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.

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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?