Tell us your coincidence stories

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Last night, my friends and I were discussing some of the crazy coincidences we’ve experienced. It was a great night of conversation, and each of us had a few stories to tell, so you all probably do too. Share!

I’ll go first.

One day, I was delivering a pizza to an appartment in a complex in which a few friends of mine reside. On my way into the complex, I saw a friend, Leah, driving into the parking lot, to meet up with another friend I knew who lived there, I assumed. I delivered the pizza and drove back to the store. On my next delivery, I drove past that same complex and saw Leah’s red Dodge truck parked, but with the lights left on. I pulled out my cell phone and called her to let her know she had left her lights on so she wouldn’t come back to a dead battery. She thanked me and I made the delivery and headed back to the store. On my way back, she called me back.

Leah: “Hey, where are you, anyway? What are you doing out here?”
Me: “I’m on delivery. I just drove by the complex and saw your lights on.”
Leah: “Complex? What complex?”
Me: “The Villagio appartment complex . . . the one you’re parked at.”
Leah: “What? I’m at work in Poway [the neighboring town].”
Me: “That’s weird, I saw an Identical truck parked in The Villagio with the headlights on.”
Leah: “Nope, I’m at work. Whoa, that’s weird. I just went out to turn off my headlights and they were on.”

2

  1. My childhood best friend was born the same day as I plus she had a younger brother with the same name as mine. Both our mothers went to the same high school.

  2. My grandmother passed away last year and I started thinking about her around her birthday. Within that week I saw “Van Helsing” (my grandmother was from Transylvania - now Romania) and visited the Christian Scientist Mother church’s mapparium where my grandmother’s birthplace (Cluj) was the only place marked on the map of Romania.

3

I posted my coincidence story here.

4

My youngest son is Justin. His cousin, Austin, is the same age, exactly. We didn’t know her brothers wife was in labor, nor what they were going to name him, and they didn’t know my wife was in labor, now what we were going to name our son. They’re still pretty good friends.

5

I had a friend in high school that I wanted to invite to my wedding, but I had lost touch with her and didn’t know how to contact her. My fiancee and I sent out our invitations, and she called me a few days later to ask something about the wedding. Turns out she had gotten married to a guy who worked down the hall from my fiancee, and he was cool enough that she invited him and his wife to our wedding…

6

I discovered, through a series of conversations, that my boss (who is a few years older than my mother) has a daughter who is a year younger than me. It turns out that I went on one date with her daughter about 18 years ago. The entire date took place in the building where I now work. For her mother.

7

When I was a young boy, my parents used to drive us across town to visit my aunt. She had 2 kids and we used to visit them quite a bit. My brother and I would play with them as well as their next door neighbor’s kids.

When we decided to get a cat for a pet, my parents had found one through my aunt… apparently the next door neighbor had some kittens. I even remember the day we went over to my aunt’s house to pick up the kitten. We had named it, “Kermit”.

This was around 1975.

Fast forward to to 1989.

My aunt has moved out of that house. Her kids are my age and are also away at college. I am in college and start dating this girl. I find out she used to live next door to my aunt and that she and her family still lives in the same house. That’s when I realize it this girl whose cat gave birth to the kitten my parents had got for us back in 1975!
Mrs. D. and I are now married for 10 years.

8

I had a load of coincidences happen when I used to partake of the odd spliff (drugs are bad hmm’kay?).

I’d think of something and then seconds later something appropriate would appear, or happen.

At the time I thought it was cosmic, but on reflection it can be explained by acute short-term memory loss: see thing, forget seeing thing, thing drifts into consciousness, see thing again - like woah! This also explains the stoner’s perpetual state of wonderment.

Thankfully things are a little better now. :slight_smile:

9

I was an army brat growing up. I went to a DODDS school in Germany until second grade. In first grade I had a really good friend named Tiffany. As usual with the military, within a year we were both gone, parents station back in the US.

My senior year of high school, I’m living in Tennessee. One day some girl comes up to me and asks what my name is. It turned out to be Tiffany from the first grade. She remembered what I looked like all those years later.

10

I picked up the phone to call a friend, but there was no dial tone. So I said hi, thinking my brother was on the extension in his room.

