Small town flashback twilight zone

I have lived in Malburne, Oztrailer for over a year now. During this time I have randomly met 2 people from Noo Zulland that I know.

"So?" I hear you say?

Well, I have met these 2 people in the last 4 weeks....at my home stop on my train line...and they're from my high school.

This is not impressive until you take into account that my home town in Noo Zulland had a population of 12,000 people and 28 chickens at the time I lived there, and my school had a total enrollment of 800. The school had years 8-12 in it, of which I knew maybe 50% of about 2 years - not many in other words.

Anyway, this is probably only weird for me. But today's encounter with random NZ chick was truly surreal. We're standing on the packed train after getting on at my stop. We stare at each other blankly for a while as commuters do before we realise we're actually staring at each other. We do the funny eyebrow scrunching mutual recognition thing before I say 'Are you from Cambridge?". Turns out this chick was in the year above me at school.

I'm pretty sure neither of us could remember each other's name but we did the obligatory stuck-on-a-train-making-smalltalk-with-someone-from-your-childhood-until-you-can-get-off thing, which covered the standard topics - my answers to her questions were:

Yes, I live here
I've been here for over a year
I am a post-grad student/lecturer
I live in Flemington
No, I don't miss Cambridge.

In return, I asked her if she lived here, how long she'd been here, what she was doing and where she lived.

Small-talk obligations fulfilled, I asked if she'd been back to our home town recently - she'd been back for xmas. I asked if she found it weird being back there, going to the town's skanky old pub etc - she said 'not really' and commented that all the people we'd gone to school with just got 'taller and hairier' as time went by.

Luckily at this point it was time for me to get off - in fact I might have considered getting off even if it wasn't my stop.