In college I was flying home for the holidays. I sat on a seat at my gate finished my crossword. I was gonna set the paper on the seat beside me and on the seat was a copy of the Straight dope. By none other than @Cecil_Adams .
I looked around and started reading the book. Laughing at loud at times
My flight was called and I sat the book down and got on the plane.
A lady came down the aisle and leaned over and said “You forgot your book, hon” and handed me the newspaper and the Straight dope.
So, ostensibly I stole my first copy of the Straight dope.
I, of course read all the others. And proceeded to live my life, re-reading occasionally and laughing again.
I gave lots of copies of the book to people for gifts over the years.
Something like 25 years later my sister, a writer, needed someone to do research for her. Not sure how but she found dropzone and hired him.
Me and him began talking online thru my sister. He mentioned the Books and I told him how much I loved them.
He mentioned the SDMB and I started lurking. Of course , I loved it.
(aside) I guess when I think about “favorite numbers” I’ve actually always been thinking of favorite digits. No reason a favorite number has to be a single digit, of course, I’ve just never encountered anyone who’s favorite number was something like 206!
Wayyy back in the day I started going to grad school. I was living in a dorm.
Some of us would go out in the common area and play touch football. One time, two guys stopped by, watched for a minute and then asked me if they could join next time. I said sure! They gave me their names. One was relatively common, like Scott but the other was Dimitri. This was back when Russian names were not popular here in the US. Not at all. The gave me their 4 digit phone number so I committed it to memory.
Next time we were going to go out and do it, I grabbed the phone and call them. A guy answered, without a Russian accent, so I said, "Scott! We are going to play some touch football. We are heading out now. Join us if you want.
There was silence and a tentative “Sure, where at?”. I said the common area and he asked which one…which was confusing to me. I then asked if Dimitri was there so we could make teams. More silence and he said sure and asked. He comes back on and yes, he will join.
A few minutes later 2 guys show up to play and they looked unfamiliar. Yes, I must have misdialed or misremembered and their names really were Scott and Dimitri. Soon after the ‘real’ Scott and Dimitri join a little miffed I didn’t call them like I promised.
I think I’ve told this before, but here goes. About 30 years ago, I was visiting my older son in Seattle and we all, including my younger son, went to the Japanese garden there. Younger son was wearing a McGill sweatshirt for some reason. A man came up to him and asked if he was a McGill student. No, he replied, but added that his father was a professor there. Oh, could I talk to him, he asked. So my son came over and said there was a man there who wanted to talk to me. So I came over and we had the following conversation:
Him: I understand you are a professor at McGill.
Me: Yes.
Him: My son is a student at McGill.
Me: Oh? [Groan, one of maybe 40,000]
Him: A graduate student.
Me: Oh [Cuts the possibilities down a lot]. In what
department?
Him: Math
Me: What’s his name? [Might know it after all]
Him: [Tells me his name}
Me: I am his PhD thesis advisor.
It turns out he didn’t even live there but was visiting a daughter who did.
As an Army Reservist from Nebraska, I once had to go to camp for a while with the National Guard in Colorado. While there I was recognized by someone from grade school in Kansas City.
In about 1991 or so I had a college roommate, great guy. Good guitarist, great sense of humor, affable as all get out. Probably my second favorite roommate I didn’t end up married to. Let’s call him Edgar. Loved living with him, but didn’t stay in touch after about 1993 or so.
About 28 years later, my wife and I move into a new (to us) house in south Dallas. After I’ve lived there for about two months, I’m in my driveway smoking a cigarette when a red Jetta passes by, then starts backing up. I’m wondering “Why’s this jackass backing down the street?” When they get back in front of my driveway, they roll the window down and ask “Are you Scabpicker?”, (of course, they used my given name).
I answer, “Yeah, who the fuck wants to know?”, (obviously, this person knows me and won’t take offense at this response). He smiles and says “I’m Edgar, your old roommate.”
Sure enough, he is. He’d moved all over the country, and I’d moved all over DFW. We ended up buying houses in the same neighborhood less than a quarter mile from each other. If he hadn’t been heading to the hardware store at the same time I was smoking, we might never know. We hang out pretty often now and have a couple of different bands going. Fate smiled on me that day.
Many years ago I owned a yellow honda civic. One day, I came out of a store went
went up to a yellow honda civic, and opened the door with my key. As soon as I sat
in the driver’s seat I realized that this wasn’t my car. I got out of the car and closed
the door. Becoming curious, I found that I could my key to lock the car and then unlock
it. I looked around quickly, worried that the car’s owner would see me before locking
up the car again. I found my own car a just short distance away. I was tempted to
wait for the driver of the other car to see if his key would fit my car but didn’t.
A doper once posted a genuinely insane story (claiming it had happened to them) about people in airports reading books, getting angry, throwing them, and hitting the author of that book who just happened to be walking by. And that’s just the START of the story. Far and away the most insane coincidence story I’ve ever heard.
I tried to search for it a while ago and failed to find it. Anyone remember it?
lol wanna hear another concidence ? Legally I was born in Monterey also but in the Fort Ord Hospital lol supposedly I was the first preemie born in the very expensive new hospital that happened to have a brand new section just for such a occurrence…
I did the same thing with a 1985 Ford Escort. It’s not that uncommon.
Back in 1981, I was once getting my car fixed in a very rural area…at the only gas station/garage around. A mechanic there opened a safe and took out a huge key ring–a wire loop about 2 feet in diameter, with a couple hundred keys on it. He told me that those were ALL the keys,for every Ford (?) (Chevy?) in the country.
I bought a cheap used car that was missing a lot of knobs and trim plus needed a couple of lenses. As soon as I got plates on the car I went down to the junkyard to find parts. Someone pulled into the parking lot just a minute after me, looked the car over and said “That was my car. How long have you had it?” Turns out he sold it over a year before and the used car dealer I bought it from was the third owner since him.
And I did the same thing with a 1991 Escort that was the same color and options as mine. The first indication I was in the wrong car was that none of the crap it in was mine.
At one point, all GM cars had exactly - six? eight? - different keys, and the conventional wisdom in a lockout situation in a parking lot was to ask people coming out and getting into a GM car nearby to try their keys in your lock. Usually didn’t take too long.
SunLass went to a Twenty One Pilots concert about five years ago. A couple weeks later, she had tryouts for her volleyball club. She was assigned to a team, and they a short getting-to-know you meeting where they were asked about the most fun thing they had done in the past month. One of the other middles answered “a Twenty One Pilots concert.”
Turns out she was one row down and two seats over. They’ve been BFFs ever since.
I got a rental car in the 90s. It was brand new. I drove straight to get lunch or supplies and parked in a mall parking lot. When I came back I was able to get into an identical car, also a rental, but not start it. It was parked a few spots away. I was so confused for a few moments
