The last house we owned (before our present home) was across the street from a city cop and his wife a teacher. Her first teaching job was 6th grade at NK. She was pretty convinced from the get go that TWI was a cult.
How about that?? Small world indeed. I have a neighbor who ran into another neighbor in London, England a few years ago. Neither knew the other was going to be there.
I had the impression that Way kids weren't treated so well in the local schools, though.
Sudo, it was a mixed bag, as far as how the kids were treated. My son had some great non-twi friends in NK, and their families welcomed him into their homes with open arms and had no qualms about their kids hanging out at our house. There were some teachers who went out of their way to be nice to the "wayfer" kids and treated them like everyone else.
There were also plenty of people who looked down on our kids, and one high school teacher at the NK school who was downright cruel to them--but then he was a jerk in general, so he's not a good example.
There was, on the other hand, the name calling and meanness that went along with it, and there were parents who, I'm sure, wanted their children to have nothing to do with ours.
My son still feels like he was a fifth wheel in school because we were with twi, but I try to explain that in this world, someone is always going to look down on you for something, and that most kids, even popular ones, feel left out sometimes. At a small school (I think there were 21 in my son's graduating class--20 after one of his best friends was killed in a car accident just before graduation) this seems to be magnified.
I could be wrong, but my sense is that kids in New Bremen and St. Mary's were more readily accepted at school. They were larger towns and not so "inbred." Maybe some of our younger GSers went to one of the NK area schools and could comment.
NK was such a small town, and many people had the mentality that if you weren't born and raised there, you were inferior. I've seen that in lots of small towns. Small-minded people are everywhere, unfortunately.
I spent spring break in Mexico. I'm sitting in the Jardine (main garden/square) in downtown San Miguel de Allende when up walks a friend from back home. He and his father have riden the buses down.
My carpenter partner and I were at a small airstrip in Stebbins, Alaska, a tiny Eskimo village in way western Alaska, near the mouth of the Yukon where it dumps into the Bering Sea. We had just gotten off a Cessna 206 (six seater), and we were waiting for another one to fly us to the the village of Emmonak, which is on banks of the Lower Yukon. It was snowing, and the guy (the mayor)who was supposed to come and pick us up and take us to his tiny general store on his four wheeler ("quad bike") hadn't showed up yet, and it had been a half an hour already. It was snowing lightly and not too cold at +2 degrees. Very quiet.
And then we hear a plane coming, but it was way earlier than the one we expected to take to Emmonak. The plane lands, comes bumping up to near where we were standing, and this guy gets out. The pilot gets his luggage out for him and that plane takes off to some other village. So now the three of us are standing there in the quiet, the cold, and the snow. As it turns out, the guy who got out and was then waiting for a different plane than ours, just "happened" to be the lawyer who was handling my partner's DUI case. So when he sees James, my partner, he says; "Oh James, fancy finding you here. I have some papers for you to sign by the way. Here, let me get 'em for ya." And so out came the papers while James signed them on the back of my parka which I was wearing. They then exchanged some details of the up and coming trial, and then the lawyers plane (another Cessna 206) came in and landed, he got on, and the guy flew away. We were just shaking our heads and laughing as I voiced a common adage up here; "Alaska, the biggest "small town" in America".
Then our guy with the four wheeler finally drove up and we sat on the rear fenders with our seabags over our shoulders as he drove us to the general store/post office/mayor's office for some hot coffee and a two hour wait. It was nice to get out of the cold, the quiet, and the snow...
While serving in Naples Italy, part of the time I was there I spent in rotating shift-work as a gate-guard. Among the other gate-guards we had some American civilians and we had some Local Nationals. Most of the American civilians were in fact military retirees who had served in Italy when they had built those bases [immediately following the battles of taking Italy from the Germans].
While they were there they had married local girls and fathered families. Due to their language skills they had spent their military careers stationed there. And when they each retired from active duty they each got hired to work on base as Policia, they never had to return stateside after their military careers and they were raising their families in Italy among relatives. Some of those guys were getting up there in age [60s and 70s], but they were a wealth of information and contacts. While working with one of them, I had a hard time understanding that since his children were American citizens, why he had never taught them English, or taken them stateside. He told me that he really did intend to return stateside but that his wife did not want to go, and that he would need to wait for her to pass-away, before he could go back to his home town. In talking to him, I found out that his hometown is Merced California. Where I graduated High-school, and that he graduated highschool one year before my step-father had graduated from Merced High. This old guy that had no teeth, could cuss in 6 dialects of Italian, and his arms were spotted with skin cancers, was from my home-town, my step-father knew him, and we had attended the same high-school. LOL
I work with a girl from St. Mary's. We are the exact same age, to the month. Her best friend from high school happens to be someone I "undershepherded" through PFAL. We have both stayed in touch with the same girlfriend, all these years later.
