My mom’s condo has a “tradition” of people putting old books, and magazines, into the mail room as a sort of honor code library. Idly perusing the shelves, noted a few old Asimov & Analog magazines, shrugged, and grabbed a few.
Come home to order something from Amazon, and right there on my front page are offers for subscriptions to both magazines, side by side, 1st two options. Note I have NEVER bought any subscriptions thru Amazon, ever…
A couple of years ago I was driving through a small town in western Oklahoma and stopped to get gas. It was such a small town that you did not even have to prepay for your gas before pumping. The young girl at the counter was amazed that I got exactly $22.22 on pump # 2. Then I paid with two dollar bills. This was not planned. It just worked out that way.
good call, ynnad. noticed another slinger … at the time i read your reply … it stated you had:
Posts: 226
*“$22.22 on pump # 2”*think i need to explain no further … <g>
My two favorite stories:
I went mountain climbing in Colorado when I was 18 years old. On the very top of Mt. Elbert, I met a guy named Garon. We got to talking, and he mentioned that he had lived in Singapore for a while. I said, “Hey, you’re the second person I’ve ever met from there.”
We started comparing notes, and found that we had dated the same girl- he’d dated her in Singapore, I’d dated her in Houston.
…
A couple of decades back, my (now) wife and I went to Half Price Books in Austin. I just wanted a book, she specifically wanted a copy of “So Long and Thanks for all the Fish” by Douglas Adams. We separated and went scouring through the stacks. A few minutes later she called me over to show me the hardbound copy she’d found, and said, “Open it”.
Inside, it said, “To Lightnin’, Best Wishes, Douglas Adams”. Needless to say, we bought that book.
A few years later, he came to Austin to sign for the game Starship Titanic. I took the book there and and told him the story. He then signed it, “And Again, Douglas Adams”.
All these numbers ones are delightful. I tend to take note of that sort of thing as well.
A former co-worker got me an interview with her new company. I didn’t think the interview went well. So I met her for dinner that night at a Chinese restaurant to discuss it. The former co-worker and myself lived nowhere near each other and the restaurant was 25 miles from the workplace and was just a typical Chinese restaurant, nothing famous. We eat our dinner and she proceeds to rip the boss a new asshole and tells me my experience wasn’t out of the ordinary. In anger I threw a few zingers out about him as well. She gets up to go to the restroom and quickly sits back down and whispers that her boss is in the next booth. She goes to the restroom and about 5 minutes later the boss gets up with his wife and stops by our table with a shit eating grin and says hello and wishes us a nice evening. He, of course, tells me I’ll hear from them soon. No job of course. Miraculously she didn’t get any shit for the incident, but would up quitting on her own a couple of months later.
Oh go on, one more: when I was a teenager, we went on a family holiday to Kenya. We spent one night staying at a campsite just outside the Maasai Mara, owned by a Maasai warrior who shared a name with my Dad. That’s not the coincidence, it’s a pretty common name, in fact, the Maasai guy had a half-brother who also had the same name, who gave us directions…
The coincidence was that the guy who owned the camp site was in the process of applying for an animal conservation course, run at Jersey zoo, that my Mum had been on the previous year. Something like 20 people a year did the course…
Re posted from another board.
Circa: late 80s, happily married to my wife.
I’m returning from visiting a friend of mine in Delaware. Walking around the Philly airport, I spy one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. I admire her from a distance. She’s with her two children. Not one of your typical drop dead gorgeous sexy types, but more the sweet, lovely, girl next door look. Dark brown hair and brown eyes. She is beautiful, but time to get to my gate. I make my way there to catch my flight to DFW, which is my connecting city on my way home to New Orleans. After checking in at the gate and settling in, I look up and there she and her kids are to check in for the very same flight. How nice I thought, gives me an opportunity to see her more. Please don’t think me some sort of pervert, as I refrained from staring or being too obvious. I was and am completely devoted to my wife, but this doesn’t prevent me from appreciating truly lovely woman. Anyway, I’m on the aisle and she’s on the opposite aisle, one seat up. Very pleasant flight. All good things must come to an end, so I’m on my way to my flight to New Orleans. Again, while waiting for my final flight to board, here she and her kids come. Yep, they’re going to New Orleans. What a lucky man I am today, I thought. After arriving in New Orleans and gathering up my luggage, I took one last look and was on my way home.
Three days later, I’m sitting at my desk at the travel agency where I was working and I look up and guess who’s walking in the door. Like a jack-in-the-box, I spring out of my chair to greet her. I live in Mandeville (north shore of Lake Ponchartrain) where my office was and it turns out that’s where she lived. New Orleans area has over a million people and she lives within two miles of me. She was from Chile and was married to an American oilman. Over the next 6 months, I handled all her and her family’s travel needs. Back and forth to Santiago, husbands travel, etc. I did get around to telling her that I recognized her and her kids from the flight from Philly. She was one of the nicest, friendliest, and most beautiful people I’ve ever known. Her husband was transferred to South Yemen or Yemen. Paulina and I exchanged letters and cards for about two months even after they had left.
The way I tell the story is exactly how it happened.
What are you doing? What are you doing? I love you! What are you doing?
“Huh, funny,” I say, coming up the stairs, “that sounds just my boss’s parrot. Just like him, in fact.”
My mother’s cousin is watching a video that his friend sent him. (I should note here that said second-cousin is from out of state, and so is pretty much everyone he knows).
