When I first started going to grad school in Maryland I put out an ad online to find some people to game with and ended up gaming with a small group. One night I commented on a picture on his wall of the Albuquerque balloon festival and we started talking about New Mexico. Turns out he used to live in Los Alamos, my home town, further investigation reveals that his younger brother was my older brothers best friend and he used be my brother’s GM in a Champions campaign. I distinctly remember my brother going out to those games, and based on this really got into that game based on his buying a copy. Alas I never got invited to a session or this story would have been upped to the next level.
Way back in kindergarten, the teacher asked one day how many bones we thought were in the human body.
“Two hundred and six!” I said confidently.
I did not, in fact, have any idea how many bones were in the human body. It was just my favorite number 
That reminds me of another one. I briefly dated a woman who believed in astrology. On our first date, she tried guessing my star sign three or four times, getting it wrong every time.
I, the skeptic, got hers right on the first try.
A person I work with named Mark went to reception where college-age summer interns were introduced to the people already working at my agency in Maryland. Mark talked to one of the interns and they both mentioned that they were from Ohio. Mark asked him where he was going to college and what he was studying. The intern told him the name of the college and what he was studying. Mark said, “Oh, I have a cousin who’s studying there in that department.” The intern said, “So what’s his name?” Mark told him the name. The intern said, “Um . . . I am your cousin.” Apparently they hadn’t seen each other for years and didn’t recognize each other. I think the intern should have said, in a deep, growly voice, “No, Mark, I am your cousin.”
I can think of about 7. At least 4 times someone called me on the phone that I was thinking about who I hadn’t even thought about in years. Another time I had lost a check I needed to pay my mortgage. It had blown out the window of my truck and I needed the money that day. I went to a drapery shop to pick up some drapery I would be installing, and the lady told me one of her customers gave her this check and she recognized my name on it. She found it in Home Depot parking lot. Another time this girl and I had agreed to meet in this particular bar 20 years from the day we decided to break up. We were going back to our exes and both of us had to call it off. It was july 4th 1990. Neither of us had been to that bar since that day and we both had forgotten about the pact we had made. By sheer coincidence we both ended up in the bar on july4th 20 years later. The last one was I jumped in my car and was headed to the hardware store for a new wheelbarrow wheel and tire. I didn’t drive 1/2 a block before I saw a brand-new wheel in someone’s trash exactly like the one, I was going to buy.
I apologize in advance for declining to provide too many details for this one, but once upon a time I was evading the cops [and, no, I had not done anything] and ended up cornered in an alley. They were sweeping the area with their Mag-Lites, and just as they were about to get to where I was crouched behind some junk, visions of a superlatively unpleasant time flashing before me, you know how in the movies a cat comes out of nowhere, and they exclaim, “It’s just a cat!” and turn back, chuckling about it? That’s real.
Not that much of a coincidence, perhaps, but perfect enough timing to be a small triumph for me.
Teenage me always helped my two uncles decorate a large outdoor tree at Christmas time, a process that involved many replacement bulbs and at least a couple rolls of electrical tape. Older, employed me couldn’t get home one Christmas, so sent the uncle whose tree it was a small care package: bulbs and tape.
They were outside stringing lights and had just run out of one or the other and were preparing to go to the store for more when the postman’s car pulled up and they got my package. Happily they decided to open it before going anywhere.
Once my ex and I were taking turns reading “The Deathbird” by Harlan Ellison to each other. Spoiler alert: The story ends up with the Earth being destroyed. At the precise moment we read in the story that the Earth is destroyed, our poster with the Apollo 8 view of the Earth from the Moon detached itself from the wall and crashed to the floor.
I’ve shared this story on the board at least once before, but while visiting Yellowstone National Park, I met a woman who had gone to high school with my aunt, in a small Wisconsin town, 50 years previously.
I was talking with the woman who helps my mother-in-law when we’re away for more than a few hours, and it turned out that she went to the same junior high school I went to, ten years before me. We live on the North Shore of Boston; the school was in suburban Baltimore.
(Hold my beer.)
1977, Anchorage, Alaska. I’m having dinner with my father who has flown up to see me. Halfway through our meal, a guy gets up, walks across the room, faces my dad and says “I know you! You’re Mr. S! I had your Science class at ABC Junior High in 1957!”
20 years, 3000 miles.
