I could not believe my eyes. As I sat with my daughter to eat lunch at the Maryland Zoo 10 days ago, I thought I saw someone I knew.

Since I grew up and now work in Baltimore, this should not come as a surprise, but I still had trouble wrapping my mind around it.

That had nothing to do with who I saw. I did enjoy catching up with a former co-worker. It’s just that this thing seems to happen to me all the time.

I don’t want to sound like I have a million friends or anything like that, but I seem to run into people I know in the strangest of places.

The same thing happened the next day when I was returning a movie we had rented. I saw a guy I used to coach wrestling with several years back.

But none of those top the strangest incident of this nature. Several years ago, we went down to Florida for a family trip to Disney. After we settled into the hotel, Maria, Bridget and I headed off to Epcot to start the magic

We had barely entered the park when we ran into a guy I knew from a work connection. We didn’t know each other that well, so it took a second or two for both of us to register what was happening. When I processed it all, I couldn’t believe I had flown to Florida and one of the first faces I saw was someone from up here.

I’m sure there is some rational explanation to all this. I bet some statistician can explain the likelihood of seeing people you know in popular places – the Zoo was pretty crowded last weekend and Disney is Disney – but it still freaks me out sometimes.

I can only remember one time when this trend disappointed me. A few years after college, I made plans to go with some friends from school to see Jimmy Buffet at Meriweather Post Pavilion.

I had to work all day and arranged to meet up with them at the show. They spent the afternoon at a friend’s house and told me the spot on the lawn they planned to set up their blankets. This was back in 1992 so we needed to coordinate plans ahead of time since cell phones were just a dream.

I got to the show and started looking in the right location, but saw no one I knew. So I spent a long time going back and forth between the two main entrances to see if I could catch them coming in.

I had no luck, but a group of girls took pity on me and invited me to come and hang out with them if I didn’t find my friends. I must have looked extra lonely.

I finally gave up and started off to find those nice girls and make some new friends. I detoured to the men’s room on the way and, wouldn’t you know it, ended up in line right behind my buddy, Tim.

Part of me considered ignoring him to go enjoy the show with those girls, but I tapped him on the shoulder any way. I just can’t escape my own life, I guess.