It was a hot and steamy day. (Nyuk, nyuk ;)-->) The tropical sun beat down upon the tarmac as I walked over to the C-130 cargo plane with my duffel bag. I always loved those C-130s and was excited to be able to finally ride in one. The cargomaster was loading some pallets into the plane and several of us were hanging around waiting, for the ride to some airbase like me I assumed.
In mid July of 1969, the daytime temperatures of Thailand were about 110 degrees. The sun beating down on the airfield tarmac radiated back at us feeling more like 140. . I had flown into Bangkok two days before and wasn't too much impressed with the area, but I guessed it beat getting sent to Vietnam.
I was glad I was a photo lab tech and the lab would be airconditioned to keep the photo chemicals within control specs.
The cargomaster calls us aboard and closes us up and announces the flight schedule. We'll be flying to U-Dorn, U-Bon and U-Tapau air bases and then back to Bangkok, he says. He didn't tell us there was no airconditioning in the airplane.
Hot.
Hot still air, sweating like a pig. Flying north, east, and then south, covering most of Thailand in two and a half hours in the hot oven-like belly of an Air Force cargo bird, yippee.
About ten minutes before landing at the first base, an oddly familiar looking guy sits down beside me and says: "Isn't your name Hansen?"
"Yeah, it is...."
"I think you went to school with my brother, Billy Borg. I'm Jimmy Borg, his younger brother."
I said: "Yeah I know Bill, ( One of the biggest jerks in my high school.) fancy that, meeting someone from my hometown, in the middle of nowhere, half way around the world."
He said: "How about that, ain't that something. Look, since we know each other, could you lend me $20?"
(Groan!)
(I get off the plane in Bangkok, and the very air smelled bad. I learned that is because of seasonings from cooking mixed with their way of dealing with sewage. I and twenty others get sent to a cheap Air Force supplied Hotel, where I find my expensive brand new Norelco Tripleheader razor with a built in sideburn trimmer, is stolen.
The next day, I grab a taxi to go to the US Post Exchange retail store to get a new one. The ten year old taxi, I find has no shocks, maybe three springs, two gears forward and no reverse, running on three cylinders and probably still has the origional oil in it.
When our traffic was stopped, he pulled into the oncoming lanes of very large dump trucks, busses, divers trucks and cars, other Bangkok taxis, mopeds, bicycles, oxcarts and elephants. When I protested, he turned around and smiled at me and waved a little charm he had around his neck, (while still driving into oncoming traffic,) and said: "Have Buddha, no die!"
Twice.
My hands and feet still had a deathgrip on various car parts when we pulled up to the Post Exchange. And then the driver was trying to get me to buy him some contraband Scotch Whiskey and cartons of cigarettes too.)
Three days in Thailand, my nose is assaulted, my razor is stolen, I'm taken on a kamikaze ride in Bangkok taxi hell, and now some jerk, brother of a hometown jerk wants half the money I have left.
I looked at Jimmy, he got a pleading look in his eyes, and he said: "I wouldn't ask except I am flat busted. You know where I'll be and I know where you are, I guarantee I'll get the money to you as soon as possible. I swear it, man."
I knew he needed the money. As a sarge, I was making three times what he was. ($400, compared to his $130) And I knew I'd never see him or the loot again, but it was nice to see a Borg looking at me with pleading eyes, so I gave him the $20.
Such a nice intro to Thailand indeed. but I grew to love the country and adapted to Thai dishes so hot a Mexican has to train to build up his tolerances. :D-->
Yes, you can meet someone you know just about anywhere and in the most surprising places. And Thailand turned out to be so much fun, I extended my service to spend two years in Okinawa, which was even more enjoyable. And one day around 1984, at a TWI Word in Business Doo, I met a Lawyer who was born and raised on Okinawa.
Hubby & I were on the second day of our honeymoon in St John, New Brunswick. We were headed to Digby, Nova Scotia that day and had boarded a small cruise ship for the short trip (I think it was like 4 hours or something).
"Hey! Mr. A!" someone yelled.
I knew from the handle of "Mr. A" that it was someone hubby had had as a student (he's a public high school math teacher in NH). (He's called "Mr. A because he had a very long Greek last name). Seems that one of the guys who worked on the boat was a student of his years ago - we can never get away from former students who have had "Mr. A".
====================
Here's another one:
An RN that I work with and have even shared an office with, were talking late one afternoon after work. We had become quite close and I disclosed that I had been involved in a 'religious organization - like a cult' for several years. She disclosed that her husband had been with "some group called The Way" for a few years - HOLY COW! I couldn't believe it! I told her briefly about my experience - talk about a moment of 'bonding'! WOW!
Chas, of course it's not so unusual and exotic to run across people on GS we knew who used to be in twi, but I think I might have known your hubby many moons ago.
