QotD: It’s A Small World

   Tell us a true story that proves it really is a small world after all. 

    Submitted by havybeaks.

I was a Navy brat growing up – I lived up and down the east coast, and spent a year out in California and another couple in the Pacific Northwest.  I started High School in Northern Virginia at W.T. Woodson high school, where I attended my freshman and sophomore years.

My sophomore year in school there, I joined the choir and the select vocal ensemble.  The director thought it was cool that my father was in the Navy and that I had moved around so much.  He mentioned that they had just had another Navy brat (named Jeremy Pelstring) move out west to finish off high school and it was almost like I was taking his place.  I had a great time with the various vocal groups I was in that year, and decided I'd sing for the rest of high school.

Fast forward a year when my father's tour of duty was up, and he was given a command out in Bremerton, WA.  We moved to Bainbridge Island, WA (just across the Puget Sound from Seattle).  When I got there, I auditioned for the school's Vocal Jazz Choir.  Of course, during the audition I answered some questions about where I was from, background, etc.  Imagine my surprise when I found out Mr. Jeremy Pelstring had been a member of this same group I was now auditioning for, singing with them for the last two years before he graduated and went off to the US Naval Academy!

Now, you may be thinking that this isn't quite as coincidental as it sounds, seeing as Jeremy and I were both dependents of fathers serving in the Navy, and it always seems like Navy families are bumping into one another.  That may be true.  So I'll up the ante once more:

I graduated from Bainbridge High School in 1997 after being accepted to the University of Virginia school of engineering.  I attended school there and graduated with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering in 2001.  While doing a google search to support this post, I found out that this same Jeremy Pelstring graduated from the US Naval Academy and then went on to get his masters degree in mechanical engineering….at the University of Virginia, class of 2001.  Jeremy ended up singing in one of The University's a capella groups (one that I had auditioned for once), and we most likely attended classes in the same buildings.  I never really got to know him personally, but it is doubtless that we nodded to each other in recognition in the halls in passing.

Small world, no?

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