip home on your own instead of getting some sort of reimbursement. Pre-deregulation, those flights were expensive, especially since they were not booked in advance.
Every last seat was filled. Sometimes passengers landed up on on the fold-down seats normally occupied by the crew. Women carrying infants and those traveling with small children were often given bulkhead seats so that the kids could be put on the floor of the cabin when everyone was exhausted. Nobody was sitting in the aisles or in the toilets on the flight that I was on but I do seem to recall quite a few children who would ordinarily have had their own seats sitting on their parents' laps. (ETA: Sometimes strangers sitting in seats adjacent to those parents traveling with children in their laps would take those kids into their own laps in order to relieve their parents. My mother and I spent part of that flight with a 3-year-old in our laps and thought nothing of it. That child's mother also had an infant with her. She needed the respite.)
Delays between boarding the plane and takeoff were quite common. Everyone wanted onto that plane as soon as possible even though there was no AC and the plane had not been fueled yet. It was not uncommon for a plane to be loaded with passengers and for it to leave the terminal and then just sit on the runway for hours. For a significant number of the passengers on board, this was better than being in the terminal no matter how hot or smelly things got. It's fairly difficult to force a plane that has left the terminal to open its doors and remove a passenger, so everyone cheered when the doors closed and the plane began to move.
I remember quite a bit of applause when the plane finally took off and again when it landed. It took me another decade or so to realize that this applause was not normal airplane etiquette and is ordinarily reserved only for very delayed or very turbulent flights and long-haul flights that are bringing folks home to a place that they haven't been for years.
ETA: I apologize for going off-tangent and will not be irked at all if this thread gets back on tangent. I just felt the need to reply publicly to a question that was asked publicly instead of PMing Tenn.
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Anne_in_VA
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Post by Anne_in_VA on Jan 24, 2019 19:16:45 GMT -5
Ex and I were on our honeymoon in Williamsburg, VA when we ran into some coworkers who were on vacation. I seem to remember having dinner with them too. Every time Ex and I traveled anywhere outside of our hometown, we always seemed to run into someone we knew.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 24, 2019 19:42:47 GMT -5
Well, I was determined not to name my daughter after any family member. So I gave her what isn't a "unique" name but not that usual (think "Audrey" although that is definitely not her name). My brother-in-law wasn't dating anyone. A couple of years later he showed up at the hospital after my son was born. His new girlfriend's name was "Audrey." Even odder is that they (both "Audreys") were born on the same day. The new girlfriend was obviously meant to be in the family. He married her a couple of years later.
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Tennesseer
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Post by Tennesseer on Jan 24, 2019 20:17:21 GMT -5
Nope, not Tehran. I can understand why it strikes some of the same chimes though.
There definitely was an era when if the US embassy told you to leave, you'd leave via Pan Am. The airline would schedule extra flights and everyone left via US carrier. Things had to be bad for you to leave via British Airways or KLM. You might have an easier time getting on one of those flights but if you didn't have a dispensation to travel on a non-US carrier due to an emergency, you might have to pay for the whole trip home on your own instead of getting some sort of reimbursement. Pre-deregulation, those flights were expensive, especially since they were not booked in advance.
Every last seat was filled. Sometimes passengers landed up on on the fold-down seats normally occupied by the crew. Women carrying infants and those traveling with small children were often given bulkhead seats so that the kids could be put on the floor of the cabin when everyone was exhausted. Nobody was sitting in the aisles or in the toilets on the flight that I was on but I do seem to recall quite a few children who would ordinarily have had their own seats sitting on their parents' laps. (ETA: Sometimes strangers sitting in seats adjacent to those parents traveling with children in their laps would take those kids into their own laps in order to relieve their parents. My mother and I spent part of that flight with a 3-year-old in our laps and thought nothing of it. That child's mother also had an infant with her. She needed the respite.)
