It’s not much, but reading the boards tonight I saw the word “invigilated” in a thread. I noticed it because it wasn’t a word I’d seen before. 30 minutes later, I encountered it in the book I was already reading (Simon Winchester’s Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire).
I’ve already mentioned my “ghost story” here at least three times, so I’ll just mention the birthday coincidence that I’ve only mentioned once before!
Last year the birthdays of my wife and me both fell on Saturday, as did those of our two children, as did our wedding anniversary. My father’s birthday and those of both my grandfathers also landed on Saturday. That much is already almost a million-to-one against, but there’s more: Three of my 8 great-grandparents had birthdays fall on Saturday last year. Going back five generations to my agnatic gt-gt-gt grandfather Septimus Stevens II — Saturday! That’s 12 Saturdays altogether. (I know those old birthdates because I’m an amateur genealogist. By the way, my records show death-dates for 21 of these close ancestors; and it’s better than 96% that one would fall on Saturday, but none did.)
Of course this coincidence didn’t occur just last year. All 12 dates landed on Friday the year before that; and all on Thursday the year before that; all will fall on Tuesday next year. (I could write “same day-of-the-week every year” but two of the 12 are February people, and thus “odd men out” on leap years.)
In 1987, the wife and I moved to Aptos(Santa Cruz area). Just before, I bought my dream bike, a 1983 Yamaha Vision still new at a dealer in San Jose(one of only two new ones in California) Several years later, I’m training a new driver at work. The conversation turns to motorcycles and he told me that he had almost bought a Yamaha Vision.
He had found one new at a dealer, borrowed the money from his grandma but had to wait for the check to be mailed. Got the check, deposited, cashiers’ check and rushed to the dealer only to find the bike had been sold that morning.
I was talking to the friend of a very good friend whom I had met after all three of us finished with college. So FoaF said something and I said randomly, gee you sound just like a high school friend named Jane Unusual surname. She stopped and thought then said Emily Unusual surname? Emily is Jane’s youngest sister! I said. Emily was my freshman college room mate, FoaF replied.
One that happened earlier this month:
I work in a classified lab (where you’re not allowed to have cell phones), but my actual desk where I check email and work on documents is in a different building that’s a few-minute drive from the lab. My manager told me he did not want me going back to the building because I needed to be close-by when someone in the lab had a question.
That afternoon, my manager asked me to do something I hadn’t done in a few months, and I said “Okay, well then I need to go back to the office to print out instructions.” I drove back to the office, in a hurry because my manager was waiting on me. In those few minutes while I was pulling up the document, my phone rang. It was HR, desperately trying to get in touch with a coworker of mine who had had a family emergency. I knew exactly where he was (in the lab, without access to his phone), and I told her I would be happy to convey the message to him right away. The fact that I was at my desk at the very instant I needed to be, even though I wasn’t allowed to be there that day, was a cool coincidence, in my opinion.
Here’s mine again -
Something a bit eerie that happened to me.
We’ve had boxers since 2003. The first boxer puppy was brought home by our son right after he graduated high school. He used his grad party money to buy the dog. After that our family was smitten with boxers. Since that first puppy, we’ve had 2 more boxers plus a boxer mix.
Back story - As most of you know, my son died 4+ years ago from cancer. He and I were very close.
A couple of weeks ago I was on the website The Grommet. They offer unique-type gifts. I clicked on the tab titled “Gifts for Pet Owners”. They had some really cute dog breed silver necklaces. Some were whole the whole body of the dog with a small heart cut into it and another style was the head of the dog with a small heart cut into it. I thought to myself that I wouldn’t mind having a boxer necklace, though I never did order one.
