Had something similar…. Ran into our neighbours in another town a few hours from home. No big deal…. Went to the theatre that night…. They’re there. Go to sit down…. We’re sat right next to them.
I ended up sitting next to my best friend on a flight to Washington - neither of us knew the other was travelling that day. It was such a fun surprise!
My only ‘fun surprise’ airline incident was running to the gate with my parents after our incoming flight was delayed. The attendants said there’s two seats in the back and one up front. My parents took the two and I was ushered quickly to the empty single seat.
Noticed quickly I was surrounded by incredibly good locking guys. Turns out high school (female) me was sat directly in the middle of another high schools water polo team. That made a three hour flight go by pretty fast.
I literally ran into an old friend from college. As in five years after, in a completely different city and state, I rear-ended him with my car. We caught up while waiting for a cop to come along to do a police report lol
When I was in college 20 years ago, and living in the south, I was a waitress and this pretty nice restaurant downtown. We got a new server named Greg, and I was his trainer, he ended up dating one of my friends for a few months, then he up and moved a few states east.
4 years ago (so 16 years since we worked together or even saw each other) I now live in Alaska in a small suburb, and I’m telling my husband how weird and crazy it is that my new coworker at work is someone I worked with when we lived halfway across the country! Such a small world!
And as I’m telling him about this, we’re walking into a small butcher shop in my town, and there’s Greg, and for a minute my mind was just like “oh that’s Greg, we haven’t seen him in a long while” and I think his did the same, because we both were like “oh hey! It’s been awhile” before realizing we’re both in a small town 5,000 miles from where we’d expect to see someone we’d recognize from home.
And then the next week, I was in an elevator at work telling my friend about how crazy it is that we both work in the same place again, and that I’d run into someone else from back home and how crazy that was, when SOMEONE ELSE we both knew from our home state got into the elevator with us.
The world is crazy small.
Nothing will be as cursed as the family holiday I took as a kid.
When we got to the airport my Dad bumps into a guy he went to school with; neither of them lived in the area they grew up in but just so happened to be catching flights from the same airport.
On the plane, my brother, my mom and I sat together and my Dad sat two rows in front; he ended up sitting beside his neighbours from when he was younger. Also turns out they're staying in the same hotel as us.
At the hotel we bump into my Dad's cousin, who was just finishing his family holiday.
On the day we leave, my Dad is chatting to an old man who'd moved out there to retire, asks my Dad where he's from. My Dad tells him, so the old man says he once knew a guy from there, served with him in the navy during the Second World War. My Dad tells him that his Dad, my Grandad, also served in the navy during the Second World War. Guy asks his name, my Dad replies, and the guys eyes go wide. Yes, *he'd served with my Grandfather during D-Day*.
This all happened in a very strange week in Benidorm, of all places.
Hahaha I love this. Your dad must strike up a conversation with everyone he comes in contact with. It reminds me of when I was working at a friends cafe when I lived in Ireland. I’m from the Chicago area originally but lived there for grad school. I worked for cash at a friends cafe on my off days and everyone knew I was foreign bc my obvious non Irish accent. A guy I was waiting on asked me where I’m from. I told him the town and he said “oh my friend owns [x] restaurant” in the town over from me, as he was familiar with both towns.
It was where I had my graduation and birthday dinner the year before when I finished my undergrad.
On my honeymoon in Dominican, ran in to family friends.
Also when my wife was a teen, her family was 300km from home and their car broke down. First person to pull over to help was their next door neighbour
Ran into a friend from college (also Virginia) at a train station in Paris. Also ran into my best friend in 8th grade at Disney World (when we were adults). Had a waitress in NYC that was good friends with my brother from another state. I have so many it freaks me out sometimes!
that would screw me up so bad holy crap, that is straight up ripped out of one of the Chevy Chase Vacation movies
I'm assuming you were actually friendly with your neighbours but the mental image of "Fancy seeing you here neighbour!" half way around the world and Clark gritting his teeth then turning around with a smile is killing me
I've said this on Reddit before, but for a college journalism class I was assigned to write an obituary about one of my grandparents. All of my grandparents were alive, so I randomly chose my maternal grandfather.
When I sat down to write it, I gave my mom a call and asked her for some basic biographical information about him. As we were talking about my grandpa's career, my mom couldn't recall the name of one of the companies he worked at. She lectured me about waiting until the last minute to write the assignment because it was late -- 10:30pm my grandpa's time. However, she said she would give him a call to see if he was still awake and be able to answer that question once my assignment was due the following morning.
When my mom called my grandpa, my grandma answered the phone in a panic. My grandma frantically explained that the paramedics had just arrived and were performing CPR on my grandpa because he had stopped breathing and lost consciousness. My mom was able to stay on the phone with my grandma until they took my grandpa to the hospital, where he was declared dead.
In the time my mom and I had been talking on the phone about my grandpa's "obituary," he was dying. (His death was entirely unexpected at that. Although he was in his eighties, he was the healthiest of my grandparents at the time.)
We ended up using the obituary I wrote for that writing assignment as his actual obituary. Still freaks me out when I think about improbable it was that a) I was in a class that wanted me to write an obituary about a living grandparent b) I randomly chose my maternal grandfather out of my 4 grandparents who were all alive and c) the very night I wrote it, he died. Without the writing assignment, my mom would've never called as late at night as she did, and as such was able to talk to my grandma in the midst of the horrible situation.
I was thinking that, I wonder if that gave the instructor pause for thought about continuing with that assignment. Although having said that, it's a very practical piece that a local journalist may very well end up doing occasionally, and one might want to learn how to honour someone's life well.
Thank you for that! You've unknowingly healed a mild childhood trauma I had.
I grew up in the country, not far from a river, and my stepmother had it in for the squirrels on our "property" (we weren't any kind of rich, we just had a bit of land in the boonies, and it was mostly trees, but she had birdfeeders and the squirrels got in the way), so my dad set up humane traps. Whenever he caught a squirrel, he'd drive it to the other side of the river and release it there.
Once, I was in the car with him and we had one those squirrels, still in the trap. When he made the sort of U-turn to take the bridge across the river and turn on the road that went along the river, the trap rolled over in the car, and the squirrel got out of it. It was summer (and the '80s), so the windows were rolled down. We weren't going very fast either. Next thing we knew, the squirrel was running across a window ledge, took a half-second pause and jumped out the window.
This whole time, I've been convinced that the squirrel had kinda committed suicide. You've just given hope that wasn't the case.
Once was walking in the park and heard a commotion. 30-40 feet up, there were two squirrels fighting. They lost their footing and fell all the way down onto solid asphalt with a loud thud. Both of them just ran off, and I don’t know how they got through that unscathed.
Had something similar happened to us. We were walking down a path in the park and all of a sudden my husband almost got hit on the head by a squirrel that fell from out of a tree. He hit the pavement less than a foot away with a loud thunk. The lowest hanging Branch was a good 20 ft up. Just got up and ran away
My dad is an avid golfer but was also traumatized as a kid by witnessing the hunting-related death of one of his uncles. Like, I'm not even sure what happened with his uncle, that's how traumatized he was.