Delays between boarding the plane and takeoff were quite common. Everyone wanted onto that plane as soon as possible even though there was no AC and the plane had not been fueled yet. It was not uncommon for a plane to be loaded with passengers and for it to leave the terminal and then just sit on the runway for hours. For a significant number of the passengers on board, this was better than being in the terminal no matter how hot or smelly things got. It's fairly difficult to force a plane that has left the terminal to open its doors and remove a passenger, so everyone cheered when the doors closed and the plane began to move.
I remember quite a bit of applause when the plane finally took off and again when it landed. It took me another decade or so to realize that this applause was not normal airplane etiquette and is ordinarily reserved only for very delayed or very turbulent flights and long-haul flights that are bringing folks home to a place that they haven't been for years.
ETA: I apologize for going off-tangent and will not be irked at all if this thread gets back on tangent. I just felt the need to reply publicly to a question that was asked publicly instead of PMing Tenn.
Reads like some of the final scenes at the airport from the movie The Year Of Living Dangerously. Thanks for replying.
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laterbloomer
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Post by laterbloomer on Jan 24, 2019 21:14:33 GMT -5
Oh, I love these types of stories! Mine is a bit different than the others, but here goes: my son has a half brother 8 months younger than him. Turns out my 1st husband cheated on me and she and I were both pregnant. Our son was born in Jan. and he and I decided to stay together. The other boy was born in Sept. the same year so my husband signed over his parental rights to the child's mother and her fiance. We raised the boys together though so they knew the whole story. Eventually we divorced and I re-married and gained 2 step-children. The 1/2 brother's parents divorced later as well. The adoptive father of the 1/2 brother then married my current husband's ex-wife's sister (my step-children's aunt)! It was a confusing mess really, but we all got along so instead of having separate family events we just had them all at the adoptive dad's home. And we also gave up trying to identify anyone as step-sibling, half-sibling, etc.
Now, I'm divorced again so I guess that makes everyone "ex" so whatever. Thankfully I do have my son and his brother and their extended families in my life.
Okay, you win, because I was lost by the second paragraph........ Is it weird that I followed it no problem?
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Regis
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Post by Regis on Jan 25, 2019 7:43:38 GMT -5
About eight years ago, my oldest son and I took a road trip that included a few days in the Wisconsin Dells. We decided to go ziplining there and made reservations to do so. When we arrived, there were two lines to check in. When I approached the window, they asked what name the reservation was under and I gave my name. A guy in the line next to me turned and said "Hey, I know you." Was a guy I had graduated from high school with in southern Indiana 30 years prior and had only seen him a couple of times since. My high school class only had 58 in it.
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Cookies Galore
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Post by Cookies Galore on Jan 25, 2019 10:07:18 GMT -5
I found out about a week or so before my wedding that my grandmom and hubs' great uncle dated when they were young. I guess it's good that great uncle died young and my grandmom met my completely unrelated to hubs grandfather?
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on Jan 25, 2019 10:14:05 GMT -5
My maiden name is part of a tree. I married someone with a last name that is also part of a tree. We joke that it was meant to be
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Tennesseer
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Post by Tennesseer on Jan 25, 2019 11:01:03 GMT -5
My maiden name is part of a tree. I married someone with a last name that is also part of a tree. We joke that it was meant to be On the show Blackish, the male lead's character's last name is Johnson. His wife's maiden name is Johnson. They once had a funny argument about the wife not taking her husband's last name upon marriage.
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Cookies Galore
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Post by Cookies Galore on Jan 25, 2019 11:47:33 GMT -5
My maiden name is part of a tree. I married someone with a last name that is also part of a tree. We joke that it was meant to be On the show Blackish, the male lead's character's last name is Johnson. His wife's maiden name is Johnson. They once had a funny argument about the wife not taking her husband's last name upon marriage. I remember that episode! The pronunciation was different- JohnSON vs. JOHNson.
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Tennesseer
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Post by Tennesseer on Jan 25, 2019 11:59:33 GMT -5
On the show Blackish, the male lead's character's last name is Johnson. His wife's maiden name is Johnson. They once had a funny argument about the wife not taking her husband's last name upon marriage. I remember that episode! The pronunciation was different- JohnSON vs. JOHNson.