Two days later, I was Swiffering under the TV cabinet. I saw something that looked like a piece of tin foil way in the back next to the wall. My first thought was that it was a candy wrapper that one of the little kids dropped and then ended up finding its way under there. I used the mop to pull it out. I picked it up and turned it over…It was a silver boxer necklace charm…with a heart cutout!!! I never saw it before, I know I never had one otherwise when I spotted them online it would have made me think about one I had. I also had cleaned under there a couple of weeks ago and never noticed it. I can’t think of anyone that would have been in my house that would have been wearing a boxer necklace. No one that I know has a boxer AND if I had seen someone wearing one, I would have commented on it for sure, exclaiming that I wish I had one.
So where did it come from? I choose to think that my son sent it. Crazy? Maybe, but it makes me feel good. And I have no other explanation.
This reminded me of another one that happened just a few months ago:
I’m watching Password Plus, and am curious about one of the celebrities, so I look him up in IMDb. Which shortly turns to looking up the other celebrity, Debralee Scott, whom I normally only associate with Match Game. The thing is, I had already closed IMDb so I just Googled her name and Password, which brought up this video on YouTube. Don’t watch it yet, or at all, depending.
Spoilered to comply with 2-click rule. Video is hardly NSFW, but I don’t know where you W, so who knows.
The title is “Debralee Scott bares her beasts on Password” or something like that. I wasn’t actually planning to watch it until I noticed that the top she was wearing in the still image looked an awful lot like the one she’s wearing on the episode I’m watching at that very moment. Already too long story short, it was indeed the very episode she apparently became somewhat infamous for.
Spoilers, “bares her breasts” is something of an overstatement for the YouTube video, and was even moreso on the air, which blurred the area. Basically, it simply becomes completely obvious that she’s not wearing a bra.
My first week in law school, and I’m sitting around in a ‘Getting to know each other’ session with my new classmates when I mention that my Dad was a judge. One of them responded that her Dad was a judge as well. So I wondered if they knew each other, and she said that she was going home that weekend and would ask.
So, on Monday I walk into the lounge and see her, so I ask if they knew each other. Her response, “I asked him if he knew your Dad, and he he said, ‘Know him? I was in his wedding.’”
Eleven years after I graduated from high school, I walked into a brand new job at a company that had just opened a local office, only to find that a brand-new coworker was one of my high school girlfriend’s BFFs. We did not like each other in high school and we did not like each other as adults.
Twenty-five years after that I walked into my brand new job and learned that my department’s administrative assistant was the kid sister of guys I hung out with in elementary school. Not only that, but our boss used to hang out with the younger sister of someone I had dated for several months.
Many years ago…
I got a new Styx album. I didn’t know any songs except for the top 40 songs. I put it on and started reading the Hobbit. (pardon any mistake in the story - it was years ago). In the book Bilbo found a ring and put it in his pocket. Later while in trouble he noticed the ring and put it on. As soon as he put the ring Styx started singing… “All hail to the Lords of the Ring”.
I love this one! What a great story.
The Mrs. and I were hiking in Death Valley one morning. we met another couple hiking, chatted for 5-10 minutes, went on our way.
Later that afternoon, hiking elsewhere about 35 miles away, we met them again! Ha ha, what a coincidence! Chatted for 30 minutes, went on our way.
That night, at Stovepipe Wells, we visited the general store across from our motel. Who pulls in to gas up? That other couple! we talk for an hour, exchange emails. Go our separate ways
Next day at the visitor’s center, 25 miles away, we bump into them in the parking lot. Go on a hike with them, spend the afternoon with them. Lovely folks!
Day after that, we’re cruising past the Devil’s cornfield, and we recognize their vehicle on the side of the road, see them hiking in the cornfield, pay another visit.
That’s 5 unplanned encounters over 3 days with the same couple, in a National Park with over 5,000 square miles in it, at various places scattered many miles apart.
A year or so after, they were traveling in our neck of the woods, and we hosted them for a few days at our place.
This remains our greatest coincidence.
I’m sure I’ve told this one before. Around 1985-ish my roommate and I road-tripped from Lawrence KS to the NYC area for spring break. I dropped him off in Stamford CT to spend the week with his girlfriend, then headed out to Long Island to stay with some friends who were going to grad school at SUNY Stony Brook.