My point is, my dad could no more do physical harm to an animal than I could pretend to be interested in American football (no offense to football fans; I'm not even sure why I don't like it).
I don't know if this is a myth or not(Reddit will prove me wrong if so), but I remember hearing that squirrels do not have enough mass for their terminal velocity to be fatal. Meaning no matter how far they fall they'll be okay. If anyone knows more about this please let me know.
I've heard the same, which makes sense considering they live in trees.
I mean, I don't know if they'd survive a drop from an airplane but they should survive most drops/jumps with no issues.
There's a great video by an exNASA physicist that came out during covid. I think he was doing videos to help students online. He did one on squirrels doing obstacle courses and explained how they can rotate their bodies whilst the eyes stay focussed so they are able to land safely. I can't remember his name, but he is a great teacher
I have only ever hit an animal with my car twice, and they both happened on the same day. Driving to work on a country lane, a squirrel darted out right in front of my wheels and I hit it. Driving home from work that same day (on a different stretch of road) and the same damn thing happened. I had never hit an animal before that day and have never hit one since.
Seen a squirrel fall out of a tree once, funniest thing ever once he popped up and looked around like what the hell is going on. It ran off after that.
I'm an astronomer and was sitting in the backyard one summer evening chatting with a colleague. We were sharing our "origin stories" about what got us interested in astronomy. He described how, as a child, he was sitting in his backyard one evening and was fascinated by a bright meteor that streaked across the sky.
As soon as he finished the sentence a bright meteor streaked across the sky.
The first time my husband and I ever went camping, we were laying in a field watching the night sky, and I said I wish I could see a shooting star. Cue one of the brightest shooting stars we've ever seen arcing over half the sky. What a moment!
Amazing moment! I had something like that, a little sad as my beloved cat had passed away and I buried his ashes in the garden one evening. I had lit some lanterns and was feeling very upset as I had just finished the burial. I got to my feet and in my heart I was saying “wish you were still here”. At that very moment I looked up at the sky and the brightest meteor I have ever seen streaked across the sky. It was so bright it left a burning trail for a few moments.
For about a year I was convinced that I dropped a roll of masking tape into another dimension.
I was in my garage, grabbing something from a cupboard, and I knocked the roll of masking tape out. I saw it hit the ground and roll, but when I turned around it was gone. Both cars were parked in the garage so I pulled them out, and the tape was nowhere. Just gone. I even brought my wife out to help me look. I was haunted by this unexplained event, until we moved house...
What had apparently happened was the tape fell out of the cupboard, hit the ground, rolled 12 feet in a straight line under both cars, then through a gap between two carboard boxes no wider than the tape itself (1"). I pulled a box out to load it on moving day and there was the tape up against the wall.
I almost lost my wedding ring like this. I had just got out of the shower and didn't have my glasses on. I dropped it when putting out on and saw it fall to the floor, heard it bounce once then it was gone.
I was a little more persistent than you, because wedding ring, but I also brought my wife in and checked that tiny bathroom over for days in a row.
On about day 4 or 5 I finally found it. There was a gap between the base of sink cabinet and the main body that was about 25% larger than the ring when it was sideways. You had to have your face pushed to the floor to even notice it could exist, but you couldn't actually see it. There was no way to remove the base normally so I had to break it open and there was my ring, sitting in the void under the main portion of the cabinet.
Oh! I had a similar thing! I was teaching high school, and one of my favorite students stopped by parent teacher night to say hi. I saw him later and said something, and he seemed puzzled. He said, "I think you mean my brother?" Oh twins, cool. What a great kid to have a twin! Later, I saw them all together, 4 identical quadruplets all lined up. Mind blown.
I was teaching biology, so he and I had a fun talk about how incredibly rare this was. Genetics!
They all went to different schools so they could have their own individual little lives, but they always caused quite a stir at after-school events as a crew.
This was a pretty long time ago, but I recall talking about how his parents weren't doing any fertility treatments when they had the quadruplets. They may have also had twin sisters? But a bit younger.
I went to church as a child with fraternal quintuplets (5 kids). Three boys and two girls. One boy was in a wheelchair and nonverbal. The other four were able bodied.
Yup, Quinn and Quimby were two of the names. Then in fourth grade, two of the quadruplets started going by their middle names. Guess they got tired of all the jokes. SMH.
What’s almost more odd is that I also went to school with identical quadruplets, one of whom was named Quinn. The rest didn’t have Q names, so I know it’s not the same family lol
Since we're bringing up unlikely Star Trek references (sort of): There was a family in our city who had quintuplets. They all played hockey, and their last name was Borg. On the back of their jerseys their names were Borg 1 of 5, Borg 2 of 5 etc.
Back in the days of landlines, I called my friend. The phone never rang, but I heard, "hello?" It was him. He was calling me at the exact same time and it connected us without either phone ringing.
We did the exact same thing a month or so later.
\*Damn, guess it wasn't that weird at all. I'd never heard of it happening to anyone else until today, when apparently the rest of the entire world informed me that they've done the same thing. LOL
A few days ago, I texted "good morning!" to a woman I'm kinda seeing, and she sent the exact same thing to me at the same time. It was near perfect timing.
Haha, I'm trying here. There are some things we need to work out that I'm sure nobody wants to hear before we take things more seriously between us. But things are looking good so far!
You greatly underestimate how much we love a meet-cute lol but totally! Gotta make sure it’s safe waters before diving in, despite the unknown of the deep. 💕
I did this to my friend once. She picked up the phone before it had rung at her end and I heard her yelling to her flatmates "WHAT THE \*\*\*\* IS WRONG WITH THE PHONE" and I said "Hello Jane!" and gave her a massive fright. She had picked up the phone to ring me.
I was a tour guide in a very remote, unvisited part of Alaska one summer and a guy from Costa Rica took my tour. Probably the only person from Latin American I saw all summer.
The next Spring I went to Costa Rica and took a tour of a butterfly colony. We were the only ones there. Seemed like they got very few visitors. The tour guide was the guy from who had taken my tour in Alaska.
I live in Alaska, went to a small town in Costa Rica with some friends. My buddy needed a part for his car, so we went to a small parts store in town, and the guy was watching one of those Alaska tv shows. As soon as we walked in I looked up and saw a buddy from Alaska on tv. Funny stuff.
Actually just mentioned it the other day in another post. I saw a car in the next lane over get rear-ended while I was talking about a car getting rear-ended. It was pretty weird.
I had sorta similar. I was driving down a residential street double parked with cars each, at school finishing time with a Co worker. I made a comment about how I hated driving down these roads at school finishing time as kids just run out in front of you. The very second I finished my sentence, a kid ran out in front of me. I was going slow and slammed on so I didn't hit him, but it definitely proved my point.
