Share your best personally experienced coincidences

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I was 27 and had a friend and I went on a road trip to the Grand Canyon when I hear someone yelling my name in front of the visitors center on the South Rim.

My best friend from the 2nd - 9th grade! She and her family had moved across Texas and I stayed with them a couple summers. We lost track of each other in college and I had been trying to find her.

This was pre-internet. I had been looking for her but hadn’t had any luck. She had also been looking for me, but changed locations, a marriage (for her), a divorce and relocation of her parents, etc., meant we never found each other.

She was living in Minnesota, I was living in Central Texas and we accidentally met up at the Grand Canyon. Amazing.

We haven’t lost track of each other again.

42

This one isn’t one I actually experienced, but I still find it funny. I have an Uncle who lives near Adeleide, Australia, and a few years back, he was planning to come over on a visit to the UK, on the first visit back here in about 20 years.
He mentioned to his neighbour that he was going, and was wondering how much had changed. His neighbour had recently been on a trip to England himself, partly to visit distant family, and invited him round to see his holiday photos. A large proportion of the pics were of a day trip they’d taken with the UK rellies. Taken at my parents’ business. It is a tourist attraction, but it’s not that big, and they don’t get many overseas visitors.

Someone mentioned bumping into old classmates- I bumped into two of them, one visiting the other, in Christchurch, New Zealand a few years back. They were apparently walking down the street discussing our old class, and who each of them had been keeping in touch with. :smiley:

Ok, one last one: I was walking through a nature reserve, at the time I was a member of it, and visited it every few weeks. I’d brought a friend to have a look round, and she was asking me what animals were found in the area- she asked me if there were any snakes around, and I answered ‘Supposedly yes, but I’ve lived in this area for 17 years, and I’ve never seen a single sna…’
There was an adder next to the path. I’ve never seen another snake in this country either. checks under couch

43

I moved from Hawaii to California a few years ago. When I played D&D in Hawaii we had a dude in our group for a bit named Jed. He fell out of our group and I never much thought about him again.

One of my friends came to Cali to visit me and we hit the local gaming store (which I very rarely went to, only did this time for my friend’s sake) and while we’re in the parking lot talking, my friend recognizes Jed walking out of the store to his car.

I didn’t even know he’d left Hawaii, very random.

44

When I was in elementary school in NJ, there were a pair of twins in my class - both boys. They had twin older brothers and twin younger brothers, which was pretty cool.

When I was in college, I was talking to a friend of mine who went to another college. She said that her resident assistant was dating a fellow who was a twin, and had two sets of twin younger brothers. My friend was very surprised that I could tell her the last name of her RA’s boyfriend.

45

One day in 1993, I took an afternoon drive drive with my friend and his uncle, right before I graduated college. Since we were all high, it sounded like a good idea to stop at this random roadside koi breeder and have a look at the fish.

That was the last day I saw either of them, until 2003, when my wife and I were driving that same stretch of road, and thought, hey, let’s check out that koi place again. Imagine my shock when I see my friend’s uncle there, at the same random place 10 years later, just, you know, checking out the fish. Before you ask, none of us were stoned that time :slight_smile:

46

I’ve posted this before - now rewritten with fake names instead of initials to make it easier to read. This sequence of events, in particular the first and second, is just so mindblowing I can hardly believe they happened, but they did.

  1. In the early 90s, my ex and I were living in Hong Kong. The ex’s cousin Catriona was on her way to Australia from Ireland, and stopped over for a few days.

On the Tuesday of that week, I took a sickie from work, and we went to a little café on a little island in Hong Kong harbour for a morning coffee with Catriona. We were sitting out on the patio overlooking the harbour, and Catriona was getting all excited about her trip to Australia.

There was only one other table occupied on the terrace. The western girl at this other table was eavesdropping, and she turned to Catriona and said “you lucky thing, going to Australia!” She also had an Irish accent.

Catriona looked at her, open-mouthed, and asked “Is your name Mary O’Riordan?”

“Yes!” said the other woman. “How did you know that?”

“Because I gave you a lift from Portlaoise to Cork two weeks ago.” She opened her purse. “And here’s the lighter you gave me.”

  1. Years went by, and I went to visit a friend in Wales. His brother and girlfriend were living with him. His brother introduced his girlfriend: “This is Rose.” We got to talking, and I told her I was living in Hong Kong. “I only know one person there,” said Rose. “Her name is Mary O’Riordan. We grew up together - she’s like a sister to me.” Yup, same woman.

  2. Many more years go by, I moved to Ireland. I got a new job. I walked in to meet my new closest colleague: it was Catriona.

47

My wife is from a small town around 3 hours north of where I live. She went to a small college a little while away from there for her first two years of higher education. She transferred to my home town for her last two years of school. Anyway, not long after she and I hooked up, I went by her mom’s house on the way home from visiting my parents to pick up a dress for her honor’s program.

It turns out I had ridden by her house more than once as a child while travelling up to the mountains. And to top that, the first college she attended near her home was the same school my best friend attended, who lived down the street from me, and I saw his picture in hre yearbook…creepy. Small freakin world.