If he's who I think he is, I knew him as one of the good guys. Of course, since you married him he's one of the good guys regardless. :D-->
Some years back my uncle was attending school in Rome and struck up a conversation with one of his professors who happened to have the same last name as his mother's maiden name.
Turns out she was a cousin from a long-lost branch of the family that we had heard about from an elderly aunt, but were skeptical existed.
Many years back, I was working for a large retail chain in ladies fashions. I'd been at this job for about 3 yrs in the same dept. with the same manager the whole time.
One day my manager introduces me to her daughter who is back from living out west, purchasing a new wardrobe for her new job. She had told me that her daughter had been out west in Banff Alberta working at the Banff School of Fine Art for the past few years in administration. This school is over well over 2,000 miles away from me.
I looked at her daughter and said...really. That's nice.. blah dee blah dee blah.
I said... I once knew a guy who went to school there. The only person I knew who did...and this is why I had heard of the school. I mentioned his name.
She stood there and said nothing. Sorta gave me a blank stare. I kept ringing in her articles of clothing at the counter. She then began to remove her jaw from the countertop and said...
"He's my fianc?How do you know him?"
I then said...Because my brother lived with him for a few years in an artsy loft apt. in downtown Toronto. She looked at me and said...You're Dan G......'s sister? I said yes... who are you?
She then called my manager over and said...MOM, did you know this was Dan G.....'s sister? Mom's face ---> !!! Oh my god... you're brother has been over to my house more times than I could shake a stick at...???? He had spent weekends there, hanging out with his friends etc... she seemed to know him better than I did!
It was the first night of a new term at the school where I teach, and one guy sat through that whole first class meeting - all 3 hours.
Afterwards he came up to me and said, "I'm in the wrong class, I should have been signed up for this other class, I'll be transferring out of yours and into the other."
He had intended to be in the more advanced C++ class, but the school assigned him to my class. My class was a beginning programming class, and this guy just wanted a refresher course. Mine was too basic. No problem.
Then this last August I started a new job, and as I'm being introduced to my new co-workers, one of them looks at me funny. It was just last month, when I mentioned that I had to go teach that night, and where I teach, that he said, "OH! That's where I know you from!"
That guy that was in the wrong class is now my co-worker.
A couple of years after I'd left the Way, I was sitting in an undergraduate Humanities class, in a small college in Oklahoma, listening to the lecture, when the professor asked us to turn to a certain page in our textbooks. It was early in the semester, and the girl who was sitting behind me hadn't yet bought her book. We turned our desks around so that she could look on with my book. Over the course of the next hour or so of classroom discussion, I quietly complimented her on her beautiful French-African accent, and asked her where she was from. "Mozambique," she replied.
"This is crazy," I said, "because I only know one person in the world who is from Mozambique. But do you know Veronique Megang?"
"I don't know Veronique," she replied, "but I have heard of her, from two friends of mine, who are from Zaire."
"I only know two people in the world from Zaire," I said. "Would their names happen to be Roger Lutombe and Andre Zakompani?"
Her eyes widened. "Yes - that's amazing! How do you know Roger and Andre?"
"Oh," I answered, "I used to date Andre."
*******************************
What has always amazed me about that encounter is not only that we knew the same people, from the other side of the world, but that if she'd had the time to buy a textbook before that day, we'd never have known it. I wonder whether the world is a much smaller place, actually, than most of us (me included) think it is.
I took Andre Zakompani, may God rest his sweet soul, in my little souped-up '65 Mustang, to his first-ever James Bond movie, at some summer drive-in on some long-distant Ohio night. He was fascinated by Bond. He absolutely loved that movie.
I have a couple of these thwack-your-forehead stories...here's two...(another involved the federal government and the protective witness program, so I'll refrain from that one...lol)
Both of these "small world" encounters happened this past week. Last Sunday, talking to a couple...ask them the usual questions..."where are you from etc." Well, small town in Ohio...and "yes, I know Wapakeneta, the Neil Armstrong thing and such...
"Maureen," says they, "are you an ex-wayfer?"
lolololol...
"Yes," says me, "I was a part of that outfit for a good portion of time."
They weren't snide or rude or anything but pleasant as they told me about Ambassador One and its upkeep...the fella owns a plane and always found it interesting how The Way managed to keep its wings.
I couldn't talk to them as much as I'd have liked to at the time, but we did have a nice chat. Then, they were joined by another two couples..."Hey, Maureen here is an ex-wayfer."
One of the other fellows then tells me about his uncle, who was a Delco (car parts) service man in NK...that once, just after his wife of 40 years passed away, something happy entered his life...it was an invitation to visit HQ with a young woman who came in needing parts for her ailing auto which was parked amid hundreds of other cars at the ROA.