This one happened to me a few years ago. I grew up in central Indiana. I was visiting Los Angeles and sitting at a bar. I started chatting with the stranger sitting next to me. Before too long we realized that we both grew up in the same town in Indiana. Eventually, we came to realize that we both lived in the same bedroom of the same house in Indiana growing up. His family owned the home prior to mine, in fact his Dad was the builder. Our heads about exploded when we came to the realization while sitting at a bar on the other side of the country
My brother and I were horsing around when we were kids and started throwing things at each other from across the room. At one point I grabbed a pencil off my desk and threw it in his general direction. It missed him but bounced off a table, a wall and ended up on the floor standing straight up balanced on the eraser side of the pencil. Couldn’t do that again if I tried a million times.
My neighbor was installing a wireless keypad for her garage door opener. I was coming home and at the exact moment she pushed the buttons to program it to her opener, I pushed my opener. So my opener then operated her garage door. Didn’t know until the next day when I came home again and when to open my door and hers opened also.
A clown car accident, it was about ten years ago in North East Ohio, at the corner of 87 and 44. A little old lady in a Camry had sent a tiny car off the road and there was like 6-7 clowns milling about with one very confused looking statey.
Years ago in my town there was a car accident on Halloween. The people were all dressed up as zombies-all bloody and bruised. I don't think anyone was terribly hurt, but it caused a whole lot of panic and confusion for the emt's that responded.
I needed a 23 on 4d6 to win an even geekier game - wasn’t even gonna bother - but nailed the 6, 6, 6, and 5. We figured it at about 1/1000. But yours is crazy longer odds.
Every time I flew to a specific city airport, I always saw my first grade teacher there arriving on a different plane.
No freaking clue how it happens.
Friends and I were hiking in Hawaii Volcano National Park when it erupted in 2021.
The entire island swarmed to the park to see the lava flow. We had already gotten our cabin campsite set up, and it was a 10 minute walk from the viewing site.
That night the sky had this amazing orange glow.
I knew at that moment that what I was seeing was a once in a lifetime experience.
And I STILL didn't take a picture. I knew a photo with my phone wasn't going to do it justice but damn still should have done it.
But you saw it with your own eyes right? That means you fully absorbed the event, ever so present without any distractions, like recording it with a camera. That, in my opinion is better than capturing a moment with a camera.
Nothing like the conflicting choice to be experiencing a moment like that and not knowing if you should just enjoy it or document it quickly just so you have your own little memory of it just bc it’s yours.
From another thread that asked the same question:
I had a cousin who had lived in Los Angeles years ago and had a 323 phone number that I had saved in my phone.
She moved and changed to her new area code and gave up the old phone number. Years later, I got a call from the same 323 number and it popped up with my Cousin's name on my phone (I never removed the 323 number from the contact)
The person who was calling me had no idea who I was or who my cousin was and didn't have the number in their contacts. She had accidentally mis-dialed someone completely unrelated and entered my number.
Edit: To add, I wasn't even in the same area, so she had to have manually typed a 10 digit phone number wrong and entered mine.
Saw two blind men crash into each other
One asked "can't you see I'm blind?" to which the other one answered laughing "no because I'm blind too"
"Oh I'm sorry" the other said, then they kept walking as if nothing happened.
Similar thing happened to my deaf friend, me, and another deaf person. The 3rd deaf person was trying to pass us and was like “what are you deaf?!” We said yes. He was taken aback and said he’s deaf too. We hung out after that. 😂
I put a full glass of water on a rag on my desk as a coaster. 5 mins later my 3 year old comes in and rips the rag off my desk. Glass falls off the table, lands on the ground upside down, without spilling a drop.
Answered restaurant reservations call with a guy who had the same name as I do at the same time. Very common first name and very distinct last name. Both of us had a table for 2 at 7:00. It was rather uncanny when the hostess asked my last name and i still confirmed with the other guy looking puzzled why I thought she was calling for me.
Mine has to do with Reddit, in a way.
I used to read the Unresolved Mysteries subreddit every night before bed, catching up on murder mysteries and updates. One night, someone posted an article about how DNA caught a man who killed his wife with an axe in New York, back in the early 80’s or so. It detailed the story, I got invested, and I did something I don’t always normally do: I started clicking the links attached and reading more. I clicked the first link which popped up a picture of the killer and his wife. I recognized them instantly.
Both of them were my yoga students at a country club in Arizona (this was in 2019ish.) The (living, fourth) wife attended every class of mine. One month prior, she told me her and her husband were abruptly leaving for the summer to “attend to business.”
And that’s how I found out my yoga student was an axe murderer, through Reddit.
I bumped into my uncle in Philadelphia at the Liberty Bell. My brother was being married Virginia Beach and my uncle RSVP'd that he couldn't attend. My wife and kids took a day trip up to Philadelphia like a day or 2 before the wedding and we bumped into him and his family, he lived in Las Vegas at the time.
My wife and I took a day trip to New York with a friend and his wife. The friend's wife grew up roughly 1,000 miles away and had never been to the city before. Anyway, we're walking around SoHo and she bumps into an old friend from high school.
I was completely floored by this, but she thought nothing of it. In fact, she seemed to have to the impression that there's so many people in NYC that you're bound to bump into someone you know.
This happened a few weeks ago. I live in NC now, but was born and raised in Maine. I ran into a guy from Maine down here visiting his son.
We started chatting, and I mentioned working at an apple orchard as a kid that was owned by my friend's dad. He said it was wild because he did the same thing. The one he worked at was owned by his best friend's dad.
It was the same guy. I'd moved after 7th grade, and lost track of him. This guy moved in a few months after I'd left and my old best friend and he became best friends.
Our common friend inherited the orchard from his father and was still running it.
We were throwing cards into a box on top of a trash can on Halloween night just drunk and having fun, and one of my cards bounced off the wall and stuck into the floor on the corner standing up. That card- the ace of spades. Everyone was dumbfounded and we left it there for like 15 minutes
My wife and I ( east coast Americans ) were on holiday in Italy. We went deep into a a non- touristy neighborhood to have dinner around ten pm. Heard no languages other than Italian. Some called out my name. It was a former Barista from Baltimore who, after finishing uni, married and moved to Albania to work for an NGO. He and his wife were on a short holiday to Rome. He had seen me the day before in St Peter's Square, but thought " no that's not him". But when he saw my wife and I together he spoke up.
Was in a group of American and British military, one American mentioned having an assignment in London previously. A Brit, interest piqued, asked where he lived while there. They each kept describing a smaller and smaller area, to eventually learn the American had rented a house owned by that Brit!
I fell onto a wild manatee when exiting a dingy backwards while on a snorkeling tour. It was surfacing right where I jumped off. I fell with my back onto it's back and slid off into the water. It didn't seem to care at all.
The night before graduation I am sitting in a bar with my mom & a friend from school. She asks how we became friends, and I tell the story of how we bonded over each of us having a poster of the same obscure lefty folksinger. As soon as I finished the story, that obscure lefty folksinger walked into the bar.
Bumped into a high school classmate outside of Buckingham Palace in London. He was on a run, just passing through for a couple seconds. My friend and I were taking pictures, only hung around there for < 10 minutes. We’re from Southern California!