“Let me look,” I tell him. “Wait. Wait. That is Willy. I’m almost sure of it.”
I asked my boss today if there were any YouTube videos of Willy, and she says her friends take and post videos of him a lot. So I’m taking that as a yes, it was him.
Which means my relative’s friend from who-knows-where just happened to randomly send him a video of a bird from New Jersey that I personally know. Something to be amused by in these grim times, anyway.
1980-ish. I’m living in Anchorage, Alaska. My father comes to visit. We go out to a Mexican place I know of. Halfway through our meal a guy gets up from across the room, comes over to our table and says “I know you! Mr. Silenus’sDad! I had you for 8th grade Earth Science at Richardson Junior High!” In 1960. In Southern California.
posted this recently : I was at a stoplight and checked my email and I had an email saying I had an item to pick up at REI and I had just driven past REI
If you had your smartphone with you when that happened, it really may not have been a coincidence, but a marketing ploy, Be prepared to be always watched by those who want to sell you things.
Headed home after a Mother’s Day visit. A pallet with stuff on it on the shoulder of the four-lane. Had to stop and look (because it’s usually gold bars). Some shingles, magazines, a steering column, and a zippered bag of clothes which I grabbed for rags in the shop. A couple of weeks later I open the bag and find several drugstore processed envelopes of pictures, some of baby and grandma. That girl’s name and phone number on the envelope so I made several phone attempts with no luck.
Father’s Day visit and I’m reading the paper at mom and dads. Big article - That girl.
I took the pictures to the police to return to That girl.
I’ve become more circumspect in my dumpster diving.
Mr. Celtic Knot and I are high school sweethearts. We did not attend the same school, we taught at a Christian school in Baltimore. I (sort of) grew up in MD, and he grew up in Indiana. My parents grew up in IN, but hours away from where Mr.CK did.
That we both ended up teaching in that school was a coincidence. I had read about the school and had decided not to apply when a former church leader suggested it. I needed something, so I did. A guy from Indiana applying to the same school? We compared notes about job hunting, and found that through a Christian employment website we had both applied to the same tiny school in a tiny community in MT that didn’t interview either of us.
My father went to college in Mr.CK’s tiny hometown. We didn’t make any connection until our rehearsal dinner (in Baltimore, not IN), when Mr.CK’s grandfather, who was a professor at said college, asked my dad if he had passed his class. Grandpa S. was a major instructor for that subject, and Dad’s employer had hired many men from that school to work in that department. It was big news to them that J’s daughter had married AS’s grandson. My husband and my dad have had conversations discussing places in that small town.
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I had a dream that came true once. I had taught 1st grade in an elementary school one year. The next summer, 3 weeks before teachers were supposed to report back, I dreamed that my time card (yes, teachers had to punch a time clock) was not in the slot for first grade but in the 6th grade slot. Nightmare. 6th grade?
First day back for teachers and I go to clock in. As I had dreamed, my time card was in the 6th grade slot. The awful, non-educator, political appointee principal decided I was going to teach a 6th grade class deliberately stacked with all the worst students in the grade. He didn’t bother to tell me ahead of time, saying something was wrong with my answering machine. I lasted until the end of 3rd quarter before I was calling the district begging for a transfer. Thankfully, I went to a much better school from there.
one time in the summer I went to my car about 11 pm. I thought this would be a bad time to have a dead battery. And sure enough the battery was dead. Maybe that was ESP?
When I was in first grade, my best friend was Lori. Lori’s family moved to a neighboring state before second grade started. We exchanged a very few letters up until I was in 7th grade but I never saw her again and we lost touch after that. In the mid 80’s I was made supervisor of my department at an insurance company. The company happened to have a branch office in the town my best friend had moved to. One day, a memo crossed my desk that had my best friend’s name on the distribution list. I called that office and yep, it was my first grade best friend doing the same job (not as a supervisor though) for the same company.
I used to listen to the stand up comedy channels on SiriusXM. One time I was listening to a bit from John Pinette about how he doesn’t like water slides. I was listening to him tell the story, but I pulled into my parking spot before he finished. A few hours later, I got into my car again to go somewhere and the comedy channel was playing the exact same story.
But not only was it the same story, it was the continuation of the story in the exact same spot I left off. It was if I had a CD of the set and it resumed when I came back into my car…but it was the radio.
So you overwhelmed her with a numerological oddity to ignore the fact that you shortchanged her by $18.22? Slick, yo.
My parents lived in Africa for about 10 years. I was able to visit them several times. On one of those visits, my SO and I, plus my parents and a couple of their African friends went out to dinner. It was a small restaurant, seating maybe 40. So here is a table of about 7, 4 of them white and speaking English with American accents. Part way through dinner, another white American approaches the table. We chat for a bit, as American visitors aren’t common in this town. It turns out that this other person is the next door neighbor of my uncle, who lives 600 miles away from me or my parents US home. Yep, I traveled 8500 miles to accidentally bump into my uncle’s neighbor.
I was in grad school on the opposite coast from my undergrad school. One day a Fuller Brush salesman came to the door. During the conversation it came out that he was my freshman roommate’s best friend in high school! Kind of freaky.
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Another one: A friend and I went on a Caribbean cruise quite a while back, and as generally happens we made several acquaintances along the way. A year or so later we were spending a week-end in NYC, and while just walking around one evening we ran into one of the people from the cruise and recognized each other. In a city of 8 million. My friend ran into another person from the cruise in San Diego a while later,