Turns out it was my friend, who’d just dialed my number, and I’d picked up before it rang. Weird.

11

I guess living in RI, my “small world” story isn’t all that amazing but… one summer, I worked at 2 different ice cream shops. They were both in the same town.

A guy in a FedEx uniform came to the window at Shop #1 and ordered a strawberry shake. I made it, and when I brought it over to the window, he looked so embarrassed. He said “This is so embarrassing… I thought I had a $5 in my wallet but I just have a $1. I’m sorry to put you through the trouble of making the shake!” I’d already made the shake, and it wasn’t like I could reuse it… plus it was a small mom n’ pop place, so I said “Don’t worry about it, it’s on the house.” He tried to refuse, and tried to give me the $1, and promised he’d come back tomorrow to pay for it, and I just waved him away and told him not to worry about it. He was so apologetic and embarrassed!

Cut to the next day. I’m working at Shop #2 which was a chain restaurant that serves ice cream. Who comes to the takeout line but… the FedEx guy! He saw me and was like “…don’t you work at the OTHER ice cream place?” We laughed about the coincidence, and he tried to pay me for the shake from Shop #1 at the time. I told him again not to worry about it. He paid for his shake and took off.

The next day, I was driving to work (not sure if it was Shop #1 or #2) and pull up at a red light. I notice next to me is… a FedEx truck. And who is driving it? The SAME GUY. He waves, I wave. I go to work at both jobs that day and don’t see him at all.

Day four, after work. Me and my then-boyfriend head to the local video store in my hometown, the next town over from where I worked. We grab a movie and head to the register. Guess who’s working at the video store? FedEx Truck Guy! By this point we were on a first name basis, and had a good laugh over “following each other around” and stuff. I saw him a couple times after that, then he just sort of dropped off the face of the planet!

It’s not all that odd or unusual, but it was really funny in a “small world” sort of way.

12

When I was 18, I climbed, with friends, Mt. Elbert- the tallest mountain in Colorado. Up on the peak, I struck up a conversation with a guy named Garon. It came out that he used to live in Singapore- and, while there, he dated a girl named Barbara. The funny thing was that, just a few months earlier that year, I had dated the same girl in Houston. That was pretty cool.

Several years ago, a friend gave me a couch. He’d just gotten a dog, and wanted to trade the nice couch he was currently using for the piece of crap I was using, so that the dog wouldn’t destroy a nice couch. I said thanks, and traded couches with him. A couple of years later, another friend was visiting my apartment- and said, “Hey, that couch looks familiar…”

It turned out that she had given the couch to her friend when her friend was dating my friend- we had no idea that our friends were so interrelated.

13

The summer I was 9 going on 10, mum sent me to a arts and crafts day camp sort of thing – and whilst there I met a girl called Marian, and we became absolute best friends for the duration. Inseparable. Felt terrible heartache when I had to leave (she stayed on the rest of the summer). A few months later, I’m in my new school, completely different place from my old school and nowhere near that camp, and I got into the classroom before the rest of the kids (mum brought me early) Already feeling lonely as I didn’t talk like the other kids, and this was a totally new kind of school for me (Catholic school) – and who should walk into the classroom, but Marian! She stopped dead in her tracks and shouted my name; I just looked up, all calm and cool, and said, ‘Oh, hi.’ But I was delighted! I stayed at that school for 2 years, then moved on…then 10 years later, in my last year at uni, having completely lost touch with Marian, there she was walking across campus! For the remainder of the time I was there, we were still close friends…I haven’t seen her, nor been able to trace her since 1987, & I miss her, but I’m not worried…

14

I was an exchange student in Brazil and I met a group of Brazilian kids that had lived in the States and just returned home. One girl told me about this great lake she had visited for a picnic and how pretty it was. She whipped out some pictures to show everybody. I said that indeed it was a pretty place and that I lived there and in her stack of pictures was a photo of my boat!

I then whipped out my pictures of home and showed her a picture of me on the same boat!