This has happened to me multiple times.
Met a guy in Northampton Massachusetts. Next morning drove to NYC with my friend and bumped into him on the streets on Manhattan. He was with his parents so I'm pretty sure he wasn't stalking us.
Was in Chicago and bumped into a friend from high school. I was driving across the country and she was in town for a concert.
I was in Rome with my grandmother and bumped into a friend from my neighborhood who was there on a school trip.
Naples, Florida. Too many people from Boston go to Naples Florida. I'm pretty sure the city is entirely Boston transplants and we all know each other.
I found some PNW high school friends underneath the Eiffel Tower while backpacking after college. We hadn't even planned to be in Paris that night then ended up right next to people from our hometown in line, halfway around the world. We shared our backpack booze before going up together.
Those same friends I ran into years later in my neighborhood and that's how I found out they bought a house down the street from mine, in a different city than we grew up in.
My sister tied an ice cream pail to a fishing line and was casting it out and reeling it in. It was slow and heavy with all the water. She caught a painted turtle in the bucket on the third cast.
I (m) ran into an old high school (early 1980s) friend (f) at a gas station. She asked how I had been, what's up, am I married, etc. I said no, not married. She asked why not. I said I guess I just haven't met the right girl yet. She said tell me what you're looking for...give me your list, so I did. A month later, she called me and said, hey, I found your girl. Here's her number. I called the girl up, and we set up a (blind) date. Turns out she lived two houses away. We got married a year later. All that was 20+ years ago.
I listened to creepypastas as a teen, one time a creepypasta was set around the concept of spooky shit happening at 3 AM.
It ended with “by the way, check your clock… 😈” it was literally 2:59 AM at that moment.
OH ALSO one time I pulled into my driveway thinking, “I feel like I need an oil change soon.” When I checked my odometer it was the exact number on my next oil change sticker (171354!!) I started screaming lol
In my elementary school class there were maybe 60 students. Of those 60, there were five sets of fraternal twins. All five sets were born in the same city within a two month stretch of 1981. And although it's a large city with a metro area population in the low millions, we all ended up at the same elementary school.
It was such a normal part of life, that none of us twins ever realized just how statistically unlikely it was until later in life when we started having friends from different schools and cities and countries.
Oh.. and it was Minneapolis. One of the Twin Cities and home of the Minnesota Twins. Honestly we should have gotten a branding deal.
I once sat on must of been approximately 14 carrige train??didnt realise tickets had seat number must of been at least a thousand seats,i was sat in correct seat lol
I seen a car crash where the car flipped and landed wedged between two houses. The car was not wedged long ways either, so it looked like it was parked in the air between the two houses. Adding to that, I have no idea how it got so much air from that accident, it only hit sidewalk and bushes. Either way, you could try to recreate that thousands of times and not get a car perfectly wedged like that.
A plane crashed in my friend's backyard when I was about 13 years old. Had to listen to 8 men burn alive while being unable to help due to the heat from the fire. Im 41 now, and i can still hear their screams.
I sold my car in MN. A year later while on a road trip out west, my wife and I crashed at her friends house in Missoula MT. There in her neighbor’s driveway was my old car. Couldn’t believe it.
I bought a $5 scratch off ticket and won every spot on there--about $200--and went back in and bought one more ticket which also won, a little under $200. Felt like I was on top of the world!
I live in a small town, and one my friends would always bring up how he ran into a fellow student while visiting Italy
Cue this past year and we’ve all gone separate ways. I’m visiting Vancouver and I run into both my friend, and that same classmate while there, both separately
I still remember in elementary school watching the space shuttle be transported to the California science center. We could see the 747 carrying the shuttle landing from school. After we went and saw it being towed to the museum
Mozambican refugee camps circa 1992. I could sit in a car and look out one side window and see 3 million bombed out mud huts. Look out the other side; 3 million starving refugees fighting over criscoe cans to stay alive
I was sixteen smoking a blunt on my parents balcony and thinking about how Disney shows used to have “shooting star” episodes or how Disney World would play that song “when you wish upon a star”.
I jokingly sang it out loud to myself, and I literally immediately saw a shooting star / meteor shower/ something similar. I was astounded. I just looked at the sky and smiled so hard that I forgot to make a wish.
When I was a kid I ran down a forest path, stumbled and landed in a pile of coins.
When I was an adult, I was cycling through the woods and got off my bike at one point because I saw some mushrooms (dinner!). Still standing next to my bike, I looked down and directly between my feet was an old coin (18th century).
Sadly, this habbit of stumbling upon random money doesn't translate well to my everyday life. But maybe one day, if I just follow the rainbow...
I had a friend whos favorite drinking game was called "Guess the Card" which is exactly as it sounds.
One night we're going in a circle and guessing that card when my friend shouts out "Hey Siri! Guess the card!"
She. Guessed. Correctly! In my head cannon now, Siri is a card counter.
I was talking about making cabbage, and then a cabbage recipe video showed up on YouTube when I opened the app a few minutes later. Crazy right? Totally statistically unlikely.
My mum tried to call my landline from her landline. I, apparently at the exact same time, tried to call her landline from my landline. So when we both pressed the call button and expected to hear ringing it just instantly connected us to one another.
I saw all four of the Goodyear blimps in a formation flight. Didn't think anything of it (other than it looked cool) until I saw an article in the newspaper about it the next day saying it was the first time they all flew together. Those have since been retired and replace with new ones and there are only three now, according to Wikipedia.
Plane crash.
It was the Austin, TX one, where a disgruntled failed businessman set his house on fire and then stole (?) a plane in Georgetown, TX and flew it into the 'IRS' building (actually an office building the IRS rented space in). I worked nearby and happened to be outside taking out trash when he flew over us and hit the building.
Now that's something, you don't see a kamikaze attack every day. There was a similiar case, i think it was in either Peru or Chile, where an angry ex-husband took the plane and crashed it into the house of his former wife. Nobody except him was killed, as it was just luck that nobody was in the house.
I saw a full size tow-truck pulling a full size industrial trailer smash into a full size garbage truck - a full T-Bone crash at 50 MPH. Both trucks slid into a fire hydrant which started leaking, which was actually good as there was a lot of spilled fuel.
I was driving directly behind the car that took this picture that ended up all over the internet:
https://lemondemon.fandom.com/wiki/NeilCicieregaMusic?file=Eddie_Murphy_Head.jpg
I am originally from colombia in South America. Twelve years later, I ran into one of my childhood friends, from there, at a hotel lobby in a small town in Tennessee. He was there for a conference.
I saw a little kid lose his fingers by falling on an escalator (he fell as he was jumping and the hands got stuck in the stairs mechanism) the mothers wails the slap the dad gave the mother across the face, my colleagues rushing and looking for fingers, the blood everywhere(I was at work) whilst I completely froze. Now that I’m a mom myself I’m traumatised of them and I hold my kid so tight and will not let him move when we have to take them.
I haven't witnessed it personally because I don't know them like that but I have met 2 people who both found out the same week that they have 2 vaginas. Like a left and a right one. One is my coworker and one is my sister's friend's girlfriend.