It was my car and I was the young woman. ROA '73. James Sailor was the name of the Delco man...he really helped me out. Apparently, he was impressed somehow becuz it remained a pleasant experience that he related to his nephew, and that his nephew related back to me over 30 years later. I only met him twice...once while at the Rock, and a second time when he came to a Sunday nite hillside thing at HQ. We exchanged letters for a while.
A couple years after I left my job at HQ, I was working for a magazine publisher. I became friends with a woman named Laura, whose cubicle was next to mine.
One day, Laura was waxing nostalgic about old boyfriends, and she sighed and said, "I wonder what ever happened to Randy Ginx. She had dated him in high school about 15 years earlier. I vaguely recalled that Randy had lived in the Cleveland suburb where Laura grew up, before he went into the Corps.
So without skipping a beat, I said casually, "Oh, he's with a Bible fellowship group called the way, and last I knew he was working at one of the way's campuses in Gunnison, Colorado. I used to joke with him that he should marry me so my name would be Linda Zinx Ginx."
In 1982 I was a senior in high school and working in a radiology office. I had just taken the class.
There was a boy named Cameron that came in periodically for X-rays. He was about 6 or 7 years old and had cancer. The cancer had stunted his growth so he was very small--about the size of a 4 year old. He was a very sweet boy and I used to take him in the darkroom with me and he would help me develop his films.
Right after I took the class, I prayed to God for this little boy that He could heal him somehow. Later that year I left that job and went on the wow field.
Fast forward a year or two later and I was sitting at the ROA and listening to a teaching entitled What God Has Done For Me.
The gentleman who was teaching was named Dr. Ron Chard (I think). He was sharing how he had seen a patient that was referred to him. He met with the patient and with the parents and said that he believed that the child would be all right because God would take care of him. The parents response was "Finally We've found a Dr. who believes in God too!"
A few months after that another patient was referred to him by the same Dr. He said, "I'm sending this patient to you so you can bless him." When asked why he would say that, the other Drs. reply was, "Remember that patient I referred to you a few months ago? Well his parents came back and said that Cameron will be fine because Dr. Chard blessed him. You know what? He is fine." Dr. Chard went on to say that God had healed that boy.
I was floored. Here I was, just really experimenting with prayer, and I find out down the road how effective it can be, even for a brand new christian who didn't know anything.
Yes, it is a small world after all. One of my neighborhood friends from about around sixth grade age became the vice president of TWI. He lived at the top of the block, and I in the cul de sac at the bottom. One day he walked into twig, and the rest is history...
I had moved to Tulsa in 1986. We were in the Carribian, cruising on a small cruise ship, (Windjammer cruise , The Fantome) about 125 people on board. Talking to a like aged couple "where are you from"? Virginia Beach Va. .... No s---! I'm from Newport News.... Where'd you go to school? "Princess Anne H.S." No s--- ! Did you know Angie Merrit??
"Yes! I dated her " NO S---!!!! I did too!!
1995 downtown Tulsa, Mayfest. I was talking with my companion and said something that caused the man beside me to remark "Oh I have a class that can teach you all about that!"
My blood chilled, hair stood on end, and the air around me grew strangely cold.... I replied "that wouldn't have anything to do with the way would it???" To which he responded "why yes how did you know? and what is your name?"
I told him I knew more about twi than he could ever believe in a lifetime and thanks but "been there done that" and "My name is Al Poole." He said do you know Bill Poole? I said "Yes he's my brother." He had been in my brothers twig and had just moved to Tulsa.
Al Poole, I think I know your brother Bill. Was he in the Ninth Corps? And is/was he married back in the day? I worked at Gunnison with Bill. At least if it is the same one...Great guy. He was a staffer, and I was in the 10th Corps. He liked me and sort ran interference for me, keeping T Jenkinson off of my case. T Jenks was always ....ed at me because I always used my spare time to go fishing...
And Vickles, did you tease that bald headed twin some more?
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Watered Garden
A lot of nice people used to come there, too.
The last house we owned (before our present home) was across the street from a city cop and his wife a teacher. Her first teaching job was 6th grade at NK. She was pretty convinced from the get go that TWI was a cult.
WG
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Sudo
Linda Z,
How about that?? Small world indeed. I have a neighbor who ran into another neighbor in London, England a few years ago. Neither knew the other was going to be there.
I had the impression that Way kids weren't treated so well in the local schools, though.
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Linda Z
Sudo, it was a mixed bag, as far as how the kids were treated. My son had some great non-twi friends in NK, and their families welcomed him into their homes with open arms and had no qualms about their kids hanging out at our house. There were some teachers who went out of their way to be nice to the "wayfer" kids and treated them like everyone else.
There were also plenty of people who looked down on our kids, and one high school teacher at the NK school who was downright cruel to them--but then he was a jerk in general, so he's not a good example.
