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Thursday, February 6, 2014

Friends & Surprises

Surprises are always unexpected and can be either good or bad -- when they're good surprises, that unexpectedness makes them especially wonderful.

Yesterday, I received a very wonderful birthday surprise, thanks to a very special friend.

This friend shares nearly the same first name as myself and exactly the same last name, yet is not a relative; I'm Dorothy and she is Dorianne. 

We're both (nearly) the same age (in April). We're the oldest child in our families (I have one sibling; she has several). Both grew up in NJ towns less than 3 miles apart. We attended Catholic grade and high schools in towns less than 10 miles apart.

Our heritage is Italian. Both our fathers were self-employed tradesmen: electrician and painter, respectively.

And there's more coincidences: While we attended college in different states, each graduated with a journalism degrees, then worked for NJ newspapers.

Yet, despite these similarities and living in close proximity, we never met either in childhood or as young adults.

We "connected" about 10 years ago, oddly enough because of similar email addresses. Emails meant for her were inadvertently sent to my email address.

Since then we've become close friends, calling ourselves "cousins."  We're separated by distance; she resides in our native NJ; I'm now on the VA eastern shore. But that email connection that brought us together initially keeps us in contact as do phone calls and visits whenever I'm back home.

Anyone else have a special friend story to share?  

12 comments:

Country Gal said...

Oh that's wonderful . WOW ! strange but good things do happen it's as if you two were meant to be best buds .I tell my best friend story's almost every day lol cause Papa and Miggs are my best friends . Thanks for sharing . Have a good day !

possum said...

Well, I forgot it again. sigh.
So, a belated Happy Birthday!

Out on the prairie said...

Very nice friends to be

MadSnapper said...

i met a blog friend that we swear we are sisters separated at birth... we are so similar, much like you and Dori.... not with the names but with our life stories.

LONDONLULU said...

That is so very sweet! Nothing like that here, though some lovely pen pals from youth that I still remember fondly after correspondence through college. Happy Belated Birthday:)

Anonymous said...

How fun :-)

For a very long time people sent me text messages from Bosnia, not meant for me but to a very similar phone number. So as soon there was a big Muslim holiday I got holiday greetings from them :-)

Have a great day!
Christer.

Anvilcloud said...

What an unusual story. I once received an email from an Aussie with the same name as mine, and we and others formed a sort of club. It never really went anywhere though. Perhaps females would have done it better.

Montanagirl said...

That's a great story, and so many coincidences. Okay, are you sure you're not related? LOL

Connie said...

What a lovely story! Such a small world we live in.

William Kendall said...

That is a curious case of stars crossing, so to speak...

Karen Lakis said...

How funny that you connected over crossed email! I love this story!

jp@A Green Ridge said...

The power of email is never ending!...:)JP