48

I joined the Air Force in 1991 and a few months later, just as I was about to graduate “Tech School”, I noticed a guy that I went to high school with was in the chow hall. Neither of us knew that the other was joining the service.

Almost 2 years later, while I was stationed in Korea, I was walking out of my office and ran into him again. He told me that a girl that we both went to high school with also worked on the base.

In 1995 I went on a one-day TDY (Temporary Duty) to Washington DC with about 10 other people. Fast forward to 2011, as I was going through some old paperwork I noticed a picture that was taken of that trip. There, in the back, was a guy that I am currently working with. Neither of us remembered each other from the trip.

While going through my paperwork I also found a list of people that I had graduated Basic Training with… the husband of a current co-worker was on that list. Again, neither of us remembered the other.

49

Not personally experienced, but weird coincidences follow my parents around. Here are just a handful. My memory of some of these stories may be slightly off.

-Once they went on vacation and left just before two hurricanes with almost exactly their first names hit the spot where they had been vacationing.

-Once they went to see a play in New York City and my dad, a Chicagoan Jew married to a Greek woman, discovered that the man sitting next to him shared all of those characteristics.

-The address (or the phone number, I forget) of my brother’s doctor is my dad’s birthdate (day, month, year).

-All four of my grandparents are from, or have lived in, the Twin Cities. Neither of my parents were born in Minnesota, and they met in Florida.

  • My favorite story, and I’ve shared it here before: in law school, my dad was noticing that a friend of his looked really familiar. He finds out she’s Greek; oh, that makes sense, his wife (my mom) is Greek. Then he asks her where in Greece her family’s from. Same tiny town (current population <5000, probably around 200 people back in the early 20th century) as my mom’s family. Then they find out that my mom’s grandmother and her grandmother were cousins.

Here are a couple of my own stories:

-On more than one occasion, I’ve had someone say a very specific phrase in a dream and then have someone say it the next day. The one I remember best is “it smells like marijuana”. Not a phrase I hear often in day-to-day life, especially not then at age 10.

-I was on a cruise with my family which went to Alaska from Vancouver. At the teen lounge thing, people are introducing themselves. Two of them say they are siblings from what I thought was “BC” but actually turned out to be… DC. Where I live as well. So I asked them where in DC. Oh, not actually DC, actually the suburbs in northern VA. Well, me too. In fact, they live in my neighborhood, two streets away.

50

So there’s this radical queer punk who runs in some of the same circles I do. I’ll call them “Jo” (not their real name, but yes their real pronouns). I used to have a mammoth crush on them, because they’re freaking gorgeous.

Anyway, in 2009 I went to the International Conference on LGBT Human Rights at the Outgames in Copenhagen – a rousing and very political event but not quite Jo’s scene, right? Lots of MPs and people in suits and that sort of thing. Nevertheless, while I was there I went to a grungy drag show in this cool underground venue, and while I’m there I turn around and there’s Jo. Apparently they’re living in Berlin, doing some sort of gig in Hamburg and up in Copenhagen to hang out with friends.

Okay, fine, I run into a queer I know at a big queer event. But it gets better (badum-tish). So a month or two ago, one of my friends got a job in Maniwaki, Quebec, this little town of 4,000 people way off in the boonies, about four hours’ drive north of Montreal. I mean, it’s halfway to Val-d’Or and that’s far.

So we get my friend moved in, and since we have the car and he doesn’t have one, we take him to the Maxi to shop for food and stuff. And there I am, between the coffee and the granola bars, and there’s Jo. Big as life, twice as nice, towering majestically over the tinned soup aisle. Okay, Copenhagen was one thing but what the hell are they doing in Saint-Beau-Milieu-de-Nulle-Part, Quebec???

It turns out they’ve got a friend with a cabin in the woods and they’re off getting supplies. I don’t even. Someday I’ll join NASA and go to Mars and I’ll come around a boulder on Chryse Planitia and there’ll be Jo.

51

Just curious, if you’re using real pronouns, does that mean “Jo” was more than one person? Conjoined twin maybe?

52

No, they use singular “they” for gender reasons.

53

My SO and I met at university in London. Our parents all come from the same small town in the north of England, but none of them live there now. Before they all moved away, my grandfather owned a factory outside the town which burned down. My SO’s father was one of the firemen who attended.

54

I bought my wife a dozen roses last Valentines Day. However, when they delivered the flowers I noticed that we had been shorted one rose. I grumbled about it for a while but never bothered to go back to the flower shop to complain. Fast forward seven months later, I ordered another dozen roses for our anniversary. When the delivery guy came to the door and my wife took the flowers from him I said half-jokingly “You’d better count them and make sure we got a dozen!” My wife paused for a moment and then said “We got thirteen.”

It took me most of the afternoon to convince her that the bonus rose was completely a coincidence and that I really had nothing to do with it.