There was, on the other hand, the name calling and meanness that went along with it, and there were parents who, I'm sure, wanted their children to have nothing to do with ours.
My son still feels like he was a fifth wheel in school because we were with twi, but I try to explain that in this world, someone is always going to look down on you for something, and that most kids, even popular ones, feel left out sometimes. At a small school (I think there were 21 in my son's graduating class--20 after one of his best friends was killed in a car accident just before graduation) this seems to be magnified.
I could be wrong, but my sense is that kids in New Bremen and St. Mary's were more readily accepted at school. They were larger towns and not so "inbred." Maybe some of our younger GSers went to one of the NK area schools and could comment.
NK was such a small town, and many people had the mentality that if you weren't born and raised there, you were inferior. I've seen that in lots of small towns. Small-minded people are everywhere, unfortunately.
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ex70sHouston
I spent spring break in Mexico. I'm sitting in the Jardine (main garden/square) in downtown San Miguel de Allende when up walks a friend from back home. He and his father have riden the buses down.
Yes its a very small world.
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J0nny Ling0
My carpenter partner and I were at a small airstrip in Stebbins, Alaska, a tiny Eskimo village in way western Alaska, near the mouth of the Yukon where it dumps into the Bering Sea. We had just gotten off a Cessna 206 (six seater), and we were waiting for another one to fly us to the the village of Emmonak, which is on banks of the Lower Yukon. It was snowing, and the guy (the mayor)who was supposed to come and pick us up and take us to his tiny general store on his four wheeler ("quad bike") hadn't showed up yet, and it had been a half an hour already. It was snowing lightly and not too cold at +2 degrees. Very quiet.
And then we hear a plane coming, but it was way earlier than the one we expected to take to Emmonak. The plane lands, comes bumping up to near where we were standing, and this guy gets out. The pilot gets his luggage out for him and that plane takes off to some other village. So now the three of us are standing there in the quiet, the cold, and the snow. As it turns out, the guy who got out and was then waiting for a different plane than ours, just "happened" to be the lawyer who was handling my partner's DUI case. So when he sees James, my partner, he says; "Oh James, fancy finding you here. I have some papers for you to sign by the way. Here, let me get 'em for ya." And so out came the papers while James signed them on the back of my parka which I was wearing. They then exchanged some details of the up and coming trial, and then the lawyers plane (another Cessna 206) came in and landed, he got on, and the guy flew away. We were just shaking our heads and laughing as I voiced a common adage up here; "Alaska, the biggest "small town" in America".
Then our guy with the four wheeler finally drove up and we sat on the rear fenders with our seabags over our shoulders as he drove us to the general store/post office/mayor's office for some hot coffee and a two hour wait. It was nice to get out of the cold, the quiet, and the snow...
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Galen
While serving in Naples Italy, part of the time I was there I spent in rotating shift-work as a gate-guard. Among the other gate-guards we had some American civilians and we had some Local Nationals. Most of the American civilians were in fact military retirees who had served in Italy when they had built those bases [immediately following the battles of taking Italy from the Germans].
While they were there they had married local girls and fathered families. Due to their language skills they had spent their military careers stationed there. And when they each retired from active duty they each got hired to work on base as Policia, they never had to return stateside after their military careers and they were raising their families in Italy among relatives. Some of those guys were getting up there in age [60s and 70s], but they were a wealth of information and contacts. While working with one of them, I had a hard time understanding that since his children were American citizens, why he had never taught them English, or taken them stateside. He told me that he really did intend to return stateside but that his wife did not want to go, and that he would need to wait for her to pass-away, before he could go back to his home town. In talking to him, I found out that his hometown is Merced California. Where I graduated High-school, and that he graduated highschool one year before my step-father had graduated from Merced High. This old guy that had no teeth, could cuss in 6 dialects of Italian, and his arms were spotted with skin cancers, was from my home-town, my step-father knew him, and we had attended the same high-school. LOL
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J0nny Ling0
Wow. Purdy damned cool Galen...
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ex10
Linda,
I work with a girl from St. Mary's. We are the exact same age, to the month. Her best friend from high school happens to be someone I "undershepherded" through PFAL. We have both stayed in touch with the same girlfriend, all these years later.
Freaky, ain't it?
:)-->
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Linda Z
Ex10, that's wild, isn't it? Or maybe not. Maybe these encounters, that seem like they'd be so unlikely to happen, occur for a reason.
Whether that's so or not, it's kinda fun when they do!
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dabobbada
It was a hot and steamy day. (Nyuk, nyuk
;)-->) The tropical sun beat down upon the tarmac as I walked over to the C-130 cargo plane with my duffel bag. I always loved those C-130s and was excited to be able to finally ride in one. The cargomaster was loading some pallets into the plane and several of us were hanging around waiting, for the ride to some airbase like me I assumed.
