I had to start a new diary on March1, 2010. I chose one from my vast collection that had a lighthouse on the cover.
On March 1 I fell and broke my arm. On March 4 a friend stopped by with a get well present–a book of lighthouse psalms. Photos of Lighthouses with quote from the psalms.
I received a get well card from Doper elbows in Canada. The two stamps had photos of lighthouses on them.
I was in line at Crate and Barrel with my wife. The woman behind us was undecided about a purchase and took out her phone and dialed it. My wife’s phone rang a moment later. I said, “It’s her,” while tilting my head back at the woman behind us. My wife laughed and answered her phone. It was her. She had dialed the wrong number.
Freshman Orientation in college, Chapel Hill, NC, 1982.
I met a young lady at a mixer named Libby, and my suitemate and I had a nice time talking with her. The next night we go to another mixer, and I see who I think is Libby again, only it’s not. I, having had several adult beverages, wasn’t immediately convinced her name wasn’t Libby. (It was Beth btw - great, two nicknames of Elizabeth-no wonder I was confused).
Anyway - I eventually apologized for thinking I knew who she was better than she did. I called my suitemate over, he walked up and the first thing out of his mouth was:
“Libby! How are you!”
:eek::eek::eek:
My girlfriend’s phone number was X675674*
My SSN is XXX675674*
This made remembering her number very easy. At least until we got married and moved in together.
*Number changed, but the idea is the same.
Back in 1997 or so, I donated my Saturn to the San Francisco SPCA. It had tons of miles and needed some major repairs, so I just bought a new car.
Fast forward to 2005, eight years later. I was living in a Duplex for about five years or so, and became friends with the neighbor that lived below me. As I went outside to drive to work, there was a car blocking the garage. I knocked on my neighbor’s door, hoping it was a friend of his before I called the tow company. Sure enough, he had a guest over and it was her car. As I waited, I glanced at it more closely.
In California, the license plates follow the car. 4AKH813. It was my old Saturn.
Turns out she lived in Hayward across the Bay, and had a friend that bought the car from another friend who was a mechanic that bought it at an SPCA auction in Livermore. The mechanic sold it to her friend, and her friend moved to NYC and didn’t need a car, so sold it to her.
My neighbor met her at Yoshie’s, a Jazz club in Oakland to which he’d never been before, but went with a co-worker for a function, then invited her back to his place, and she offered to drive rather than take BART b/c she needed to be in SF later that day.
As we all sat there working out the whole story …I mean, what are the odds of all of those confluences occurring? We decided they were incalculable.
Alas, they saw each other a couple more times, then I never saw her or my car again. Ah.
About 20 years ago I lived in New Jersey, and had a job that required traveling to various different companies all over the state. One day I was in Vineland and met this guy who’s job also required traveling all over the state. The only similarity between our jobs was the traveling. Other than that, we provided completely different services.
The weird thing was that our paths kept crossing! I was walking out of an office in Morristown and he was in the reception area. I stopped at a McDonalds in Fairfield for lunch and he pulled up and parked right next to me. I was getting my oil changed in Atlantic City and there he was, getting his oil changed.
It was, on average, about once a month that we would bump into each other. We never really became friends, but both commented on how odd it was. It got to where we would make it a point to have lunch whenever we happened to meet each other.
After a few years our randomly meeting stopped. I moved back to Texas. As it turned out, the best job I could find was doing exactly the same thing that he had been doing in New Jersey. I was traveling all over East Texas.
Years later, I stopped at a Whataburger in LaPorte for lunch, pulled up and parked right next to him! I recognized him the moment I saw him. As if that wasn’t strange enough, his job in Texas was doing exactly the same thing I had been doing in New Jersey! Just like in NJ, we would randomly bump into each other about once a month, and made it a point to have lunch.
Now it gets really strange. I moved to this tiny little town in Louisiana where I live now. I was getting gas one day and glanced at the pump next to me. It was him! His sister had moved to my area and he was visiting. That was about a year ago.
Since then I have bumped into him twice, both times were somewhere on the road while driving to visit my old hometown in Texas.
We are more acquaintances than friends. We have exchanged phone numbers and email addresses, but that’s about it. In spite of randomly meeting up, we really don’t have that much in common.
Strange.
(First you need to know that I’m a huge fan of The Who…)
I was on vacation in New Zealand, and I was returning a rental car. I had to report a chip in the windshield, and asked the woman at the counter what forms I needed to fill out. She told me that the form was in the folder that my rental papers came in. Unfortunately, I had left the folder at my hotel. She picked up a folder from a stack on the counter. She said, “Oh, we can just use this one that someone just turned in–you can cross the name off and fill in your information.”
The name I crossed off was P. Townshend.
While in college, I got a job in the library. A couple of other people got jobs there, too, and one was a girl who grew up about a hundred miles from me. We got to talking and became friends. We talked about all the usual stuff - family, friends, home, etc. We had been socializing for a couple of months when Thanksgiving break rolled around.
