I forget to put my leftovers in the fridge last night and since it was fried chicken and beef cutlets, I figured it would be okay to eat since it was cool enough during the night (I keep my A/C on all night). I warmed up the food and put it on the side while I prepared a place to eat, then accidentally knocked over my bowl. Splat, completely all over the floor!
I gave the 5 second rule a quick thought, then chalked it up to divine intervention (I’m a believer). Eating the leftovers wouldn’t have been a good idea.:smack:
Whether or not you’re religious, what are coincidences that you’ve had, that turned out to be a good or bad. Yes, I know there’s confirmation bias, but sometimes it just has to be more than a coincidence…or was it???
When I lived alone, I regularly made meals large enough to last three or four days. It was not unusual to forget to put the pot away, and it would be left out overnight without AC in Texas. Never had a problem. Common sense tends to trump folk theology and Facebook nannies.
When my oldest daughter was accepted to the university of her choice, we found that she would be required to live on campus the first year. She had a Dalmatian she had raised since a 6 week old puppy. The dog was 7 yrs old and had spent her entire life here. My daughter was insisting the dog should go to college with her. Of course it wasn’t possible. But she was distraught about it, swearing she would never leave her dog. Every morning she ran and the dog ran with her. One morning they were running and the dog collapsed, she got her home and we went to the vet. The dog died later that day. The vet said it was a heart attack. Well, the dog moving to college was no longer a problem. We grieved as we always do with the loss of a loved family member. Coincidence, IDK?, but maybe.
The lawn guys were supposed to come yesterday (Friday). For some reason, Thursday morning my wife and I cleaned up the back yard (dog poop, dog toys, hose, etc.); 10 minutes after completion, here come the lawn guys.
I was thinking about the song Black Dog by Led Zeppelin while driving today, something I’d heard about different parts being in different time signatures. I’d heard JPJ had the idea to do that to make the song undanceable. I thought HEARING the song right now would sure elucidate that. I flipped through the channels, and lo and behold: one station was playing Black Dog.
Once when my family was really poor there was a day when we literally didn’t have anything to eat that day, just milk and water in the fridge.
So imagine our surprise when we got the daily newspaper and there were three single serving boxes of cereal as part of some promotion they were doing. Only time I’ve ever gotten free food with my newspaper.
Strange things happen to me on a fairly regular basis; I don’t think of them as being divine or supernatural (although I do believe in both) just more a matter of me being who I am and getting around a lot. In the ways described in the OP, back in my college days I realized I had left my car unlocked just before getting to class – early as usual. Normally I would have just ignored it; the car was a POS and there wasn’t anything in it worth stealing but this time I decided to head back. And the building the classroom was in blew up. (Pitt mid-70s in case you want to Google).
The more common thing with me is seeing people in places and situations you wouldn’t expect. Again, a byproduct of getting out and around a lot, my wife claims she can’t take me anywhere without bumping into someone I know or who knows me. Visit a Cracker Barrel in Macon Georgia and the waitress is an old girl friend. Go to a seafood place in Saco Maine and the people two tables away recognize me from a history event I run in Cook Forest (PA) ---- she falls in Carowinds Amusement Park and the person walking by just happens to be a doctor I went to grade school with near Wilkes-Barre who actually recognizes me 50 years older. Some new guy starts at work and his Dad rode motorcycles with me in the 70s. That kind of coincidences is so common with me that it almost freaks even me out.
1994, I was scheduled to go stag to my senior prom. Really didn’t want to, deep down, but Mom had put up$150 for tux rental, I had missed my junior prom, etc. Then grandpa dies four days prior to the prom. Rode a Greyhound bus 8 hours one way to be a pallbearer at his funeral the same day as the prom. Mom got half her deposit back, but didn’t complain, given the circumstances.
Still grateful to gramps for getting me out of that situation.
Oh, also, I met and became engaged to a woman while we both lived about 70 miles outside Washington, D.C. Turns out her sister and my brother BOTH lived in Seattle, Wash., less than a mile apart!
I saw a friend from school who I haven’t seen for 15 years. Week after that, I saw him again. Two days after, again. This pattern repeats every year, with dozen different people.
Years ago a stray cat that we fed had 3 or 4 kittens. We took care of the family for a while and the evening before we called the Humane Society to pick them all up, we couldn’t find the most precocious one. My then girlfriend found him under the hedge next door and said that he didn’t want to leave us. We buried him in the backyard.
Just re-read my post above and meant to say: “My then girlfriend found his body under the hedge next door and said that he didn’t want to leave us. We buried him in the backyard.” The original sentence makes it sound like I’m a psycho!
One time when I was flat broke with a week to go before pay day and wondering how I was gonna eat that week, I decided to go for a walk and, lo and behold, there was a $50 note just lying on the sidewalk near my house. Crisis solved. Thank you immensely, clumsy and inadvertently generous stranger!
I used to keep a journal of weird coincidences in my life that had quite a lot in it. Thinking of someone I hadn’t seen for ages and then running into them randomly a few days later, hearing songs on the radio, flipping channels and finding people on different TV shows happening to say something similar in a different context, that kind of thing. One I remember is that in March 2002, my mom had mentioned she had a dream that the Queen Mother died, about a week before it happened. A little eerie, but she was 101…
We sold our house and hadn’t found a new one yet so we were going to stay with my parents until we found one. We had a big dog that stayed in the house. My parents had a big dog that lived outside most of the time. They also had a cat. Our dog was not good with cats and I don’t think my parents were too thrilled with having our dog inside all the time. We didn’t know what we were going to do. A week before we had to be out of our house our dog was hit and killed by a car. She just happened to get out and was found in an area she never went before. It was horribly sad for all of us. The kids had a really hard time with it. But I remember thinking, well we don’t have to worry about what to do with the dog now.
When I was a teen, my mother, who works in a zoo, was asked to be the ‘bug expert’ on some phobia themed reality TV show, basically because the zoo had a handle-able tarantula. The morning they were filming, she called to confirm time and location, and the TV guys casually asked her to bring ‘a really big house spider as well’. Just before she was due to head out. Why they thought that was reasonable, I have no idea; I suspect they’d just failed to find one and thought they’d make it someone else’s problem.
Cue Mum freaking out about where to get a big house spider at no notice. I mean, have you ever tried to find a big house spider? They just appear when you don’t want one. None of us had noticed any around, and I wasn’t going to make their lack of planning my emergency. So I left her looking, and went into my brother’s room (he was away at Uni) to borrow a book, and there in the corner was a pint glass he’d left, trapped in the pint glass was the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in that house.
I think it’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever been been in need of. Ungoliant was looking out for me that day.
Driving back from Glastonbury Festival, pulled into a lay-by to allow a minor weed-induced panick attack pass. Wound down the window to listen to the flock of sheep in the adjoining field. Pressed play on the car CD player, and the sound of the sheep segued perfectly into Pink Floyd’s “Sheep” from the Animals album.
Yeah, OK, a coincidence that was just a coincidence. Trippy though.