15

On three separate occasions, I’ve found myself in a situation where I’d be driving home from a function (theatre events, mostly), and find myself in need of a bite and a smoke, and wanted to eat and smoke with my buddy Flip. On each of these three occasions, I either didn’t have my cell phone with me, he didn’t have his, or, for one reason or another, I couldn’t get in touch with him.

And on each of these three separate occasions, I wound up spotting him anyway… once he was waiting at a cross street, once he pulled up behind me in the drive-thru at Carl’s just after I ordered, and once I pulled up behind him in the drive-thru.

It was spiffy.

16

Once I was singing this song and when I turned on the radio the same song was on at the exact same spot where I was…also once I was watching a movie on television and did not finish it, the same day I went to a friend’s house and his dad was watching the same movie on DVD and it was on the same spot that I had watched before I left the house.

17

No Disguise, By coincidence, I am from Poway and have also had friends who lived in the Villagio apartments. Weird.

18

A long time ago, I lived in a military barracks. One day, an ugly yellow hide-a-bed couch appeared in my room – I had 3 roommates, and Kenny, who had a pickup truck, had brought this couch home. It was a very comfortable couch, and when we all moved off base, into a house in town, the couch came with us. From there the couch was sold to Van, who was semi-transient, and used it as his bed for several years. It was basically all he owned. Eventually, most of those people moved away, and the yellow couch came back to me. I used it in my ‘rec. room’, as it really wasn’t living room material any more.

Much later, I ran into one of the old roommates from the barracks. He was amazed that I still had the couch, and related to me that the couch was stolen property! Turns out that Kenny had broken into a trailer that was next door to some girl he was visiting, and simply carried off the couch he found inside. His friend Denny helped him, and when they sold the couch to Van, Kenny split the money with Denny.

Within the year, I moved halfway across the country, and that ugly, yellow hide-a-bed came with me. Moving into my rental house, my new landlord commented that he’d “owned a couch just like that”. After his family got tired of it, he’d put it in a rental trailer he owned out west, before moving halfway across the country. He said that someone had stolen it from the trailer, and was astonished when I told him the month and year it went missing.

I told him the history, and offered to give the couch back. Fortunately he was more amused than pissed off, and declined to get the police involved, or take the couch back. I ended up moving the couch around the country several more times, and last saw it in San Diego, where I gave it away.

19

I was just about to start a thread on this topic. Weird!

20

That happens quite often. I’d actually say that such an occurence is too common to truly be called coincidental. That said, my own phone story isn’t really coincidental in any way, but really strange.

During high-school, I used to talk to this one girl quite often on the phone. Of course, I was most always the caller. :rolleyes: Anyhoo, one day, I’m down in my basement alone, just watching T.V. or playing video games, when the phone rings.

I pick up the phone and say “hello”, in the usual questioning tone when getting a call. A girl on the other end says “hello”, also in the usual questioning tone. :dubious: I say “hello” again, in a more questioning tone. She follows suit in the same manner. And repeat.

I can’t remember exactly who asked the first real question, but here’s kind of how the rest of the conversation went…

BP: “Who are you calling?”
XX: “Who are you calling?”
BP: “You called me?”
XX: “No. You called me?”
BP: “Who’s this?”
XX: “XX. Who’s this?”
BP: “BP.”
XX: “BP who?”
BP: “BP Carlson.”
XX: “Oh! JJ’s not here.”

She recognizes my name, if she didn’t already know it was me. I recognize her as my friend’s younger sister, who I thought sounded very familiar…

BP: “I didn’t call.”
XX: “Yes you did.”
BP: “The phone rang here, and I answered it.”
XX: “The phone rang here.”
BP: “This is weird.”
XX: “Yes… Are you sure you didn’t call.”
BP: “Yes. My phone rang.”
XX: “This is weird.”
BP: “Well, JJ’s not in?”
XX: “No.”
BP: “Well, just tell her I… Um… Tell her to give me a call.”

Then, since neither of us actually made the call, and traditionally (at least around here), it’s the caller who ends a call (i.e. hangs up), our conversation ends somewhat awkwardly…

XX: “Okay.”
BP: “Okay.”
XX: “Um. Bye.”
BP: “Oh. Yeah. Bye.” <click>

Weird. :eek:

Anyhoo…