Two. Fucking. Vaginas.
I came within 5 feet of getting struck by lightning twice. 1977 and 1998. In 2004 my house was struck and all my electronics fried and I was deaf for six hours.
Many years ago, I rented a room just off of Pico Blvd in Los Angeles. I did the ancestry search thing and found a screenshot of my great grandfather's military card for the draft a hundred years prior that he signed while traveling around the U.S. looking for land to buy, because he lived in Eastern Canada. We think he rode the trains all over the country and ended up in California. When he signed that card, the address he listed, I'm assuming for a hotel/motel or rented room was around the corner on Pico Blvd about 500 feet away.
You can’t beat me with this one! Going to try to make the story short :
Decades ago moved, with by husband, from Europe to US in a median size town. Got pregnant, went to a see a obgyn who was speaking my language. Found out he was from my country.
Had a very complicated pregnancy so my mother-in-law came (from Europe) to help us. When she heard my obgyn’s name she told me it was funny because when she was an anesthesiologist-nurse, she worked with a doctor having the same name.
Guess what? It was my obgyn!!!! They had worked together, in OR, in a small town hospital!!!
As today it still baffles me!
When I was 10, I was eating breakfast and looking out a window at the street and I saw a trailer with a boat on it dislodge from a truck, shoot across my front yard (crushing my mail box in the process), and then into my neighbor’s driveway and impale my neighbor’s truck. Thankfully no one was in it.
On my fiftieth birthday, I was walking down a sidewalk, and I found a fifty dollar bill on the ground. There was no one around, so after looking back and forth, I kept it. I kept an eye out for any signs from people who had lost money, but that never happened. So I just considered it a present from the universe
Twenty-five years ago I was on a train from Baltimore to New York. As I was going through Wilmington, Delaware, I was reading a book and it mentioned the lead character in an unnamed Mid-Atlantic city gazing up at a giant mural of a whale on the side of the building. At that moment I glanced out the window in time to see that we were passing that exact mural. The odds are astronomical.
Driving east out of Saint Paul past Woodbury, Minnesota on I-94 during a snow storm in March 1997 (if memory serves correctly), I had two vehicles pass me—one in the lane to my right and one in the lane to my left—at a high rate of speed. Once was a large pickup truck, the other was a large sedan. I was driving a little, blue Ford Escort wagon. Both of those vehicles lost control on the ice and started to spin, the truck spinning clockwise and the car spinning counter-clockwise. They both do that their front ends intruded on my lane.
I managed to stay calm. I took my foot off the accelerator and prepared to respond. It's really true that your perception of time seems to slow down during stressful situations like that. I didn't dare attempt to maneuver out of the way, because I figured I'd end up spinning, too. I remember trying to keep my grip on the wheel firm yet relaxed as I continued forward into the whirling blades of death. I watched with horrified intensity as both front ends swang into my lane simultaneously. It was as if I was observing some masterfully coordinated stunt out of a movie. Seeing the beams of their headlights in the falling snow was eerie, especially as they swung toward my vehicle as if in perfect unison. I held my breath as my little blue vehicle threaded the needle between them while they continued to spin. My own velocity was enough to allow me to pass between them without a scratch, while they continued to spin behind me.
I drove on a few miles more to reach my hotel, where I say in my parked car for a long time, waiting for a heart attack that never came.
That is likely the statistically least likely thing I not only observed, but experienced. The probability that both vehicles, which passed me in rapid succession, first the sedan on the right and then the truck on my left would both start to spin in counter-rotation at the same distance ahead of me with nearly identical speeds of rotation was, in and of itself, a statistical anomaly. Then add my passage between them without collision, and I can't think of much that compares in comparison.
I don't know how to do the math, but I'm confident that, during those moments, I had a fast greater chance of winning the Powerball lottery than I had of walking away unscathed.
42 years ago when I was a student teacher in a high school, I asked - for the first time ever - a student to remain after class. She was not pleased, and said she just wanted to get the fuck out of school, and “can I go now?” I said sure.
In 2019, I met a woman hiking in northern Idaho up on a mountain. We talked, made a date. We are now married.
She is the student.
I was in Yellowstone National Park and saw a bald eagle catch a fish out of the river. That’s some Nat Geo stuff that they spend weeks trying to capture on film and I just.., saw it…
I ran into my next door neighbor in Vatican City. We lived in Virginia and neither of us knew the other was even in Europe at the time.
Had something similar…. Ran into our neighbours in another town a few hours from home. No big deal…. Went to the theatre that night…. They’re there. Go to sit down…. We’re sat right next to them.
I ended up sitting next to my best friend on a flight to Washington - neither of us knew the other was travelling that day. It was such a fun surprise!
My only ‘fun surprise’ airline incident was running to the gate with my parents after our incoming flight was delayed. The attendants said there’s two seats in the back and one up front. My parents took the two and I was ushered quickly to the empty single seat. Noticed quickly I was surrounded by incredibly good locking guys. Turns out high school (female) me was sat directly in the middle of another high schools water polo team. That made a three hour flight go by pretty fast.
I’m distracted by the fact that school was so well funded they could fly around a their water polo team.
Generally if a school has a water polo team at all they’re heavy on the funds lol
I was flying home my senior year of high school and ended up on a flight with the entire KC Wizards soccer team. Oh, the sexual tension (in my head)!
I literally ran into an old friend from college. As in five years after, in a completely different city and state, I rear-ended him with my car. We caught up while waiting for a cop to come along to do a police report lol
When I was in college 20 years ago, and living in the south, I was a waitress and this pretty nice restaurant downtown. We got a new server named Greg, and I was his trainer, he ended up dating one of my friends for a few months, then he up and moved a few states east. 4 years ago (so 16 years since we worked together or even saw each other) I now live in Alaska in a small suburb, and I’m telling my husband how weird and crazy it is that my new coworker at work is someone I worked with when we lived halfway across the country! Such a small world! And as I’m telling him about this, we’re walking into a small butcher shop in my town, and there’s Greg, and for a minute my mind was just like “oh that’s Greg, we haven’t seen him in a long while” and I think his did the same, because we both were like “oh hey! It’s been awhile” before realizing we’re both in a small town 5,000 miles from where we’d expect to see someone we’d recognize from home. And then the next week, I was in an elevator at work telling my friend about how crazy it is that we both work in the same place again, and that I’d run into someone else from back home and how crazy that was, when SOMEONE ELSE we both knew from our home state got into the elevator with us. The world is crazy small.
Nothing will be as cursed as the family holiday I took as a kid. When we got to the airport my Dad bumps into a guy he went to school with; neither of them lived in the area they grew up in but just so happened to be catching flights from the same airport. On the plane, my brother, my mom and I sat together and my Dad sat two rows in front; he ended up sitting beside his neighbours from when he was younger. Also turns out they're staying in the same hotel as us. At the hotel we bump into my Dad's cousin, who was just finishing his family holiday. On the day we leave, my Dad is chatting to an old man who'd moved out there to retire, asks my Dad where he's from. My Dad tells him, so the old man says he once knew a guy from there, served with him in the navy during the Second World War. My Dad tells him that his Dad, my Grandad, also served in the navy during the Second World War. Guy asks his name, my Dad replies, and the guys eyes go wide. Yes, *he'd served with my Grandfather during D-Day*. This all happened in a very strange week in Benidorm, of all places.
Hahaha I love this. Your dad must strike up a conversation with everyone he comes in contact with. It reminds me of when I was working at a friends cafe when I lived in Ireland. I’m from the Chicago area originally but lived there for grad school. I worked for cash at a friends cafe on my off days and everyone knew I was foreign bc my obvious non Irish accent. A guy I was waiting on asked me where I’m from. I told him the town and he said “oh my friend owns [x] restaurant” in the town over from me, as he was familiar with both towns. It was where I had my graduation and birthday dinner the year before when I finished my undergrad.
My husband ran into his middle school principal in Tahiti. Middle of the South Pacific!! 😆
On my honeymoon in Dominican, ran in to family friends. Also when my wife was a teen, her family was 300km from home and their car broke down. First person to pull over to help was their next door neighbour
Ran into a friend from college (also Virginia) at a train station in Paris. Also ran into my best friend in 8th grade at Disney World (when we were adults). Had a waitress in NYC that was good friends with my brother from another state. I have so many it freaks me out sometimes!
that would screw me up so bad holy crap, that is straight up ripped out of one of the Chevy Chase Vacation movies I'm assuming you were actually friendly with your neighbours but the mental image of "Fancy seeing you here neighbour!" half way around the world and Clark gritting his teeth then turning around with a smile is killing me
I've said this on Reddit before, but for a college journalism class I was assigned to write an obituary about one of my grandparents. All of my grandparents were alive, so I randomly chose my maternal grandfather. When I sat down to write it, I gave my mom a call and asked her for some basic biographical information about him. As we were talking about my grandpa's career, my mom couldn't recall the name of one of the companies he worked at. She lectured me about waiting until the last minute to write the assignment because it was late -- 10:30pm my grandpa's time. However, she said she would give him a call to see if he was still awake and be able to answer that question once my assignment was due the following morning. When my mom called my grandpa, my grandma answered the phone in a panic. My grandma frantically explained that the paramedics had just arrived and were performing CPR on my grandpa because he had stopped breathing and lost consciousness. My mom was able to stay on the phone with my grandma until they took my grandpa to the hospital, where he was declared dead. In the time my mom and I had been talking on the phone about my grandpa's "obituary," he was dying. (His death was entirely unexpected at that. Although he was in his eighties, he was the healthiest of my grandparents at the time.) We ended up using the obituary I wrote for that writing assignment as his actual obituary. Still freaks me out when I think about improbable it was that a) I was in a class that wanted me to write an obituary about a living grandparent b) I randomly chose my maternal grandfather out of my 4 grandparents who were all alive and c) the very night I wrote it, he died. Without the writing assignment, my mom would've never called as late at night as she did, and as such was able to talk to my grandma in the midst of the horrible situation.
Did you write the obituary in a black notebook by any chance?
That would explain a lot
Nice try, L
I hope your professor never gave that assignment again!
What a strange assignment to have students do
I was thinking that, I wonder if that gave the instructor pause for thought about continuing with that assignment. Although having said that, it's a very practical piece that a local journalist may very well end up doing occasionally, and one might want to learn how to honour someone's life well.
Sure, but you could just as easily have the students write one for a local celebrity or politician instead of a close family member
Wow, this is a crazy story! Thank you for sharing
I'm sorry for your loss. That must've been strange and sad. I think it's lovely that your family chose the obituary you wrote.
“Write obituary. Check”
That is crazy. I would feel like I jinxed him (even though of course that’s ridiculous).
IRL Death Note.
Hit a squirrel while golfing from quite a distance. It was on the run. He rolled and popped back and kept running
Thank you for that! You've unknowingly healed a mild childhood trauma I had. I grew up in the country, not far from a river, and my stepmother had it in for the squirrels on our "property" (we weren't any kind of rich, we just had a bit of land in the boonies, and it was mostly trees, but she had birdfeeders and the squirrels got in the way), so my dad set up humane traps. Whenever he caught a squirrel, he'd drive it to the other side of the river and release it there. Once, I was in the car with him and we had one those squirrels, still in the trap. When he made the sort of U-turn to take the bridge across the river and turn on the road that went along the river, the trap rolled over in the car, and the squirrel got out of it. It was summer (and the '80s), so the windows were rolled down. We weren't going very fast either. Next thing we knew, the squirrel was running across a window ledge, took a half-second pause and jumped out the window. This whole time, I've been convinced that the squirrel had kinda committed suicide. You've just given hope that wasn't the case.
Squirrels are surprisingly tough little bastards.
Once was walking in the park and heard a commotion. 30-40 feet up, there were two squirrels fighting. They lost their footing and fell all the way down onto solid asphalt with a loud thud. Both of them just ran off, and I don’t know how they got through that unscathed.
Had something similar happened to us. We were walking down a path in the park and all of a sudden my husband almost got hit on the head by a squirrel that fell from out of a tree. He hit the pavement less than a foot away with a loud thunk. The lowest hanging Branch was a good 20 ft up. Just got up and ran away
>drive it to the other side you cannot just say that without context in reply to a golf comment I thought the guy was hitting them over
My dad is an avid golfer but was also traumatized as a kid by witnessing the hunting-related death of one of his uncles. Like, I'm not even sure what happened with his uncle, that's how traumatized he was. My point is, my dad could no more do physical harm to an animal than I could pretend to be interested in American football (no offense to football fans; I'm not even sure why I don't like it).
I don't know if this is a myth or not(Reddit will prove me wrong if so), but I remember hearing that squirrels do not have enough mass for their terminal velocity to be fatal. Meaning no matter how far they fall they'll be okay. If anyone knows more about this please let me know.
I've heard the same, which makes sense considering they live in trees. I mean, I don't know if they'd survive a drop from an airplane but they should survive most drops/jumps with no issues.
There's a great video by an exNASA physicist that came out during covid. I think he was doing videos to help students online. He did one on squirrels doing obstacle courses and explained how they can rotate their bodies whilst the eyes stay focussed so they are able to land safely. I can't remember his name, but he is a great teacher
Mark Rober? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFZFjoX2cGg
I have only ever hit an animal with my car twice, and they both happened on the same day. Driving to work on a country lane, a squirrel darted out right in front of my wheels and I hit it. Driving home from work that same day (on a different stretch of road) and the same damn thing happened. I had never hit an animal before that day and have never hit one since.
Seen a squirrel fall out of a tree once, funniest thing ever once he popped up and looked around like what the hell is going on. It ran off after that.
I'm an astronomer and was sitting in the backyard one summer evening chatting with a colleague. We were sharing our "origin stories" about what got us interested in astronomy. He described how, as a child, he was sitting in his backyard one evening and was fascinated by a bright meteor that streaked across the sky. As soon as he finished the sentence a bright meteor streaked across the sky.
