My best friend is Jewish and from California; I’m black.
Sometime during the fall of 2001, his mom came to visit NYC for the first time for about 2 weeks. Because my friend had a really busy work schedule and I had more flexibility, I ended up hanging out with his mom a lot, taking her places, etc. We got really close and she really took a liking to me, saying I was like a son and she was really glad her son and I were friends.
The night before she was to return to California, we were walking through the lower level of Port Authority (the subway and cross-county bus hub). This was during the time people were still clinging to hope that various family members who were in the World Trade Center would be found and many had left “Have you seen _______” signs at this particular place in the terminal.
We were just getting ready to leave when my friend’s mom clamped her hand over her mouth and said “I don’t believe it.”
Right behind us was one of those signs looking for someone who had died on 9/11, reading: "Have you seen [My friend’s first name] [My first name (as a last name)].
Also a bit freaky. A few years ago I was working for a law firm that had some dealings with the legal aftermatch and ran across that name again.
I thought that at first, but now I think I maybe just heard the locks on my car which was only like 15 feet away.
My husband and I met at work in Manhattan. The company had just gone through a reorganization and many people had taken advantage of very generous packages and left the company. We got pretty close over that time and started dating and decided to go on a backpacking trip to the Wind River Range in Wyoming. So we’re headed up the trail and on the way down is a group with a couple of horses and major camera equipment. The guy leading the group looked really familiar–it was one of the people who took the severance package from our company in NY and was spending it happily taking nature photos all over the world. He just happened to be in the same park on the same trail at the same time.
Several years later, still in Manhattan, I was pregnant with our first child, seeing a group of OBs–2 men and 1 woman. After I delivered my son, I went to see the woman doctor for a post-delivery checkup and she said she was moving away. A few months later, I get a call from my mom in Hawaii, telling me that she and my sister had just gotten a new gynecologist–yes, the same doctor who had seen me in NY when I was pregnant. My sister still sees her.
My husband and I then moved to a town in NJ, which happened to be the same town a friend of his grew up in. She took us to meet her parents who still lived there. Her parents both commented on my husband’s somewhat unusual last name. They had gone to Cornell, where one of the popular football players had the same name–my father-in-law.
Another board game related one:
I was playing a board game that involves one-sentence prompts on cards. Everyone writes down something on a slip of paper, then the players take turns trying to figure out who wrote what. Part of the challenge is that you have the option of putting down your actual response, or trying to create something you think another player would have written, thereby bluffing the group.
I was playing with my husband, his brother, and the brother’s wife. So, two couples, and two of the players are siblings. We know each other pretty well and quite a lot of bluffing shenanigans went on.
One card had a prompt along the lines of “what would you expect to see on a sign in a town that’s totally backwards?” My brother-in-law and I both wrote “nowT sdrawkcaB oT emocleW”. Because the guessing goes sequentially, there was a real WTF moment when my paper was drawn immediately after his… by him… reading his answer in my handwriting. After we’d just finished guessing it. Also, neither of us were bluffing, we both really had that as our first response.
You wouldn’t expect that kind of mental synergy from two of the people who weren’t related or married!
And now, a fortune cookie story:
A group of students, working late in the school newspaper office. We decided to order in some Chinese food for dinner. The restaurant ended up packing one fewer fortune cookie than the number of diners. “That’s okay,” I said, grabbing the last cookie, “we’ll share this one.” I broke the cookie in half and handed a piece to the other person without a cookie. Then I pulled out the slip to read aloud to the room.
“You are of a dual personality.”
My then-girlfriend and I decided to canvas for Obama in Central Pennsylvania in the 2008 election (we lived in NYC at the time so this was a long haul trip for us), and after a weekend of knocking on doorbells we returned to the campaign headquarters and signed in that we had finished our canvassing–right above my signature was the name of the editor of my first published book (we had never met, only corresponded in the late 1990s) and right above HIS name was the unusual name of a kid who’d gone to the same bungalow colony as I had, over forty years ago. I figured that they must have just finished signing in, so I went out onto the street and looked for two middle-aged men.
I found them, and I questioned them–they were amazed to find that they both knew me, and I was astonished to find that they had travelled together to Pennsylvania from NYC, where they were neighbors and close friends.
Here is my contribution to this. About 17 or 18 years ago, I was in the Japanese garden of the Seattle botanical gardens with my college-age son. My older son lives in Seattle and we were visiting him. My younger one happened to be wearing a McGill blazer. He came up to me and said that a man over there had asked if he was a McGill student. He wasn’t but explained that his father taught there. Oh, could he talk to me. So I went over. He didn’t introduce himself, but told me that his son was a McGill graduate student. So I said, conversationally, what department. Math was the answer. Oh that’s my department. What’s his name? Jim O… was the answer. Oh, he is my doctoral student. Dr. O… (he was a medical doctor) was on his way from Alaska to San Antonio stopping in Seattle to visit his daughter! So neither of us lived in Seattle, but we just happened on each other in the Japanese garden.
