Wednesday, January 17, 2007

It's a small, wierd world after all

Jodi over at AsiaPages had a wierd story post and invited others to offer their own weird stories. I offered a story there about an encounter with a high ranking monk who showed some very un-monklike behavior. I also invited others to come here and check out some other stories of wierdness in my almost 11 years in Korea.
Here's yet another one not in the realm of Korean wierdness persay, well just call it "Small world story #20"
I was looking for a job in the Daegu area and noticed a job listing on the webpage of a local college. I wanted to know what the conditions were for the job so I decided to peruse the webpage and see if i could contact a foreigner on the faculty. I found one such gentleman and his office phone number. I called him and spoke to him at length about the conditions of the job and decided that it was a good place to work. All during the conversation I had a strange sense of familiarity in the man's voice and I finally figured out what it was. It was his accent. I was sure I knew this guy was from. So, I asked him, "You have an accent that sounds like its from the south, I'm guessing Kentucky or Tennessee."
"Wow! you hit it right on the head. I'm from the Tennessee/Kentucky border area." He said kind of shocked.
"What part?" I inquired.
"Well, I'm from Hopkinsville originally but I lived just across the border in Clarksville for a long time." He replied.
I was not yet suprised by this revelation since there are quite a few soldiers fromt he 101st Airborne which is based on the border between these two towns. "I lived in Hoptown from 2nd to 7th grade."
"really!" he sounded genuinely suprised and the conversation turned to details about wheres and whens and I realized that his family name also sounded familliar. I didn't think anything of it at first because it is fairly common in the South to have one area permeated with local names of people who are anywhere from sisters and cousins to distant relatives. So I had to comment, "(family name) sounds familliar, is it a common name in that area."
"Not really", he replied and we got to talking bit more "my father was a teacher at Hoptown middle school."
Then it hit me. This guy's father was my middle school industrial arts teacher!
We talked some more and realized that since he is much older than me he and I probably don't have any further connections but we had a lot to talk about and hit it off instantly. I got the job and we worked together for 3 years. Last summer, he went back home to care for his father who is in his 80's now. It really is a small world isn't it.

No comments: