Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

For some reason I am amused by such stories and am hoping ElD'ers would have some slightly better stories than just your run-of-the-mill ones like "I dreamt 4-6-7 on the pick 3 lottery, went and played it...and it won!!!" or, "I was in the middle of Paris and I randomly bumped into some good friend of mine from NY."

This is also an excuse to tell my favorite one which really doesn't involve me but at least it's my family.

--

In early 1970s my Dad makes a scientific discovery regarding the relationship of the production of Glutathione Peroxidase in the livers of mammals solely due to intake of Selenium.
Something like that anyway. The discovery was in various science publications. look up 'Rotruck Selenium Glutathione' on google for more.

My Dad wasn't exactly world-famous for his scientific contribution/discovery but it did get him some limited notoriety in the field I guess.


Anyway, fast-forward 25 or so years and my sister is taking her first crack at the board-exam to become a veterinarian.
Evidently this is an incredibly tense time and I think most people fail on their first shot at it and have to wait 6 months just to get to take it again.
Everyone is nervous and it's a very tense atmosphere.

They open the booklets and the very first question asks what nutrient has been determined to be solely responsible for the production of Glutathione Peroxidase in mammals.
My sister literally LOL'ed in the middle of the big exam room (everyone turned and looked at her like she must have just lost her mind) because the first question on this exam was her own Dad's rather obscure scientific-discovery.

Weird.

She naturally took this as some sort of sign that she would do just fine and, in fact, she did pass.


Okay, so this probably isn't the weirdest that you guys can come up with but I thought I'd get the ball rolling.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

This isn't really a coincidence, but I literally married the girl next door.

We grew up next door to each other, but I was 3 years older and we went to different schools, so we didn't really know each other beyond waving hello.

I went to the east coast for college and she went to the Midwest, and 15 years after I left home for college, we ended up in the same town, both single. (That part was, I guess, a coincidence.)

Our moms (who still live next door to each other) pestered both of us to get together for a drink, and neither of us wanted to do it. We finally agreed to get our moms to leave us alone, and met for a drink one night.

We've been married 2 years and have a 9 month old boy, and the 4 grandparents still live right next door to each other.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

[ QUOTE ]
"I was in the middle of Paris and I randomly bumped into some good friend of mine from NY."

[/ QUOTE ]
I went to school in West Virginia (WVU). The summer after I graduated, I went to Prague for a month. In the last week I was there, I was walking across town and decided to stop at the walk-up KFC right on the edge of the touristy part of Prague. It was like two in the morning. Two spots ahead of me on line was this girl a friend of mine had been dating in WV. It was really weird, and made weirder by the fact that I couldn't remember her name, so I had to rock the "introduce her to my friend so she'd be forced to say her name" move. Anyway, that added nothing to this thread, considering you sort of covered it in your OP, but that was the biggest coincidence, probably, in my life.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

First 2 in this thread are pretty sweet, but I'm a science dork and an optimist.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

Oh, this is another sort of weird one. My major was in creative writing. One of my teachers was basically like a mentor to me, and I've kept in touch with her after college. She won a very prestigious literary award some years ago for a book of short stories she published. Despite my relationship with her, I never read the book. So now I'm 26, and about a month ago I decide to order it used off Half.com. It came a few weeks ago, and on the title page is a hand-written note from my professor's sister. I guess she gave the book to someone as a gift, and wrote a personalized note saying, "This is my sister's book. I thought you would enjoy it etc." I guess she didn't enjoy it, considering the book was in mint condition and selling on Half.com for 50 cents.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

That is pretty cool Bob.

Most of mine seem to be travel related:

I ran into a girl a knew from KC in the Narita airport in Tokyo. I saw her coming a long way away, so when she noticed me I just said "hey what's up", very casually. Her jaw dropped to the floor. That was fun.

My dad just visited his estranged brother, whom he hadn't seen in 25 years. The only reason this happened his his brother's best friend happened to be in Positano, Italy (where our family is from) at the same time me and my Dad were visting. Here's the full story if anyone's interested.

A good friend of mine in LA I know through two different unrelated friends from Kansas City. So if either connection wasn't there, I would still know her through the other one.

I can name at least 50 people scattered around the country, including some of my good friends in LA, who all know each other solely due to a connection made between me and another group while I was in SF. The lynchpin of this conncection is a quiet, often drunk, always broke waiter I used to work with, that no one even knows that happened to anymore. For some reason it always freaks me out to think of that.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

cue KKF's picture story asap.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

One time, early on in high school, I went over to a friend's house to play Nintendo after school. His mom asked us to leave because the Dali Lama was coming over later. At the time I was pissed because it took an hour to get to my house and that was a lot of missed video games.

True story.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

I had a few big deadlines coming up at work and was very underprepared.
I had been half-thinking about how I could get out of them but I dont
have the front to out-and-out lie so I would usually get through somehow.

Yesterday I accidently tripped down a single step and broke my ankle.
6 weeks off work with a plaster cast!

Tx.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

[ QUOTE ]
I had a few big deadlines coming up at work and was very underprepared.
I had been half-thinking about how I could get out of them but I dont
have the front to out-and-out lie so I would usually get through somehow.

Yesterday I accidently tripped down a single step and broke my ankle.
6 weeks off work with a plaster cast!

Tx.

[/ QUOTE ]

uh, that kinda sucks?

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

I discovered two previosuly unknown (to my family, anyway) recordings on which my grandfather played in the mid-1920s, one of which was a song he wrote, when I accidentally misspelled his name in a google search.

Full story here.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

[ QUOTE ]
uh, that kinda sucks?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah I wasnt classing it under "funny".

I made it almost 40 years w/o ever breaking a bone
despite cycling to/from work every day in major UK cities.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

[ QUOTE ]
cue KKF's picture story asap.

[/ QUOTE ]

heh, yeah, kkf will win again.

we've done this thread at least twice in oot but i'll let it go cos its always good fun.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

In the September 05 2+2 magazine there was an article by Ed Miller targetted at young poker players who had recently made huge amounts of money at high stakes limit HE. I had made 200k over that summer at 50/100 and 100/200 and was only 17, so it was very relevant to me.

One of the things he warned against in the article is having no protection against a disaster scenario, such as getting cancer. He mentioned how several friends who played had caught it and the problems it caused them. I remember remarking to friends about how ridiculous this was, as the chance of getting it as a teenager is extremely low.

I was diagnosed one month later.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

Mine are usually travel-related as well. I remember faces and am pretty observant.

1) Was in Disney World (from Missouri) and saw a girl from my school getting onto a passenger train/trolley thing smack dab in the middle of DW. She was sort of popular and hot, so I was too much of a loser to say anything.

2) was vacationing in Port Aransas, TX (near Corpus Christi) Senior year of HS from Houston, TX. Out on balcony of hotel room and below me walks by this dude from my gym class. He looks up and gives this nonchalant wave and says "whats up man?" I was like "WTF...yeah...whats up?"

3) Just went to SF with gf earlier this month from Houston. Two homosexual males were in front of me at airport for an hour trying to find out where their plane was(their flight ended up getting cancelled, mine didnt, lol).

Cut to: We're in SF and walking by Union Square I see one of the guys puffing on a [censored] in Union Square. I nudge gf "there's that gay dude from the airport" "No way." "yeah." "That guy is wearing sunglasses and totally different clothes." "It's him"

Then cut to 2 days later we're leaving Alcatraz and the new boat is coming to drop off people, when lo and behold him and his partner walk right by us. I nudge her again "See there he is again, and taht's his partner (who looked completely similar to airport)" "OMG U R RIGHT ZOMG WHY R U OBSESSED WITH GAI DUDES WITH HUDGE BULGES ZOMG"

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

My brother was set up on a blind date with this this girl and started dating her. They decided to move in together after a year. During all kinds of documents processing, it turned out that our mother was very good friend with her mother 25 years ago in a different country that no longer exists. There were no contacts between them during that time. My mom started telling stories how when his baby-stroller broke, she would borrow the one from his now-wife's mother, how they shared same milk producer, and so on. The girl was sobbing "please tell me you're not my brother", etc.

I just rented a new apartment in Manhattan. First email from my new landlord revealed that her cousin is a coworker of mine who was kind enough to provide a letter of reference to me.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

Mine was kind of like PHB's.

Me and my buddy traveled Europe for a month this summer. Towards the end we were going from Rome-->Barcelona. We went on a pub crawl while in Rome and met a lot of the other people on the crawl but that was basically the extent of it. Two days later we flew to Barcelona.

As we were getting on the plane we run into this Mexican kid who was with us on the pub crawl two nights prior. We start talking to him, and hes a big soccer fan. He tells us we should try to get tickets to the FC Barcelona-Espanyol game a few nights later. We agree that this is an excellent idea and say ciao at the airport.

The game is taking place on our 3rd night there and after buying a Messi (me) and Eto'o (him) jersey, we get on the subway to go over to the stadium. Of course as we get on who do we see sitting there, on the exact car, 2.5 hours before the game? Yeah, same kid.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

Like 6 months ago I was walking into a Target and saw a really good looking woman. My mind was elsewhere, and I didn't intend to do it, but I guess I was kind of staring at her.

She catches my gaze, and says "I'm sorry, do I know you?" I took this to mean that she caught me staring and was calling me out on it.

I stammered a bit and then said "Oh, I'm sorry you look just like this girl Janelle I know." Thing is, I do know a girl Janelle, but she looks nothing like this girl. The only connection is that they were both smoking hot.

Her jaw then drops a little and she is like...."Umm what is Janelle's last name?"

I think its weird that she is quizzing me. Maybe she is trying to call my bluff. "Umm...Smith".


Her jaw then drops even more and says "Are you kidding me, that is my sister!!!"

Now I'm really confused, and part of me thinks she is [censored] with me since they look nothing alike. "Oh..maybe that is why I saw the resemblance."

Her-"Ummm well that would be pretty difficult, since I was adopted."


There was some ensuing awkwardness as she tried to determine if I was a psycho stalker and I tried to determine if she was [censored] with me.

When I got home, I hopped on facebook and sure enough, there was a pic of Janelle with this girl and the caption indicating it was her adopted sister (something like brother from another mother, but for girls). I had never seen this girl before, she had gone to college on the other side of the country, and hadn't visited her sister at school since I met her.



So basically, I randomly picked out someone from the probably 10,000 people whose names I have on recall, and it happened to be related to this girl, but there was no way I could have known that.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

noah yours is awesome.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

noah - that's really weird.

One of my good friends from grade-school was adopted.
He had a brother 4 or 5 years younger who wasn't adopted (parents learned the fun way that they really COULD have kids).

The two of them looked pretty damn similar including similarly curly hair.
They got comments ALL the time about how much they looked like each other.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

I've had 3 relationships. all 3 girls have had the same phonetic last name, but different spelling.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

This is probably weak as far as coincidences ago (certainly doesn't hold a candle to Noah), but it is kind of funny...

I was interviewing roommates for my apartment in Seattle. The apartment was a really sweet deal -- $750 for a very large two-bedroom apartment on Queen Anne hill overlooking the city. It could have easily rented for $2K but the owner kept the rent low for various reasons.

So a lot of people really want this apartment and I tell everyone I meet that I smoke pot occasionally. For most of the prospective roommates it was not a problem, and for those for whom it is a problem whatever. Then I interview a guy and we get along really really well. He is a professional who makes a lot of money, so I know I will never worry about him sticking me with rent. So because I decide I want him to take this place, I neglect to mention that I smoke pot. At that time I was not smoking much anyway, and I figure he'll bring it up.

So six months go by and by this point I'm really convinced that he doesn't smoke pot. I've been occasionally smoking secretly in my room, blowing the smoke out of the window. One day he brings his new girlfriend over and her first words to me are "So let me ask you, do you smoke pot?" I look at my roommate and his face is beet red and I can tell he is really angry at his girlfriend for asking me this question. I don't want to lie, and I just answer honestly that yes I do smoke occasionally. Then I see that his expression relaxes tremendously. His girlfriend says 'we smoke too, that's great' and then she goes to his room and pulls out a beautiful glass bong that is probably 3 feet tall. My roommate somehow convinced himself that I didn't smoke, and he didn't want to jeopardize the roommate relationship by bringing it up.

We got high on his BC bud every night for the next six months before I moved to Los Angeles.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

[ QUOTE ]
I've had 3 relationships. all 3 girls have had the same phonetic last name, but different spelling.

[/ QUOTE ]

Didn't you post about that like a year and a half ago? Leigh, Lee, and Lei?

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

I moved into an apartment when I was 19 and did not know either of my two roommates. (I got in because I was friends with one of their girlfriends.) 3 or 4 months after moving in the subject of birthdays comes up with one of my roommates. I tell my usual birthday story about how my mom missed the men walking on the moon because she was delivering me. He laughs because he has the same birthday story. It turns out we were born within about 8 hours of each other. I tell him I am used to sharing my birthday because I have a fraternal twin. Turns out he is a fraternal twin as well. We ended up living together for several years.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

Weird.

My best friend from college and I were born less than an hour apart.
On our birth-certificates it would say we were born 4 minutes apart...but we were actually born 56 minutes apart because it was in different time-zones.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

favorites: bob,drew, kurt, noah

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

In the same vein as DD.

I moved around a lot as a kid, and ended up going to 3 different middle schools.

The girl I'm living with now not only went to the same middle school as me, we sat next to each other in many of our classes. We even both played French Horn. We had no idea until after we started dating.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

When I was about 12 or 13 I liked ninjas and collected throwing stars. I used to throw them with my neighbor in LA, who is still a good friend of mine.

Last year I was driving to New Orleans with new friends, and one of them mentions that his uncle bought him nunchucks when he was 13. Now it's been 15 or 20 years since I've thought of my own long lost throwing star collection, but this reminds me of it, and I start telling my new friends about it and about my old neighbor.

About 20 minutes later I reach in my pocket to check my voicemail, and I see I have a new text message, about 15 minutes old. It's from my old neighbor, who I havn't spoken to in months. It says: "Hey dude whatever happened to your throwing stars?"

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

Can't remember if I posted this before. As all good coincidences this was during a europe backpacking trip.

Had just arrived in Budapest on the train from Prague. I rode the subway into the downtown where I was staying. Chatted with some other backpackers for the 5 minutes we were on the train, one was a girl from San Francisco. Anyway, we all get off on different stops "maybe see you around the city!"

3 days later during my last night in the city some random guys in my hostel take me out to a bar/club/art gallery (you'll know it if you've been to budapest). Lo and behold the girl is there so that's cool, but not really surprising since there were a ton of backpackers hanging out at the bar. Either way we hang out, it's my birthday I get drunk it's good times.

Next morning I race to the train, obviously never going to see any of the folks from the night before again. A week or so later I'm in the Florence train station struggling to find a way out of the godforsaken city. Standing in line sweating like crazy I get a tap on the shoulder, holy [censored] it's the san francisco girl! So we talk for a bit, she has to catch a train with this dutch kid she's been shacked up with for a week (lol). Anyway, that was cool - I add those 2 coincidences to my anecdote libray.

Another week later I'm in Barcelona, walking out of the subway looking for dinner. Just out of the corner of my vision is the same girl! I run up and say hi (forgot her name again), and we end up spending a crazy night together partying with argentinians in an illegal super secret legit after hours bar. We hook up obviously and I wake up next to her in an apartment somewhere in the gothic quarter.

3 chance encounters over 3 weeks in 3 different cities. Pretty cool eh!

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

Smiley - awesome.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

Another European backpacking one to add to the list.

I was working in a London pub, and went to Brighton for my monthly 2 consecutive days off. At the Hostel I met a couple of Venezuelan guys, a Polish Girl and 2 Aussie girls who'd met each other that day. The 6 of us ended up getting a few drinks in town and later cans of stella on the beach. Didn't see any of them the next day before I headed back to London.

Then 4 months later, I've quit my job and I'm backpacking out east. I jump in the shuttle bus from Auschwitz back to Krakow, and hear a couple of Aussie girls talking. Sure enough its the two who had met the night I met them in Brighton. Turns out they'd met up again in Scotland and had been living/traveling together since. I didn't think of it at the time, but I suspect they may have been a couple.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

I get engaged to a girl from a small town in Kyushu Japan. Meanwhile I get entry into the Ironman triathalon on the big Island of Hawaii (was living on Oahu at the time).

So I'm doing my best to survive the marathon portion of the course. It's pitch black. I hear footsteps and some guy comes up and prods me to start running with him.

We get going and I notice a Japanese accent, ask him in Japanese where he is from..Kyushu..oh really. Find out he lives about 3 miles from where my wife grew up. He knows her father because he ran a few small grocery stores, goes back after the event and puts the good word in for me which made it far easier to get his blessing on the wedding...

Considering there were only about 20 entrants from Japan in the entire race, and all the other variables I'm always amazed at this one...

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

The only one I can think of involves my broter. In high school he wrote down his name and phone number on a $1 bill for a friend of his. A couple of years later when he was in college (6+ hour drive away in a different state) someone came up to him and asked if xxx-xxxx was his home phone number. They had that $1 bill and showed it to him.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

Not the best story, but me and my wife's 4-digit PIN numbers that we have always used for our debit cards, passwords, etc are the same four digits, only reversed. We both picked them out before we even knew each other.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

My wife's parent's bought their house in 1985 from the "Olsen's" who then of course moved into a new house. Life for the Olsen's was not going well because they were in the process of getting divorced by 1989. When it came time for the Olsen's to sell the house they moved into in 1985, they sold it to my parents.

I met my to be wife on 2002 and approx 1 year later this subject came up.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

So your parents lived in 2 different former Olsen houses? Is there some significance to the subject coming up 1 year after meeting your wife? I'm confused.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

That was really poorly written. I think it meant that his wife's parents bought a house from a couple. That couple then moved to a different house, divorced and sold the house to his parents. So both of their parents lived in houses owned consecutively by the same couple.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

deleted by me.

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

Noah, this is a pretty sweet story. However, is there really no way you've ever seen a picture of Janelle and her sister? Not that you were consciously doing it, but the brain can be pretty remarkable when it comes to associations like this.

-McGee

Re: Weird/funny coincidences in your life
 

[ QUOTE ]
Not the best story, but me and my wife's 4-digit PIN numbers that we have always used for our debit cards, passwords, etc are the same four digits, only reversed. We both picked them out before we even knew each other.

[/ QUOTE ]

I actually think this one is pretty neat.

-McGee