In mid July of 1969, the daytime temperatures of Thailand were about 110 degrees. The sun beating down on the airfield tarmac radiated back at us feeling more like 140. . I had flown into Bangkok two days before and wasn't too much impressed with the area, but I guessed it beat getting sent to Vietnam.
I was glad I was a photo lab tech and the lab would be airconditioned to keep the photo chemicals within control specs.
The cargomaster calls us aboard and closes us up and announces the flight schedule. We'll be flying to U-Dorn, U-Bon and U-Tapau air bases and then back to Bangkok, he says. He didn't tell us there was no airconditioning in the airplane.
Hot.
Hot still air, sweating like a pig. Flying north, east, and then south, covering most of Thailand in two and a half hours in the hot oven-like belly of an Air Force cargo bird, yippee.
About ten minutes before landing at the first base, an oddly familiar looking guy sits down beside me and says: "Isn't your name Hansen?"
"Yeah, it is...."
"I think you went to school with my brother, Billy Borg. I'm Jimmy Borg, his younger brother."
I said: "Yeah I know Bill, ( One of the biggest jerks in my high school.) fancy that, meeting someone from my hometown, in the middle of nowhere, half way around the world."
He said: "How about that, ain't that something. Look, since we know each other, could you lend me $20?"
(Groan!)
(I get off the plane in Bangkok, and the very air smelled bad. I learned that is because of seasonings from cooking mixed with their way of dealing with sewage. I and twenty others get sent to a cheap Air Force supplied Hotel, where I find my expensive brand new Norelco Tripleheader razor with a built in sideburn trimmer, is stolen.
The next day, I grab a taxi to go to the US Post Exchange retail store to get a new one. The ten year old taxi, I find has no shocks, maybe three springs, two gears forward and no reverse, running on three cylinders and probably still has the origional oil in it.
When our traffic was stopped, he pulled into the oncoming lanes of very large dump trucks, busses, divers trucks and cars, other Bangkok taxis, mopeds, bicycles, oxcarts and elephants. When I protested, he turned around and smiled at me and waved a little charm he had around his neck, (while still driving into oncoming traffic,) and said: "Have Buddha, no die!"
Twice.
My hands and feet still had a deathgrip on various car parts when we pulled up to the Post Exchange. And then the driver was trying to get me to buy him some contraband Scotch Whiskey and cartons of cigarettes too.)
Three days in Thailand, my nose is assaulted, my razor is stolen, I'm taken on a kamikaze ride in Bangkok taxi hell, and now some jerk, brother of a hometown jerk wants half the money I have left.
I looked at Jimmy, he got a pleading look in his eyes, and he said: "I wouldn't ask except I am flat busted. You know where I'll be and I know where you are, I guarantee I'll get the money to you as soon as possible. I swear it, man."
I knew he needed the money. As a sarge, I was making three times what he was. ($400, compared to his $130) And I knew I'd never see him or the loot again, but it was nice to see a Borg looking at me with pleading eyes, so I gave him the $20.
Such a nice intro to Thailand indeed. but I grew to love the country and adapted to Thai dishes so hot a Mexican has to train to build up his tolerances.
:D-->
Yes, you can meet someone you know just about anywhere and in the most surprising places. And Thailand turned out to be so much fun, I extended my service to spend two years in Okinawa, which was even more enjoyable. And one day around 1984, at a TWI Word in Business Doo, I met a Lawyer who was born and raised on Okinawa.
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ChasUFarley
Hubby & I were on the second day of our honeymoon in St John, New Brunswick. We were headed to Digby, Nova Scotia that day and had boarded a small cruise ship for the short trip (I think it was like 4 hours or something).
"Hey! Mr. A!" someone yelled.
I knew from the handle of "Mr. A" that it was someone hubby had had as a student (he's a public high school math teacher in NH). (He's called "Mr. A because he had a very long Greek last name). Seems that one of the guys who worked on the boat was a student of his years ago - we can never get away from former students who have had "Mr. A".
====================
Here's another one:
An RN that I work with and have even shared an office with, were talking late one afternoon after work. We had become quite close and I disclosed that I had been involved in a 'religious organization - like a cult' for several years. She disclosed that her husband had been with "some group called The Way" for a few years - HOLY COW! I couldn't believe it! I told her briefly about my experience - talk about a moment of 'bonding'! WOW!
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Linda Z
Chas, of course it's not so unusual and exotic to run across people on GS we knew who used to be in twi, but I think I might have known your hubby many moons ago.
If he's who I think he is, I knew him as one of the good guys. Of course, since you married him he's one of the good guys regardless.
:D-->
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Oakspear
Some years back my uncle was attending school in Rome and struck up a conversation with one of his professors who happened to have the same last name as his mother's maiden name.
