When I went to London to live for a couple of years I stayed at a hotel the first night. When I got up the next morning and went out to explore Hyde Park the first person I met was our school captain 2 years ahead of me at high school.
I once joined a group of guys talking about the quickest injury they had ever seen in a football game. One guy told a story about a game where one of his teammates was sliding on his knees to get the ball from a trick kickoff and had collided with the knee of the opposition winger who was trying to run around him. Without knowing the guy I said, “this was on an interschool visit to Canberra. The guy got kneed in the temple and had to be taken to hospital before anyone had touched the ball.” He was dumdfounded until I revealed that I would have told the same story, it was my knee that injured him. The other guy had gone to school in Cooma and we worked together in Sydney probably 14 years later.
At the current company that I work for, I work at the head office. We have 22 employees, of which 11 of us are desk jockeys, not including the owner and his executive assistant. Of those 11:
6 of us are lefties, including me, though myself and one other are writing-lefties only. (We’re right-handed in everything else.)
Myself and 2 others grew up in the same area of the city, in the same general city block, within 5 years of each other.
Myself and my immediate supervisor live in the same city just north of the one we work in
5 of us came to this company from other companies in a related field lower on the food chain, and we have dealt with at least one of our existing clients at those previous jobs.
It doesn’t really sound like much, but it all adds up to a lot of coincidences for one somewhat small company.
I mentioned this once, in another thread: A while back I had to go and get new plates for my car. I also had to stop at a guy’s house and pay him for something. The plates I got (3 letters and 4 numbers) were identical to the guy’s initials and the amount I owed him. The odds of that happening are one in 175,760,000!
At a job I once worked, I was in a ‘cell’ with four other people. The purchasing agent grew up in a duplex that was converted into four apartments of which one was where I was living. I was sleeping in his old bedroom.
I was wondering why after I moved there I had the overwhelming need to call people and haggle over pennies and lead times for items I didn’t care about.
I was taking the Amtrak from NYC to Indianapolis and stopped off in Chicago. I had a wait of about three hours before my connecting train. Since I’d never been to Chicago before, I got out and decided to hurry and see as much as I could. It was around 8AM, I dashed out, roamed around a bit. The streets were rather empty (it was a Saturday). I was a little lost and thought I’d ask for directions from the only person I saw nearby, a woman walking toward me. As she got closer, I realized I knew her – in fact, I’d worked with her back in NYC a year prior to this at my last job. She was only in town for the weekend. Considering the populations of both cities, the odds of seeing someone I actually knew (especially someone who didn’t live their, either) seems pretty small. Freaked. Me. Out.
This was even stranger, happened about fifteen years ago. I’m an Anglophile and have seen many British TV shows and films, and one thing I’d noticed was that many of them seemed to feature a hymn (with the text “And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England’s mountains green…”) but never seemed to say what the heck that hymn was. (Now I know it’s “Jerusalem,” of course.) It became a running joke with me and my sisters, waiting to hear the song turn up in whatever we were watching. I was always wondering what it was called, but since this was before the web, looking up lyrics wasn’t easily done. Plus it wasn’t something I ever remembered to do.
Anyway, one day my friend (a fellow singer) was going to Patelson’s, which is a famous music store here in NYC, and I tagged along. When I was inside, I suddenly remembered that hymn and so I snooped around the religious music area hoping to find some reference to this particular hymn. No luck, not surprisingly.
So my friend bought her music and we left. We were walking about three blocks from the store when I noticed this person up ahead of us is singing to herself. Not a rare occurance in NYC, to be sure. But she was singing the infamous hymn!! I swear to God, I nearly got run over by a car in my attempts to cross the street and get this woman’s attention. And no, she hadn’t been in Patelson’s with us – and even if she had, how would she know what I was looking for? I hadn’t asked anyone in the store for help in finding the music. She told me the name of the hymn and that was that. Hilarious. I’m a fiction writer now and honestly, I wouldn’t dare include anything like this 'cause it’s too far-fetched!
The first person I ever met personally who had my same birthday and year was a lady who came to work for our company. She was 45 minutes older than I ( and always let me know it)… A few months later another younger lady came to work for us and had the same birthday and was only 1.5 hours off of our farthest birth time but exactly 10 years younger.
My Mother has the neatest birthday, 2-10-20.
My Father’s Sister in law’s Son in law is his Brother in law.
I lived in a small village (population about 3,000) in the greater Cincinnati area for a few years. I got calls for another guy with almost my exact same name* all of the time. He had the same full first name and last name, plus the same middle initial. It later learned that he also had the same birthdate, only 10 years earlier. I did not grow up near there nor am I related to this guy.
I found out we had the same birthdate when I went in to an appointment with the doctor who did my Lasik surgery. This other “me” was also a patient there (so presumably shares my genetic disposition to near sightedness). They were confused when they looked me up on the computer and the other guy’s name was in there as well. Had to get to the street address as the differentiator.
I never met the guy.
cue eerie music
*My full name is not that common, although not extremely uncommon.
Mom and I were born in the same hospital (different days and years though). My niece’s birthday is a day after my sister’s (her mom’s) - again, different years. And Mom’s birthday is 1 day before her sisters - yep, different years.
I know a family where father and daughter have the same birthday, in yes, different years.