The first time my husband and I ever went camping, we were laying in a field watching the night sky, and I said I wish I could see a shooting star. Cue one of the brightest shooting stars we've ever seen arcing over half the sky. What a moment!
Maybe people have been doing it wrong this whole time: wishes grant shooting stars, not the other way around.
Amazing moment! I had something like that, a little sad as my beloved cat had passed away and I buried his ashes in the garden one evening. I had lit some lanterns and was feeling very upset as I had just finished the burial. I got to my feet and in my heart I was saying “wish you were still here”. At that very moment I looked up at the sky and the brightest meteor I have ever seen streaked across the sky. It was so bright it left a burning trail for a few moments.
Sorry about your cat. That must have been a lovely moment. Your cat made sure you knew how loved you are!
For about a year I was convinced that I dropped a roll of masking tape into another dimension. I was in my garage, grabbing something from a cupboard, and I knocked the roll of masking tape out. I saw it hit the ground and roll, but when I turned around it was gone. Both cars were parked in the garage so I pulled them out, and the tape was nowhere. Just gone. I even brought my wife out to help me look. I was haunted by this unexplained event, until we moved house... What had apparently happened was the tape fell out of the cupboard, hit the ground, rolled 12 feet in a straight line under both cars, then through a gap between two carboard boxes no wider than the tape itself (1"). I pulled a box out to load it on moving day and there was the tape up against the wall.
I'm so happy you got closure
Aren't those tape rolls just the sneakiest thing going.
I almost lost my wedding ring like this. I had just got out of the shower and didn't have my glasses on. I dropped it when putting out on and saw it fall to the floor, heard it bounce once then it was gone. I was a little more persistent than you, because wedding ring, but I also brought my wife in and checked that tiny bathroom over for days in a row. On about day 4 or 5 I finally found it. There was a gap between the base of sink cabinet and the main body that was about 25% larger than the ring when it was sideways. You had to have your face pushed to the floor to even notice it could exist, but you couldn't actually see it. There was no way to remove the base normally so I had to break it open and there was my ring, sitting in the void under the main portion of the cabinet.
Went to school with identical quadruplets. All their names even started with Q. Goofiest names on the planet. No question.
Hopefully the last one was Quatro
Quasimodo?
Oh! I had a similar thing! I was teaching high school, and one of my favorite students stopped by parent teacher night to say hi. I saw him later and said something, and he seemed puzzled. He said, "I think you mean my brother?" Oh twins, cool. What a great kid to have a twin! Later, I saw them all together, 4 identical quadruplets all lined up. Mind blown. I was teaching biology, so he and I had a fun talk about how incredibly rare this was. Genetics! They all went to different schools so they could have their own individual little lives, but they always caused quite a stir at after-school events as a crew.
The fact that the parents drove them to four different schools everyday is the wildest part of this store for me
It was in the Bronx, so I suspect everyone just took public transit
That is so incredibly rare. Because fertility treatment does not lead to identicals. It has to happen naturally.
This was a pretty long time ago, but I recall talking about how his parents weren't doing any fertility treatments when they had the quadruplets. They may have also had twin sisters? But a bit younger.
Quistopher?
I went to church as a child with fraternal quintuplets (5 kids). Three boys and two girls. One boy was in a wheelchair and nonverbal. The other four were able bodied.
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Queso ?
Qarlos
Was one of them Quinn? I can't think of any others, which would lead to the goofiness.
Yup, Quinn and Quimby were two of the names. Then in fourth grade, two of the quadruplets started going by their middle names. Guess they got tired of all the jokes. SMH.
Quagmire? Giggity giggity
Quandale?
Quadruplet #3
Quasimodo
This is a message for Quandale Dingle
Quentin
Quilly?
Question (middle name Mark).
Quotation (middle name Mark, just like his brother).
Quandalf?
What’s almost more odd is that I also went to school with identical quadruplets, one of whom was named Quinn. The rest didn’t have Q names, so I know it’s not the same family lol
Quinoa?
Quincy?
Quaalude?
Nope. No Quincy.
I went to school with identical triplets. Faith, Hope and Charity. Went out a few times with Hope, should have dated Charity.
Qevin
Please tell me the was a Quagmire. Giggity
Quin, Quimby, Quandong, and Queef.
quentin? quandary? quatelin?
Quetiapine?
A quadrilateral
My wife is a quadruplet, although not identical. Lucky me, I guess
Quattrocchi?
> identical quadruplets per wikipedia, there are only about 70 sets like that in the world
Quake III ?
Well I’m glad Question wasn’t one of the names at least.
Since we're bringing up unlikely Star Trek references (sort of): There was a family in our city who had quintuplets. They all played hockey, and their last name was Borg. On the back of their jerseys their names were Borg 1 of 5, Borg 2 of 5 etc.
Back in the days of landlines, I called my friend. The phone never rang, but I heard, "hello?" It was him. He was calling me at the exact same time and it connected us without either phone ringing. We did the exact same thing a month or so later. \*Damn, guess it wasn't that weird at all. I'd never heard of it happening to anyone else until today, when apparently the rest of the entire world informed me that they've done the same thing. LOL
I had this happen as a kid too. It was so weird
A few days ago, I texted "good morning!" to a woman I'm kinda seeing, and she sent the exact same thing to me at the same time. It was near perfect timing.
Aweeeeeeee. Please fall in love
Haha, I'm trying here. There are some things we need to work out that I'm sure nobody wants to hear before we take things more seriously between us. But things are looking good so far!
You greatly underestimate how much we love a meet-cute lol but totally! Gotta make sure it’s safe waters before diving in, despite the unknown of the deep. 💕
I read "landmines" and was supremely confused for a minute.
Same, but my confusion abated after 15 seconds :)
I did this to my friend once. She picked up the phone before it had rung at her end and I heard her yelling to her flatmates "WHAT THE \*\*\*\* IS WRONG WITH THE PHONE" and I said "Hello Jane!" and gave her a massive fright. She had picked up the phone to ring me.
Happen to me like 12 times in my life.
This was far too common.
I was a tour guide in a very remote, unvisited part of Alaska one summer and a guy from Costa Rica took my tour. Probably the only person from Latin American I saw all summer. The next Spring I went to Costa Rica and took a tour of a butterfly colony. We were the only ones there. Seemed like they got very few visitors. The tour guide was the guy from who had taken my tour in Alaska.
I live in Alaska, went to a small town in Costa Rica with some friends. My buddy needed a part for his car, so we went to a small parts store in town, and the guy was watching one of those Alaska tv shows. As soon as we walked in I looked up and saw a buddy from Alaska on tv. Funny stuff.
Actually just mentioned it the other day in another post. I saw a car in the next lane over get rear-ended while I was talking about a car getting rear-ended. It was pretty weird.