Years ago, there was someone in my store wearing a shirt that said Vagabond Ski Club. I asked her where she got it and she proudly said she found it a thrift shop. 1n 1958, my grandfather and a handful of friends founded the Vagabond Ski Club. She didn’t seem as excited as I was to see that in the wild. Up until then, the Vagabond Ski Club, which is still around today, had only existed for me in stories/anecdotes I’d heard over the years.
well, there IS only twelve of them.
I’ve posted this before. One night, while my sister was over visiting, my roommate came home from a day skiing in the mountains and told us how on the mountain pass on the way back in treacherous weather, a reckless driver caused his car to spin around backwards, but fortunately the rest of traffic other than that driver was going slowly enough that no one got hurt. When my sister went home that night, her roommate told her about how he felt awful because he’d been driving recklessly on the pass on the way home from skiing and had caused a driver to spin around backwards. I still bug him about it to this day.
OK, I’ve had a few unlikely coincidences in my time on this planet, but this one is pretty far out there.
My father was a department head for one of the few medical schools in the state. Not the state he grew up in, nor the one in which he went to medical school in. I went to college at a state university is the same state my father worked (not the same university, in fact, hundreds of miles away).
In my sophmore year, I developed a fairly serious case of tonsillitis (back then, most people had their tonsils yanked at first occasion, but the children of physicians usually kept theirs, as physicians would treat their own children with antibiotics before resorting to surgery). Trying to become a responsible adult at 19, I went to the student clinic because of my sore throat. I was assigned the random doctor on duty who diagnosed me with tonsillitis and prescribed Amoxicillin.
After filling the prescription, I called my father to let him know. Now, up to this point, the only pediatrician I had ever known was my father. While I had seen other doctors, he was my PCP my whole life. More stories than I have time to tell, but I was sewn up on the kitchen table, had sutures removed in the living room, and other “home procedures” performed (admittedly, some worked better than others) and was led to believe that was normal.
So, I expected to receive some sort of “adulting merit badge” for taking care of my medical problem on my own. Instead, I got, “What! With all the doctors and connections I have in this state and you go to some rando at the student clinic? Well, who did you see and what did he prescribe?”
So, I read the prescription bottle with the drug name and Dr. Name (which I mangled, as it was, apparently, of Eastern European origin). His response was, “Dr. XXXXX?” with xxxxx being a proper pronunciation of the name. I said that I thought so. He said that he went to Med School with a Dr. XXXXX and he was, actually, his roommate and Best Man for my father when he married my mother. My father asked my what he looked like, and told me that his roommate was from New York, The Bronx to be specific.
Well, the next week, I had a follow-up with the doc, so after he examined me, I asked him if he was from The Bronx (he did have a heavy accent). His response, “Born and raised! Any particular reason?” with almost an accusatory tone.
I responded with, “Did you ever know a Bill (my last name)?”
He looked at me, looked at my file, looked at me, looked at my file again, then said, “Are you Bill’s son? How is (my mother’s name)?”
Well, my mother had passed a decade before, so that was a bit awkward, but I said, yes. Turns out, neither he or my father had kept in touch after graduating from medical school. Until nearly thirty years later…
All these posts involving schools reminded me of another…
In Jr High I had an eccentric math teacher that I just had to tell my parents about. Long story short, he had been my mother’s teacher decades before. Many decades. My mom was in her 40’s when I was born so he was likely late 60’s early 70’s when I became his student.
The incident I came in to post also took place in the 80’s when land lines were all the rage. I had picked up the phone to call a friend about something to hear no dial tone at all. And then a “Hello?” a few seconds later. Friend had called me and I managed to pick up the phone before the first ring.
Back in the mid-70s, that Ford Fiesta was a German car.
Made by Ford Germany in Köln (Cologne), though I don’t know if that pertains to why a Fiesta key would start a VW Golf.
“Of all the gin joints in all the medium-sized towns in small countries in the world, she walks into mine”
I love this story!
“If you get confused just listen to the music play”
I was playing a gig one night and noticed this guy sitting at a table by himself in the front. He was really digging the music and came up to tell me so during a break. He said he was in town from Germany visiting relatives. He went out for a walk, heard the music and decided to come in and check it out. He told me he was also a musician. He asked me my name, and when I told him, he pulled out his passport and showed me the same exact name.