One day we took the train into the city, spent the day doing touristy stuff, and were heading back to Penn Station to catch the train back home. As we’re waiting to cross the street in the middle of Times Square, my friend Deb points out a guy waiting on the other side of the street. “Oh my God, look at that hick over there. He looks like he just blew in from Kansas!” It was my roommate.
Yeah, but you did just schlep your roommate from Kansas to NYC, so was it such a big surprise to see him in a tourist area that’s literally an intersection?
I had, or nearly had, a much more unlikely moment. A few years ago, I visisted China on a 2+ week tour. On Day 3 or so, we visited Beijing with a day trip to a section of the Great Wall, then returned to our hotel where we were free to do as we liked for the night.
As we were leaving the Wall, around 4pm or so, I used a VPN to get around the Great Firewall of China to check Facebook, and to post a picture of me and my family while there. Almost immediately, despite the massive time zone difference from NY where most of my friends are (where it was 4am), I got a comment/response from a friend of mine who I’d grown up with, still lived in the NYC area, and whose wedding I had just been to a few months earlier: “Wow! Where are you?”
“Uh… At the Great Wall of China… Duh?”
“No, I mean where are you RIGHT NOW?”
(I switch to FB messenger)
“What are you going on about? I’m on a bus heading back to our hotel in Beijing.”
“Where is your hotel?!”
“… Where is this going?”
“I’M IN BEIJING TOO! Check out my Facebook wall!”
And sure enough, he had JUST posted a pic of himself at the Great Wall. At a point where I know I walked! We had been a few hours from running into each other, half a world away from where both of us live. His group had gone to the Wall in the morning, ours in the afternoon.
And here’s the really funny thing: we’re both Chinese-American. So, we kind of “blended in” with the local population that constituted the majority of the visitors there. It would have been one of those moments where I’d be looking at someone in a large crowd of Asian faces and thinking, “Man, that guy there really looks like X - haha!” and him doing the same for me, before it dawned on one of us that yeah, it really WAS him. (Neither of us have family there either, our families from our parents’ or grandparents’ generations are pretty much all in Taiwan.)
He had also just gotten back to his hotel room, which was only a few blocks from mine. So we met for dinner at a nearby restaurant.
Still makes me laugh at the idea that that scenario could have happened.
Beginning of my junior year of high school in Oregon, I made friends with a senior who had just moved from California. Halfway through the year, my dad got a new job in California. After debating a couple other options, I ended up transferring to that guy’s old school. I didn’t know, it took a mutual friend of his and my younger brothers after a few months to make a connection.
I was in South America visiting with a group of other exchange students and sharing pictures of our travels. One girl said she had visited my hometown in the states and pulls out a picture of her at the beach. I pointed to a boat in the background. It was mine!
I was talking to a high school friend during the summer after freshman year in college. She mentioned that her RA’s boyfriend was a twin and had two sets of younger twin brothers (six male children in the family in three sets of twins). I asked if the last name was [Unusual Last Name] and it was. I had known the middle set of twins when I went to elementary school in a different state.
I think the coincidence part was the friend looked at random dude in Times Square and said “he looks like a hick from Kansas” and it actually was a hick from Kansas (Shoeless’ road trip buddy).
Agreed, but considering he was staying about an hour from the city in one direction, and I was staying an hour or more away in another direction, and we had no idea what each other’s plans were during the week, and just happened to be in NYC the same day, at the same intersection at the same time… I still think it’s a pretty big coincidence.
On the other hand, my wife has twice run into relatives from halfway across the country while on vacation in Rocky Mountain National Park.
After getting my PhD, I took a job at the University of Chicago. Seven years later I moved to Yale. We took a summer vacation driving to Vancouver where I worked at UBC for the summer. We stopped at Yellowstone on the drive out. After hiking down some trial to see a waterfall (whose name escapes me) we met the family of a senior colleague from Chicago.