Turns out she was a cousin from a long-lost branch of the family that we had heard about from an elderly aunt, but were skeptical existed.
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A la prochaine
Many years back, I was working for a large retail chain in ladies fashions. I'd been at this job for about 3 yrs in the same dept. with the same manager the whole time.
One day my manager introduces me to her daughter who is back from living out west, purchasing a new wardrobe for her new job. She had told me that her daughter had been out west in Banff Alberta working at the Banff School of Fine Art for the past few years in administration. This school is over well over 2,000 miles away from me.
I looked at her daughter and said...really. That's nice.. blah dee blah dee blah.
I said... I once knew a guy who went to school there. The only person I knew who did...and this is why I had heard of the school. I mentioned his name.
She stood there and said nothing. Sorta gave me a blank stare. I kept ringing in her articles of clothing at the counter. She then began to remove her jaw from the countertop and said...
"He's my fianc?How do you know him?"
I then said...Because my brother lived with him for a few years in an artsy loft apt. in downtown Toronto. She looked at me and said...You're Dan G......'s sister? I said yes... who are you?
She then called my manager over and said...MOM, did you know this was Dan G.....'s sister? Mom's face --->
!!! Oh my god... you're brother has been over to my house more times than I could shake a stick at...???? He had spent weekends there, hanging out with his friends etc... she seemed to know him better than I did!
Small world.
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Steve!
This happened about a year and a half ago.
It was the first night of a new term at the school where I teach, and one guy sat through that whole first class meeting - all 3 hours.
Afterwards he came up to me and said, "I'm in the wrong class, I should have been signed up for this other class, I'll be transferring out of yours and into the other."
He had intended to be in the more advanced C++ class, but the school assigned him to my class. My class was a beginning programming class, and this guy just wanted a refresher course. Mine was too basic. No problem.
Then this last August I started a new job, and as I'm being introduced to my new co-workers, one of them looks at me funny. It was just last month, when I mentioned that I had to go teach that night, and where I teach, that he said, "OH! That's where I know you from!"
That guy that was in the wrong class is now my co-worker.
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notinKansasanymore
A couple of years after I'd left the Way, I was sitting in an undergraduate Humanities class, in a small college in Oklahoma, listening to the lecture, when the professor asked us to turn to a certain page in our textbooks. It was early in the semester, and the girl who was sitting behind me hadn't yet bought her book. We turned our desks around so that she could look on with my book. Over the course of the next hour or so of classroom discussion, I quietly complimented her on her beautiful French-African accent, and asked her where she was from. "Mozambique," she replied.
"This is crazy," I said, "because I only know one person in the world who is from Mozambique. But do you know Veronique Megang?"
"I don't know Veronique," she replied, "but I have heard of her, from two friends of mine, who are from Zaire."
"I only know two people in the world from Zaire," I said. "Would their names happen to be Roger Lutombe and Andre Zakompani?"
Her eyes widened. "Yes - that's amazing! How do you know Roger and Andre?"
"Oh," I answered, "I used to date Andre."
*******************************
What has always amazed me about that encounter is not only that we knew the same people, from the other side of the world, but that if she'd had the time to buy a textbook before that day, we'd never have known it. I wonder whether the world is a much smaller place, actually, than most of us (me included) think it is.
I took Andre Zakompani, may God rest his sweet soul, in my little souped-up '65 Mustang, to his first-ever James Bond movie, at some summer drive-in on some long-distant Ohio night. He was fascinated by Bond. He absolutely loved that movie.
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MATILDA
I have a couple of these thwack-your-forehead stories...here's two...(another involved the federal government and the protective witness program, so I'll refrain from that one...lol)
Both of these "small world" encounters happened this past week. Last Sunday, talking to a couple...ask them the usual questions..."where are you from etc." Well, small town in Ohio...and "yes, I know Wapakeneta, the Neil Armstrong thing and such...
"Maureen," says they, "are you an ex-wayfer?"
lolololol...
"Yes," says me, "I was a part of that outfit for a good portion of time."
They weren't snide or rude or anything but pleasant as they told me about Ambassador One and its upkeep...the fella owns a plane and always found it interesting how The Way managed to keep its wings.
I couldn't talk to them as much as I'd have liked to at the time, but we did have a nice chat. Then, they were joined by another two couples..."Hey, Maureen here is an ex-wayfer."
One of the other fellows then tells me about his uncle, who was a Delco (car parts) service man in NK...that once, just after his wife of 40 years passed away, something happy entered his life...it was an invitation to visit HQ with a young woman who came in needing parts for her ailing auto which was parked amid hundreds of other cars at the ROA.