When she got back, she said to me, “My parents have a picture of your dad in their den.” I said, “What?” Turns out that her stepmom had lived briefly in my hometown and had worked in community theater with my dad. At the end of each show, they take a cast and crew picture. She later moved on, met my friend’s dad, married him, and put that picture up on their wall.
That girl later became my post-college roommate for over 5 years.
Neither are amazing, but anyway:
One of my Japanese penpals that I’ve known for several years, knows a friend of mine in Orlando who I met just last year.
In Kyoto station, I bumped into a friend of mine that lives there, who I had never met in person until that time. Kyoto is about the size of Boston I’d say, maybe bigger.
Well, I got 2, but I still am not too sure about one being real. Too weird to have actually happened.
So here is the other:
When I was an exchange student in Brazil, I was introduced to a bunch of Brazilian kids who had spent time in the states and were now back home. We talked about our experiences and shared photos and such. One kid said that they had been to my hometown on a tour across the US and had some pictures they took while they were there. One was a picture of a beach party at the lake. She says to me, “Here is a picture of me at the lake! It was so pretty there!”
I said, “See that boat in the background of the picture? Thats mine!” I pulled out a picture of me and my parents on the same boat.
I’ll get back to you on the other one…
I don’t know why, but this one is my favorite.
One year just before Thanksgiving I awoke in the morning with a feeling of panic and the thought, “The turkey’s in the ditch! The turkey’s in the ditch!” running through my mind. Must have had a silly dream.
Went downstairs and picked up the morning paper. There I read the story of a family which had seen a turkey which had fallen off a farm truck, chased and caught it and took it to a hobby farm.
Happy story - turkey intended for the dinner table lives long, comfortable life instead.
Only thought I had was, “Why can’t I dream about lottery numbers?”
My dad is from a large, scattered family and I have cousins on his side that I barely know and some I’ve never met. He had a sister who had kids and she was killed in a car accident in the 1960’s in Georgia, and I’ve never met those cousins or knew much about them.
Now I’ve moved to Atlanta in 1991 and I’m looking for a job. Restaurants, retail type jobs while going to school…and I just happen into a small retail store and apply. The owner interviews me and mentions that my last name is his moms maiden name. He’s my first cousin…and my boss (I got the job).
I hadn’t talked to an ex (friendly, still) for quite some time. I was driving down the highway and he popped into my head. I decided that if Sweet Child O’ Mine was the next song on the radio, I would call him. IT WAS! I mean…really…what are the chances?!
About a year ago, I set up a meeting with a family friend to talk about the local film industry. He lives a couple hours away, but was doing some filming closer, like half an hour from where I live. So we arrange coffee.
At the same time, I was learning to sail, and a week before we were supposed to get coffee, I go out for a lesson, and he’s the other student on the boat with me.
My girlfriend’s second husband’s cell phone number is one number different than my cell phone number (same area code.) He first husband’s cell phone number is one number different than my home phone number (different area code though).
OK. I just had a coincidence occur, and I can safely say it wins the thread.
I’m watching the Colbert Report and Colbert is doing a segment with a Sunday news anchor and the editor of Politifact.com. They are discussing the necessity of fact-checking when Colbert says: "I don’t care about fact checks. I gut-check my show. I say, "Gut, does this seem right to you?’ and Gut says, ‘It sure does Stephen, now let’s get a grilled cheese sandwich.’
And what do you suppose I was eating at the time, at 3AM in the morning? Not just one, but two grilled cheese sandwiches!
This isn’t the strangest, isn’t spooky or weird in any way, but nevertheless:
We found the “six degrees” between my boyfriend and I. His mother used to work with Anna, who was from the same birthplace as my mother; Anna’s father was my uncle’s first boss. The distances are what make it noteworthy: my boyfriend is from England. The town Anna and my mother are both from is Maffra, a small town in Victoria, Australia. My boyfriend’s mother’s office was in Surrey, England. Anna worked in their Swiss branch. There’s more than 10,000 miles between my mother’s hometown and where my boyfriend’s mother worked.
Years ago, decades actually, back when I was young and stupid we celebrated a friend’s birthday a little too hard with prodigious amounts of tequila and I ended up in jail. The offense was innocent enough but it sounded bad and the ramifications could have been pretty serious. So the next morning they haul me in front of the judge. He looks at me sternly and with a rather grave voice says to me "Son, we don’t look kindly upon people that ‘and mentiions my offence’. He looks back at my papers and I’m thinkin’ oh hell, this is gonna be bad. Suddenly a look of realization comes across his face, he looks back at me and says my last name which is rather unusual. Then he says “I haven’t heard that name in years. Years ago I was heading over to ask a woman with that name to marry me and on the way there I heard on the radio that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. I had to stop, turn my jeep around, go back to the barracks and I got shipped off to war. I never got to see her again.” He paused for a moment, wiped a tear from his eye, cleared his throat and said “Lieu, don’t go within 200 yards of that bar again. Case dismissed.”