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flamingo
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Post by flamingo on Jan 25, 2019 12:19:41 GMT -5
Not me, but my dad. My parents and I were visiting my grandparents in their new assisted living facility last summer. Grandma is introducing us to everyone and inviting everyone into the "party" room to meet the family. A guy who lives in the facility stops by and starts talking with my parents. All of a sudden, I hear my dad say, "Wait, are you Dr. Fred X?" And the guy says, yep that's me, I was a doctor for many years, my office was on Y street by the beauty shop. And my dad says, oh hey, you were my doctor growing up and my mom owned the beauty store next door to your office!
My dad is 70, the good doctor had to be 90, and my dad left that town in 1970, I think. But this doctor remembered my dad's mom and brother and remembered some funny stories about my dad getting in trouble as a kid.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2019 12:27:15 GMT -5
A couple years after I started my first job out of college my grandfathers cousin became CEO of the company.
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happyhoix
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Post by happyhoix on Jan 30, 2019 10:49:48 GMT -5
We moved into a house when I was 5 months pregnant. Four months later, DS was born. DH met a man from our neighborhood who was there with his wife - turns out, we lived two houses apart, both had our babies on the exact same day, both had C sections, both had the same doctor, at the same hospital. Before then, we didn't even know she was pregnant yet (only met her DH).
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on Jan 30, 2019 12:31:53 GMT -5
My biggest coincidence was that multiple times I have run into high school classmates in O'Hare airport in Chicago. There were 62 people in my graduating class in NY. I lived in TX. I was only flying through Chicago once each year.
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teen persuasion
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Post by teen persuasion on Jan 30, 2019 15:22:29 GMT -5
Back in college, I had the same roommate for our first 2 years (in the dorms). Then I moved out to an apartment with my now DH. After a year, we moved to a new apartment in a different neighborhood, and old roommate and her next roommate and another friend moved into an apartment a few blocks away. The group of us were on a jaunt to an entirely different section of the city, and we're looking thru an antiques shop. My old roomie found an old box from a pharmacy, someone's prescription from 50+ years ago, with their address on it, right down to the floor and number. She decided she was meant to find it and bought it.
Another time while we were living at that apartment, the neighborhood was having a community garage sale. The neighborhood was built up just after the Pan Am Expo in 1902, so it's full of gorgeous Victorian era and other historic homes, like Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin house. From one place I got a great treadle sewing machine. From another, a beautiful bedroom dresser with a mirror that has beveled glass. The treadle cabinet had lots of fun things still in the drawers, including a key which fits the locks on the bedroom dresser. I wonder how many items made the circuit of different homes in the area, but still - the odds that I bought both things the same day from different owners!
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beergut
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Post by beergut on Jan 31, 2019 7:56:03 GMT -5
In HS I was at a family function of my then BF's family when my uncle Dave walked in. I had commented that it was weird to see my uncle Dave there. He got this weird look on his face and goes "That's my uncle Dave." We immediately ran to go find his mom to find out how he was related to uncle Dave as he was a bit of a distant relative for BF. Turns out he's not related by blood to uncle Dave. He's blood related to aunt Mary, uncle Dave's wife. I'm blood related to uncle Dave as he's my grandpa's brother. So we share uncle Dave and aunt Mary, we're just not related by blood. Good thing to as we had already been having sex at that point and that would have been really weird. Also years later Thing 2 ended up being friends with exBF's niece, so I would still see the same family from time to time. I still do and we broke up in 1996 or so. You would have had to move to Alabama Apologies @bamafan1954, I couldn't resist.
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souldoubt
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Post by souldoubt on Jan 31, 2019 14:59:41 GMT -5
Nothing as interesting as some other stories but we saw someone randomly on vacation who lived in our same city when we were 2,500 miles from home. The recent one that sticks with me is we went camping last year with family at a national park that's a few states away. While we were on a hike we ended up talking to a family that's from the east coast for 5-10 minutes. Two days later my wife and I had driven our rental car to Las Vegas where we would fly back home. We had some time to spare and while walking over one of the bridges that connects two hotels we passed the exact same family. Had we been there any earlier or later we wouldn't have seen them. Just kind of one of those "what are the odds" situations.