It was my car and I was the young woman. ROA '73. James Sailor was the name of the Delco man...he really helped me out. Apparently, he was impressed somehow becuz it remained a pleasant experience that he related to his nephew, and that his nephew related back to me over 30 years later. I only met him twice...once while at the Rock, and a second time when he came to a Sunday nite hillside thing at HQ. We exchanged letters for a while.
It is a small world...after all.
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Linda Z
Ooh, thought of another.
A couple years after I left my job at HQ, I was working for a magazine publisher. I became friends with a woman named Laura, whose cubicle was next to mine.
One day, Laura was waxing nostalgic about old boyfriends, and she sighed and said, "I wonder what ever happened to Randy Ginx. She had dated him in high school about 15 years earlier. I vaguely recalled that Randy had lived in the Cleveland suburb where Laura grew up, before he went into the Corps.
So without skipping a beat, I said casually, "Oh, he's with a Bible fellowship group called the way, and last I knew he was working at one of the way's campuses in Gunnison, Colorado. I used to joke with him that he should marry me so my name would be Linda Zinx Ginx."
She nearly flipped.
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AHAT
In 1982 I was a senior in high school and working in a radiology office. I had just taken the class.
There was a boy named Cameron that came in periodically for X-rays. He was about 6 or 7 years old and had cancer. The cancer had stunted his growth so he was very small--about the size of a 4 year old. He was a very sweet boy and I used to take him in the darkroom with me and he would help me develop his films.
Right after I took the class, I prayed to God for this little boy that He could heal him somehow. Later that year I left that job and went on the wow field.
Fast forward a year or two later and I was sitting at the ROA and listening to a teaching entitled What God Has Done For Me.
The gentleman who was teaching was named Dr. Ron Chard (I think). He was sharing how he had seen a patient that was referred to him. He met with the patient and with the parents and said that he believed that the child would be all right because God would take care of him. The parents response was "Finally We've found a Dr. who believes in God too!"
A few months after that another patient was referred to him by the same Dr. He said, "I'm sending this patient to you so you can bless him." When asked why he would say that, the other Drs. reply was, "Remember that patient I referred to you a few months ago? Well his parents came back and said that Cameron will be fine because Dr. Chard blessed him. You know what? He is fine." Dr. Chard went on to say that God had healed that boy.
I was floored. Here I was, just really experimenting with prayer, and I find out down the road how effective it can be, even for a brand new christian who didn't know anything.
GOD IS GOOD ALL THE TIME.
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Wacky Funster
Small world...you betcha!!!
About 12 years ago I was in a woman's group therapy anger/grief workshop recovering from leaving a cult and a marriage.
It was a weekend gig at a camp...lots of emoting from everyone.
I live in the middle of nowhere.
There was another ex-way in there. She knew exactly what I was spewing about.
She avoided me most of the time. She was only in for 2 years as opposed to my 13 years...I'd have avoided me too.
Hey...about 8 years ago I had an ex-way person from New York( that was helping Vince Finnegan deal with reality) on my massage table!!!!
Talk about small world LindaZ and all!!!!
You betcha
;)-->
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J0nny Ling0
Yes, it is a small world after all. One of my neighborhood friends from about around sixth grade age became the vice president of TWI. He lived at the top of the block, and I in the cul de sac at the bottom. One day he walked into twig, and the rest is history...
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vickles
When I was young and in school there were a pair of twins that were bald. My friends and I would really give them a hard time.
Well years later I had moved and went to a different twig and lo and behold there was one of the twins. I was floored!!!!
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Al Poole
I had moved to Tulsa in 1986. We were in the Carribian, cruising on a small cruise ship, (Windjammer cruise , The Fantome) about 125 people on board. Talking to a like aged couple "where are you from"? Virginia Beach Va. .... No s---! I'm from Newport News.... Where'd you go to school? "Princess Anne H.S." No s--- ! Did you know Angie Merrit??
"Yes! I dated her " NO S---!!!! I did too!!
1995 downtown Tulsa, Mayfest. I was talking with my companion and said something that caused the man beside me to remark "Oh I have a class that can teach you all about that!"
My blood chilled, hair stood on end, and the air around me grew strangely cold.... I replied "that wouldn't have anything to do with the way would it???" To which he responded "why yes how did you know? and what is your name?"
I told him I knew more about twi than he could ever believe in a lifetime and thanks but "been there done that" and "My name is Al Poole." He said do you know Bill Poole? I said "Yes he's my brother." He had been in my brothers twig and had just moved to Tulsa.
I
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J0nny Ling0
Al Poole, I think I know your brother Bill. Was he in the Ninth Corps? And is/was he married back in the day? I worked at Gunnison with Bill. At least if it is the same one...Great guy. He was a staffer, and I was in the 10th Corps. He liked me and sort ran interference for me, keeping T Jenkinson off of my case. T Jenks was always ....ed at me because I always used my spare time to go fishing...
And Vickles, did you tease that bald headed twin some more?
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