55

Two Saturdays ago, I was at my niece’s birthday party. My cousin who set me up with my girlfriend was also there. Unknown to me, my girlfriend had sent a text to my cousin telling her that she was in love with me and was afraid to say anything, since at that point we’d only known each other for a week and she was afraid she’d scare me away.

My cousin didn’t say anything to me about it. I was feeling the same way as my girlfriend, but on an impulse I said what the hell and text’d to her that I loved her.

Totally blew our minds how that worked out.

56

Back in the bad old days when I still worked I was doing payroll for a mine in Wyoming. Someone had a question about a check that required me actually looking at the check in question. It was, I think, about a year or so old.

The guy across the hall from me was doing an audit of the payroll, there hadn’t been on for a couple of years. He had some 25,000 checks to go through.

When I went into his office to look through the boxes for the one I needed it turned out to be the very one he was holding in his hand at that moment.

57

Two—one a bit morbid, the other a bit maudlin. I’ll try and keep these as short as possible, particularly as you can probably see where they’re going a mile away.

Morbid:
About fifteen or twenty years ago, I changed my birthday (don’t ask; another long story). I put a lot of effort into picking out the day (e.g. not too close to another holiday, a good time of year, not related to anything, etc.). There were a small string of coincidences that followed (e.g., it’s the anniversary of Mrs. Devil’s first marriage), but nothing too major. Until a few months ago. Visiting some relatives, I found out it’s the day the person I’m named after died in a motorcycle accident. I knew the backstory, but never knew anything about the timing.
Maudlin:
I met the future Mrs. Devil while in law school (hi Gadarene![sup]*[/sup]). Bit rough, going to school in DC and seeing her in NYC. Anyway, fast forward a few years and I’m studying for the Bar. A few miracles of timing came together, and I ended up finding the perfect ring with the perfect backstory and other maudlin details (particularly hard for a just-out-of-law-school-studying-for-the-bar-self). I got the ring sneakily shipped to me, took her folks out for dinner to ask them beforehand, all the trimmings (see, told you maudlin). One problem.

When it all came together it was the week of Valentine’s Day. Both of us are incredibly cynical and were of the ‘Hallmark Holidays can bite us’ ilk. So there I am on the phone with a close friend basically saying “WTF am I going to do. Not ask her on Valentine’s Day just to spite Hallmark? That’s a bit petulant. But getting engaged on V’Day is so fucking trite.” His advice was to not sweat it—it was time, and besides, no one really celebrates or remembers the day you get engaged.

I agreed and it was a fabulous V’Day.

For our engagement party, we rented out a restaurant, invited a ton of friends and kept the Johnny Black and Grey Goose flowing until dawn. Great times.

We then went into business together, bought a house, and got otherwise distracted.

About a year later, the same friend flew in to visit and check out our new place. About fifteen minutes after he arrived during the smalltalk/catch-up time, he asked “so, you guys threw this kick-ass party; when’s the wedding?” I looked at him. Looked at Mrs. Devil. Looked back at him and said “tell you what, you fly with us to Vegas this weekend and we’ll get married.” We’d never talked about eloping, but somehow I didn’t need to ask if she’d be into it as well—it was perfect.

Except … except travelling out was a nightmare. It was 2005, the winter of that snowstorm that shut down the east coast airports for days. After having three separate itineraries get cancelled out from under us on successive days, we were just about to give up hope. That is, we were going to leave on Friday, but SHIT!, it’s cancelled. Then Saturday, but the same thing. Then Sunday, we finally make it out. We had to drive from NY to Philly, but we made it. There were lots of perfect things (the Venetian had an opening, we found our ideal wedding bands at the last moment, etc.). The three of us had a blast.

Oh, the coincidence? He arrived about a year later. Our plans got changed due to the snow—pushed back a few days. Until… until we ended up getting married on Valentine’s Day.
I love my life.

[sup]*Er, I met Gadarene after randomly finding out via the Boards that we were in the same section. We’re not married. [/sup]

58

A couple of nights ago I was in a pub chatting with some friends and some other people I’d never met before, and a few people started talking about star signs. In, like, a serious way. Myself and one other guy moaned loudly and both started talking about much we hated astrology, and even using the exact same arguments to describe why it was a load of crap, yadda yadda. For a moment we were really bonding over how similar we were in our views… until we very inconveniently discovered that we had the exact same birthdays, down to the year. :smack:

59

I don’t understand why you’re using the word ‘maudlin’ here.

60

Some time in the spring of 2009, my wife gets a mailer about a class action suit related to a drug she’s been taking since dirt was young. Usually she plays along with these, knowing if she is on the winning side, she might get $5. This one required lots of documentation from pharmacies about frequency of use, and she gets a couple of printouts covering many years and sends them in. We soon forget about it.

At the end of 2010, I find out I’m losing my job because the contract will dry up on New Year’s Eve. My company offers me a position at a different office, about 200 miles from the old. We will have to move, and I don’t have two dimes to rub together.

January of this year, she gets a nondescript envelope in the mail. It’s a settlement check from that class action suit, and it’s enough $$$$ to cover a fast trip back to Indiana and the out of pocket expenses related to a corporate move.