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tcu2003
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Post by tcu2003 on Jan 31, 2019 21:39:11 GMT -5
I studied abroad one summer in Seville, Spain. It was a small center, and there were maybe 100 kids in that summer session there. About 15 or so were from my university. Shortly before I left, my dad was chatting with someone in my hometown about me and my upcoming trip. She mentions that her niece is also going to study abroad in the same country. No big deal, it’s a big country. Well, I get to Spain, meet a girl in one of my classes, and after we start talking, we figure out that she is the niece of the lady my dad knows. Small world because her cousin graduated high school with me, and her dad graduated with my dad (I grew up in the same small town my dad did, but this girl grew up in our state Capitol about 3 hours away). And both of us were going to out of state colleges - she was in Utah and I was in Texas.
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flutterby
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Post by flutterby on Feb 1, 2019 7:16:06 GMT -5
We lived in a small town in the Midwest when I was growing up. In elementary school, I had a best friend, Sara. In 5th grade her family moved to another little town a couple hours away. My mom was friends with her mom, so we went to visit them a couple times after they moved. A couple years later, Sara died in a car accident, and my mom and I went to the funeral.
Fast forward to high school, we moved halfway across the country. At my new after-school job, I got to chatting with one of my coworkers and mentioned the state I'd just moved from. She was from the same state and also from the little town Sara had moved to. So I told her about my elementary school bff who had moved there. Turns out, once Sara had moved there, she and this girl became best friends. She was also at the funeral. We'd probably seen each other there. So we both ended up moving to the same town 1500 miles away, working at the same fast food place, and were bffs with the same little girl when we were kids.
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abovewater
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Post by abovewater on Feb 15, 2019 12:55:01 GMT -5
When I was a toddler, a new family moved in to the house next door. It turns out the woman was my mom's labor & delivery nurse, from when I was born. Decades later, we still joke that it must have been funny when they made the connection... Mom: "I thought you looked familiar!" Neighbor: "Hmmm, I don't recognize your face..."
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Tennesseer
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Post by Tennesseer on Feb 15, 2019 13:01:36 GMT -5
Thought of another one.
At the time, my niece was a school teacher in Denver, Colorado. The father of one of the school's students noticed my niece's last name. The father told my niece he had an aunt with the same last name. My niece asked him the name of his aunt and where she lived. The father told her his aunt lived in Springfield, Massachusetts. My niece replied his aunt was her grandmother.
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Malarky
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Post by Malarky on Feb 15, 2019 18:10:40 GMT -5
About 30 years ago I was on a bus in the South Island of New Zealand. All of a sudden the phrase "off like a herd of turtles" caught my attention. The only place I'd ever heard anyone use that expression is Massachusetts.
Not only was the couple from MA, I knew them. They were customers of the shop I worked at back home.
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Tennesseer
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Post by Tennesseer on Feb 15, 2019 18:17:15 GMT -5
About 30 years ago I was on a bus in the South Island of New Zealand. All of a sudden the phrase "off like a herd of turtles" caught my attention. The only place I'd ever heard anyone use that expression is Massachusetts. Not only was the couple from MA, I knew them. They were customers of the shop I worked at back home. Not odd at all, but several weeks ago I used the word 'Wicked' in a sentence describing something cool. A person overheard me and stated "You're from Massachusetts, aren't you." Yup.
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saveinla
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Post by saveinla on Feb 15, 2019 18:27:28 GMT -5
My maiden name is part of a tree. I married someone with a last name that is also part of a tree. We joke that it was meant to be On the show Blackish, the male lead's character's last name is Johnson. His wife's maiden name is Johnson. They once had a funny argument about the wife not taking her husband's last name upon marriage. I am watching this episode now .
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