In a restroom in newark Airport, a guy steps up to the urinal next to me. It’s my roomate from college, in the Netherlands. We hadn’t seen each other in 20 years.
“Revolution #9”?
Saturday morning I’m coming back from the laundry, and all I have in my wallet is quarters. I’m debating whether I should use the quarters to get another 7-eleven coffee refill, or go to the ATM and get a twenty dollar bill, then double back to the 7-eleven and break the bill to get coffee and to have small bills for my town’s sidewalk sale being held that day.
As I pondering this, I spot a twenty dollar bill on the ground. Problem solved!
I was watching TV back in August 1978 with my friends. In the middle of a really good show, there was a “We interrupt this program…” having had several such interruptions for minor issues, I growled “This time, the Pope better have died or something…”:eek:
We were riding Snow Whites Scary adventures, I really like the gems in the mine segment, and so I turned to my wife and said, “Now I wish the ride would break down!” (we had been plagued by them that day) and of course…
There was a minor flood in my apt, I lost many good books. But, hey the library has a sale next Saturday! I saw a book I had lost in the flood. It had my name in it, it was one I had donated as it was a duplicate copy… two or more years ago.
In grade school, we were watching a movie where an early plot was that people were watching TV, when suddenly the power went out, and the people were trying to find out why and how to fix the problem. Guess what happened in real life a few minutes later… I never did get to see the end of the movie.
Wait, you and your wife have the same first name? Or did she change hers to yours when she got married?
Back when my fiancee & I were planning our wedding, there was one person from high school named Carolyn who I wanted to invite, but I had no way to get in touch with her. We sent out the stack of invites and a couple days later, I got a call from Carolyn, saying she had just been invited to my wedding.
She had married one of the people at my fiancee’s work who was a nice enough guy that my fiancee invited him to the wedding…
My real name is a reasonably common first name and a very uncommon last name (a last name that is oft misspelled, and almost never used as a first name) - think something along the lines of Joe Kratochvil.
I went to the local medical appointment at the tiny government run clinic in East End, Grand Cayman. The doctor introduces himself as <MyLastName> <MyfirstName> <His last name> - in this example he’d be Dr. Kratochvil Joe Smith.
Two guys are sitting in a bar. One turns to the other and says, “Today’s my birthday!”
“Ya don’t say - today’s my birthday too! Let’s have a drink on it!” So they have a drink.
“Where were ya born?” asks the first guy. “Dublin.” “Ya don’t say - I was born in Dublin too! Let’s have a drink on it!” So they have another drink.
“Me mother’s name was Mary. How about yours?” “My mother’s name was Mary too! Let’s have a drink on it!” So they have another.
Another guy asks the bartender, “What’s going on over there?”
“Ah, nothing.” says the bartender. “The O’Malley twins are drunk again.”
Regards,
Shodan
A lot of people don’t realize what’s really going on. They view life as a bunch of unconnected incidents and things. They don’t realize that there’s this, like, lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything. Give you an example, show you what I mean: suppose you’re thinkin’ about a plate of shrimp. Suddenly someone’ll say, like, “plate,” or “shrimp,” or “plate of shrimp” out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin’ for one, either. It’s all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.
Many years ago, I was in a bar in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, waiting for some friends. I saw a guy at the end of the bar and thought, “Wow, that guy looks exactly like George Wendt!” Could it be? He is a native Chicagoan, after all. I got a little closer, the guy turned around, and he very clearly was not George Wendt.
A few minutes later, I decided to wait outside for my friends. As I approached the door, who do you think came walking in but… George Wendt! I nearly walked right into him! After I got over the surprise, I said hello and he shook my hand. He was very nice, and he has massive hands.
I was watching one of the Kill Bills on cable and Uma was buried in a casket and it went pitch black from her perspective, iirc. It kept going and going and I was getting angrier and angrier at Tarantino. Like what an “artistic” douche to immerse the audience in such self-aggrandizing nonsense… and then I realized the cable had gone out at that exact moment the movie went naturally dark.
I traveled to China for business several times a year for about 12 years, the company I worked for at the time had a sales office in near the Hang Seng area of Shanghai, that was always a fun area, one Saturday morning, I went down for breakfast, it’s always family style, so I got some food, looked around the room, saw another American sitting by himself, young guy, so I went and sat down with him…turns out, he was getting his masters from Oxford, the program he was in allowed them to write their thesis from where ever in the world, he had come to Shanghai to check it out, his friends were in Thailand for the weekend…I asked where he was from, he said, “Upstate NY”, I said, “Really, where’d you go to high school?”. he said, "Oh, you’ve never heard of it, I went to a place called ‘XXXX’ ", I laughed, we live about 8 minutes from there…we had a good chuckle over that…
The night before last a tornado warning* for some nearby places was on the TV. Quite odd here for this time of year when there’s no hurricane or anything.
The next morning Mrs. FtG calls out that there’s another tornado warning on the TV for the same places. I know she records her game and watches it the next morning. So I figured it was just a recording of the old warning.
Turns out it was a new warning.
I checked the radar and there were two red wedges in the same spots as the previous night’s radar. It was like my browser hadn’t updated the images.
(Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times would be a ticked off storm god.)
- Not a watch.
There was a folk-ish band back in the day called The Roches. I had seen them live once at college in 1979. I went because friends did and although I enjoyed the show I never bought any of their albums or even gave them another thought. Sometime in the early 90’s I have this really vivid dream where I walk into a local bar that I used to frequent and meet the Roches, where they say they missed me. When I woke up I was totally perplexed as to why this obscure band came back into my mind. I go to work and during lunch I look at a local newspaper and there’s an ad for a just announced Roches concert in my town. The venue they’re playing is across the street from the bar in my dream. Of course I went to the show. Sadly, they did not come to the bar and tell me they missed me.
When I moved to NJ, I got a job working in an office and I had to take a bus to work.To pass the waiting time, I started talking with a woman who waited at the same bus stop as I did, though we took different buses.
I then got another job where I didn’t have to take the bus. I’d been working there about a month when the woman I talked to at the bus stop walked in. Turns out she went to school with and was a close friend with one of my co-workers. So we developed a friendship.
One of my favorite films.
Around about a month later a music show on the radio was interrupted for a news flash. My then husband intoned “The Pope is dead.” in a sepulchral announcer’s voice. A beat later the real announcer came on with “Pope John Paul is dead.” The second pope to die that year, which was weird in itself.
But your husband wasn’t responsible for the* first *one, right?
I’m pretty sure I mentioned this on here in another thread.
My mother and my ex-wife’s father both came from Staten Island. When my grandmother died at the young age of 104 she was buried with my grandfather who did die much too young before I was born. As we were standing there graveside I noticed the grave directly across from my grandparents had the same name as my ex-wife’s maiden name. Same first name as her brother. Sure enough it was the grave of her grandparents. It’s a small cemetery so their feet were practically touching. So four of my children’s great grandparents are buried across from each other even though they are unrelated to each other.
Another Staten Island coincidence happened at the job I had before my current one have now. The office had previously been in Staten Island. That’s why my ex was there. After I had been there a while there was a slow day and I started to talk to the woman in the cubicle next to me about Staten Island. Turns out my cousin was her best friend in high school and her son was friends with my cousin’s daughter.