I recently received a scarf as a gift. The image on the scarf comes from a Tiffany window on display at a museum in NY and was purchased in NY. Thinking that the image looked familiar, I pulled out the business card holder I bought for myself 5 years ago in CA. It turns out they are based upon the very same window. The person who bought the scarf had no idea about the business card holder either.
I lived in Hong Kong for a few years. I lived on an island, so spent a lot of time on ferries - a minimum of 12 journeys a week but sometimes considerably more. One day guests were visiting from the UK, and we were on a ferry going to another island. As we were pulling into the pier, one of them asked me “Have you ever seen any marine life in the harbour?” “Not much,” I replied. “Though about a year ago, as we were pulling into the pier, I saw a manta ray jump out of the water.”
The exact moment I said that, a manta ray jumped out of the water. These two incidents were the only things I ever saw jump out of the harbour the whole time I lived there, and the second one came at the specific moment I mentioned the first one, at a completely different island.
Background information: I come from a relatively small town. For a long time, it only had one phone exchange and this was shared with surrounding areas. For example’s sake, let’s say it was 836. Eventually, sometime during my elementary school years, they added a new one; let’s say it was 832. This meant that most of the phone numbers in the area started with 836, but there was an ever-increasing number of 832 numbers as well. It also meant that if your phone number happened to be one of the newer 832 numbers, people would habitually dial 836 anyway and get the wrong number frequently.
Well, hope that made sense. Anyway, the story!
We had an 836 phone number for a long time, but one year we started getting a whole bunch of wrong number phone calls in the middle of the night. My dad got our phone number changed because it was annoying. We ended up with an 832 number. For example’s sake again, let’s say 832-0061.
My name is Lynn. There was a girl, my age, in my class named Lynne, whose family had the 836-0061 phone number. Our names are pronounced identically. The even funnier thing is that our fathers and brothers also have the same names. Two houses, same town, 3 people in each house with identical (or at least identical-sounding) names, phone numbers one digit apart. You can imagine the amusing wrong number phone calls that ensued.
About 5 years ago I was watching ER. The episode focused mostly on following a woman who just had a stroke, and we are watching the events though her eyes and thoughts. Half-way through the show, I get a call from my brother, saying that our Mom just had a stroke.
We attended a gathering of friends from all over North America, and one from Jamaica, this summer at the Grand Canyon. We drove from there to Las Vegas where we were to spend 2 nights before flying home.
We got off the highway in Kingman AZ to pop into a McDonald’s for a snack and potty break. As we walked in, Typo Knig stopped dead in his tracks in front of me then started laughing.
There at a table was one of the other families (the one from Jamaica, as it happened).
I have a parrot whose species comes from the mideast. One day, shortly after 9/11 she took a bath. She then flew to a window and started wiping her cheeks against the glass; when she was done I could clearly make out the Arabic letters for Allah Akbar on the window.
I started work at a new job, and was introduced to my new co-worker, with whom I would be sharing an office. It was the best frined of my old high-school girlfriend, whom I hadn’t seen (or thought of) in 10 years.
My father did better though. He was in Chicago, on business, walking up Michigan Ave. when he turned a corner and walked right into his brother, who was also there on business.
Several years back a friend and I went to Hickory, NC for a weekend gathering of gamer friends. Now, if you’ve ever had the misfortune to have to drive through Hickory, NC, they have the WORST street naming system known to man-a typical address is 4214 E. 14th St. NW (with NE, SW, and SE quadrants, and 14th St. Lanes and Circles, etc…).
Anyway, I told my friend I was going to psychically navigate our way there, because it was getting hopeless otherwise. I took a right, a left, turned down a cul-de-sac, and parked right outside the house we were going to.
My given first name was Cliff, which I grew up hating but didn’t get around to finding a replacement I liked until I was 35. I’d only ever met 2 other Cliffs in my entire life, one of whom was the man I was named after.
Anyway, several years ago I worked as a reporter for a midsized daily newspaper in Ohio. There was a case I was covering, a lawsuit if I remember correctly, and I wanted to talk to the defense attorney about it. I dug up his number, called, got his receptionist and asked to speak with him.
When he answered, I said, “Hi, Mr. so-and-so. This is Cliff (lastname) from the Review Times. I just wanted to ask you a few questions about the whatshisface case.”
I asked questions and he answered them for a few minutes. When I went to end the call he said, “Oh, by the way, I have your consulting check ready.”
“Excuse me?”
“The check is ready for the consulting work you did on the otherwhatshisface case.”
“Um, sir, I think you think you’re talking to someone else. We’ve never spoken and I’ve never worked with you. This is Cliff lastname from the Review-Times newspaper in Fostoria.”
“Not Cliff lastname the attorney from Bowling Green?”
“No, sir. In light of the fact that you thought you were talking to someone else, an attorney, is there anything you told me in our conversation about the whatshisface case that I shouldn’t use due to privilege?”
He said there wasn’t, apologized for the misunderstanding and we hung up.
Now, I’d only ever met two people with my first name in my life, but to find out there was an attorney practicing a couple counties over with my same first AND last names was a bit jarring.
On two different occasions, I’ve freaked people out by commenting on the Facebook pages of people they thought I shouldn’t know. One guy I went to grad school was in Peace Corps with someone I was also in Peace Corps with. (They had both served in Bangladesh. In the middle of their service, the program was ended due to safety concerns. She was reassigned to Bulgaria, where I knew her. He ended up moving to London and eventually went to grad school with me.) When we met, we immediately realized we had a mutual acquaintance, but I guess neither of us bothered to mention it to her, and she sent me a confused private message a few months later when she was surprised to see me comment on his Facebook status.
In the other case, I met a girl on the Albania/Macedonia border who had been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mongolia. This was before I was in grad school, but I knew I was going to go. She offhandedly mentioned that she knew someone from Peace Corps who was going to my school. Anyway, she and I became Facebook friends. I did eventually meet the guy she was talking about and I could have SWORN we had that same conversation establishing that we had a mutual friend, but once day he came up to me, totally weirded out that I had posted on this girl’s Facebook.
It’s the offbeat places where we randomly came together and that we’re all tied up electronically that tickle me.