how weird is this? people from hometown edition

Post date: 2023-01-24 06:53:56

How often do you meet strangers from the same general area you grew up in? (Addressing the question specifically to people who no longer live anywhere near their hometown.)

I lived pretty close to my hometown for the first 37 years of my life. After I moved away, though, I noticed that I keep meeting strangers who are from the same general area. I'm trying to get an idea of how common this is.

Example: Yesterday I was eating some pizza with my daughter, and I could overhear the conversation at the table next to us. One of them mentioned attending a college in a city about ten miles away from my hometown that many of my family members have attended. The college is pretty small and regional, and we were about 700 miles away. That seems to me like quite a coincidence, but maybe it's not? After all, something like this happens to me maybe once a month, maybe even more. It's also not just limited to where I live now - I meet people from my hometown traveling often. (And I'm not even counting instances involving my alma mater, because it was a big state school and fellow alumni are nearly everywhere.)

I have some thoughts about why, but I'd like to see how common it is. Does this happen to you? If so, where did you grow up?

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