Recently I've had an overabundance of random connections in my life. Check out how freakish each, let alone all, of these random occurrences are.

High School Circle Meets College ... In London

About a year ago Lindsay was studying at London School of Economics. While there, she took her foreign service exam. The way I understand the story is that in the course of trying to find a particular place she needed to be, she ran into Sam Silverberg, a college friend and fellow University Democrat. In fact, she succeeded me as UDems Vice President. They started talking and figured out that I was their totally random connection. On an even more odd note, I ran into Sam last week at Union Station, where I was meeting Lindsay for lunch. Crazy.

A Sixth Grade Heartthrob

In the course of planning Delta to DC, I sent fundraising letters out to friends, Teach For America corps members, etc. When all fundraising was done, I organized a small meet-and-greet with donors and the kids in DC. My friend Alyssa from UVA was one of my very gracious donors, along with David, a TFA teacher in Greenville. Alyssa saw the E-vite that I sent out and shot me an email about this particular David. I told her that he was from Richmond, so she might know him. She immediately called me because it became clear to her that this was her date to a camp dance in sixth grade. Apparently the two had kept very sparse communication over the years.

College Circle Meets TFA Circle ... in Prague

A few weeks ago my housemate in Mississippi was traveling Europe and Kenya. Prague was one of his stops in Europe. He was out one night with people that he met and ran into my friend Matt Starr from UVA. After Andrew indicated that he was a teacher in Mississippi, Starr said, "Hey I know a teacher in Mississippi!"

A Throwback to T-Ball

I was in New York City this past weekend visiting Andrew, since he was back from his worldly travels. We met up with his long-time friend, Jeremy, and went out on the town on Sunday night. In the course of the usual get-to-know you conversation, Jeremy said that he went to college with someone from my hometown, Palm Desert. He went to school and now lives in New York City with Sean Oeding, a guy that I played T-ball with when I was in first and second grade.

WTF?

All these random connections got me thinking about the probability of them happening. When you think about these things in terms of the entire US population, they are pretty striking. But -- all of the connections are amongst college students of roughly the same year. If you think of the probability of this happening amongst a nationwide class of college students in, say, the top 100 colleges, it makes a bit more sense ... but it's still pretty weird. When Harry Met Sally doesn't seem too implausible in light of all this.