Mine’s fairly mild.
Setup: When my wife was in the market for a new car (well, 2nd hand, but new for her) she test drove a 1995 Nissan Maxima. She liked it and we knew they were reliable because my brother (who lives interstate) owned a 1997 model, so she bought it. Some time later my brother bought a new car, so I bought his.
Coincidence: One day I hopped into my wife’s car (unlocked - in our garage) put the key in and started it. Only I realized later that it was the key to my car. The key doesn’t open the doors of her car, but it does work in the ignition. My wife’s key doesn’t work in my car, and naturally the remotes don’t work on the “wrong” car.
PITA: My wife once picked up my keys and drove off in her car, leaving me stranded for a couple of hours.
I love these stories.
This is years after the fact, but I only realized recently that my best friend probably was one of the OT that worked on my brother when he was in a group home. Only neither of us knew each other and she didn’t live up were she does now. When we were talking about group homes and places she’s worked and stuff, the dots connected and I just went, " huh…"
When Mr. Ujest and I were on our honeymoon in Cancun back in 1993, we ran into a guy that he stood up with in a mutual buddies wedding a couple years earlier.
When I use to work for a tour company that specialized in Mexico and the Caribbean ( I only did Mexico) I had just gotten back from a B-trip to Puerto Vallarta with about 25 or so travel agents from all over Michigan. I had a vacation scheduled with my husband and we went to Vegas. There, I ran into one of the agents that I had hung around with.
Not my story. A friend of the Ujests ( from Germany) was working in Australia in the (opal?) mines in 67? His work buddy there was a jewish guy from Israel. They played alot of cards to pass the time. When the Three Day war started, which no one knew at the time was going to be a three day war, his buddy said good by and headed home to fight for his country. Many years and travels later, this friend (who has lived all over the world at this point.) decides to go scubaing ( is that a word?) off a very specific remote spot that he heard about in in some remote-remote island bit of Fiji ( or something.) Takes a plane, another plane and finally a boat or three to get to this remote place. On that last shuttle is THAT work buddy from the Australian Mine all those years ago. They picked up their friendship like that. ( I’ve probably skwered the story, but that’s the gist of it.)
Cousin A grew up in Florida but moved to Wisconsin to work in Chicago.
Cousin B grew up in Michigan but lived in NC. Cousin B’s son was graduating the Naval Thingie in Chicago and they drove up to see it, but did have Cousin A’s address/phone number. (this is before facebook/txt. Yanno, the dark ages, people.) They take their son out to dinner at a restaurant, sit down to eat and who is at the table next to them? Cousin A.
My husband took his wheelchair bound dad back to visit family in Germany just last month. His dad wanted to go to this younger crowd bar place near Hamburg. My husband and his cousin explained it was not the scene that it was 40 years ago (the music alone would drive him nuts or something.) and he wouldn’t know anyone anyways. My father in law is not to be swayed, gets in the joint and instantly runs into a bunch of guys he hasn’t seen in 40 years. damn germans.
When I was a student most of my life (halls, jobs, college) were north of the Thames, and I seldom strayed south just because I was too busy. Then I started seeing someone who lived on the South Bank.
My parents live about 200 miles away, which is a long way in England (shut up). They tended to let us (siblings and me) know if they were coming to town for any reason, and we would try to arrange to see each other.
I’m a very careful and spatially-aware person, very observant, and not at all clumsy.
One day I was walking back across Waterloo Bridge from visiting the sweetheart no-one knew I had on the other side of the river, and walked smack bang into a man in the middle of the bridge. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said… to my father.
Someone posted a truly stunning story in a thread like this on the SDMB many years ago that involved an airport, a thrown book, and an author.
Anyone remember what I’m talking about? It was really amazing, and I don’t think I can do it justice.
Got my class ring junior year of high school. Evidently during that Spring I took it off on the first tee when I was playing golf. I thought I got it in my bag. Evidently not and I lost it.
Fast forward 6 months and a friend walks up to me and says, “Hey, are you missing a class ring?” I said “Yeah, I lost it a long time ago.” He takes it out and gives it to me (I had my name inscribed on the inside of the ring." He says he was teeing off and and it caught his eye. He looked at it and saw my name.
So not only did it survive umpteen mowings and thousands of people playing the course, but the guy that DID end up finding it happened to be a friend of mine.