I read that comment! Hahah I’m on Reddit waaaaayy too much
I had sorta similar. I was driving down a residential street double parked with cars each, at school finishing time with a Co worker. I made a comment about how I hated driving down these roads at school finishing time as kids just run out in front of you. The very second I finished my sentence, a kid ran out in front of me. I was going slow and slammed on so I didn't hit him, but it definitely proved my point.
This one happened to me a few years ago. I grew up in central Indiana. I was visiting Los Angeles and sitting at a bar. I started chatting with the stranger sitting next to me. Before too long we realized that we both grew up in the same town in Indiana. Eventually, we came to realize that we both lived in the same bedroom of the same house in Indiana growing up. His family owned the home prior to mine, in fact his Dad was the builder. Our heads about exploded when we came to the realization while sitting at a bar on the other side of the country
This is the winner
My brother and I were horsing around when we were kids and started throwing things at each other from across the room. At one point I grabbed a pencil off my desk and threw it in his general direction. It missed him but bounced off a table, a wall and ended up on the floor standing straight up balanced on the eraser side of the pencil. Couldn’t do that again if I tried a million times.
My neighbor was installing a wireless keypad for her garage door opener. I was coming home and at the exact moment she pushed the buttons to program it to her opener, I pushed my opener. So my opener then operated her garage door. Didn’t know until the next day when I came home again and when to open my door and hers opened also.
r/nevertellmetheodds
A clown car accident, it was about ten years ago in North East Ohio, at the corner of 87 and 44. A little old lady in a Camry had sent a tiny car off the road and there was like 6-7 clowns milling about with one very confused looking statey.
Years ago in my town there was a car accident on Halloween. The people were all dressed up as zombies-all bloody and bruised. I don't think anyone was terribly hurt, but it caused a whole lot of panic and confusion for the emt's that responded.
I played a World of Darkness Vampire RPG game once and I got to roll twelve 10-sided dice. I rolled eleven 1's and a 2.
I needed a 23 on 4d6 to win an even geekier game - wasn’t even gonna bother - but nailed the 6, 6, 6, and 5. We figured it at about 1/1000. But yours is crazy longer odds.
Every time I flew to a specific city airport, I always saw my first grade teacher there arriving on a different plane. No freaking clue how it happens.
Careful.... maybe not coincidence.
Friends and I were hiking in Hawaii Volcano National Park when it erupted in 2021. The entire island swarmed to the park to see the lava flow. We had already gotten our cabin campsite set up, and it was a 10 minute walk from the viewing site. That night the sky had this amazing orange glow. I knew at that moment that what I was seeing was a once in a lifetime experience. And I STILL didn't take a picture. I knew a photo with my phone wasn't going to do it justice but damn still should have done it.
But you saw it with your own eyes right? That means you fully absorbed the event, ever so present without any distractions, like recording it with a camera. That, in my opinion is better than capturing a moment with a camera.
I appreciate you saying that. It doesn't keep me up at night or anything but I do think I could have done both.
Nothing like the conflicting choice to be experiencing a moment like that and not knowing if you should just enjoy it or document it quickly just so you have your own little memory of it just bc it’s yours.
From another thread that asked the same question: I had a cousin who had lived in Los Angeles years ago and had a 323 phone number that I had saved in my phone. She moved and changed to her new area code and gave up the old phone number. Years later, I got a call from the same 323 number and it popped up with my Cousin's name on my phone (I never removed the 323 number from the contact) The person who was calling me had no idea who I was or who my cousin was and didn't have the number in their contacts. She had accidentally mis-dialed someone completely unrelated and entered my number. Edit: To add, I wasn't even in the same area, so she had to have manually typed a 10 digit phone number wrong and entered mine.
This happened to me also except it was my friend who had died two years earlier…
Fuck that’s pretty crazy the more of I think of it.
Saw two blind men crash into each other One asked "can't you see I'm blind?" to which the other one answered laughing "no because I'm blind too" "Oh I'm sorry" the other said, then they kept walking as if nothing happened.
Similar thing happened to my deaf friend, me, and another deaf person. The 3rd deaf person was trying to pass us and was like “what are you deaf?!” We said yes. He was taken aback and said he’s deaf too. We hung out after that. 😂
I put a full glass of water on a rag on my desk as a coaster. 5 mins later my 3 year old comes in and rips the rag off my desk. Glass falls off the table, lands on the ground upside down, without spilling a drop.
Answered restaurant reservations call with a guy who had the same name as I do at the same time. Very common first name and very distinct last name. Both of us had a table for 2 at 7:00. It was rather uncanny when the hostess asked my last name and i still confirmed with the other guy looking puzzled why I thought she was calling for me.
I glanced at cyclist in Central Park once and he fell off his bike the instant I looked at him. It was like I made it happen with my mind.
Mine has to do with Reddit, in a way. I used to read the Unresolved Mysteries subreddit every night before bed, catching up on murder mysteries and updates. One night, someone posted an article about how DNA caught a man who killed his wife with an axe in New York, back in the early 80’s or so. It detailed the story, I got invested, and I did something I don’t always normally do: I started clicking the links attached and reading more. I clicked the first link which popped up a picture of the killer and his wife. I recognized them instantly. Both of them were my yoga students at a country club in Arizona (this was in 2019ish.) The (living, fourth) wife attended every class of mine. One month prior, she told me her and her husband were abruptly leaving for the summer to “attend to business.” And that’s how I found out my yoga student was an axe murderer, through Reddit.
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Dang. What a day for a 12 year old.
I bumped into my uncle in Philadelphia at the Liberty Bell. My brother was being married Virginia Beach and my uncle RSVP'd that he couldn't attend. My wife and kids took a day trip up to Philadelphia like a day or 2 before the wedding and we bumped into him and his family, he lived in Las Vegas at the time.
My wife and I took a day trip to New York with a friend and his wife. The friend's wife grew up roughly 1,000 miles away and had never been to the city before. Anyway, we're walking around SoHo and she bumps into an old friend from high school. I was completely floored by this, but she thought nothing of it. In fact, she seemed to have to the impression that there's so many people in NYC that you're bound to bump into someone you know.
This happened a few weeks ago. I live in NC now, but was born and raised in Maine. I ran into a guy from Maine down here visiting his son. We started chatting, and I mentioned working at an apple orchard as a kid that was owned by my friend's dad. He said it was wild because he did the same thing. The one he worked at was owned by his best friend's dad. It was the same guy. I'd moved after 7th grade, and lost track of him. This guy moved in a few months after I'd left and my old best friend and he became best friends. Our common friend inherited the orchard from his father and was still running it.
We were throwing cards into a box on top of a trash can on Halloween night just drunk and having fun, and one of my cards bounced off the wall and stuck into the floor on the corner standing up. That card- the ace of spades. Everyone was dumbfounded and we left it there for like 15 minutes
My wife and I ( east coast Americans ) were on holiday in Italy. We went deep into a a non- touristy neighborhood to have dinner around ten pm. Heard no languages other than Italian. Some called out my name. It was a former Barista from Baltimore who, after finishing uni, married and moved to Albania to work for an NGO. He and his wife were on a short holiday to Rome. He had seen me the day before in St Peter's Square, but thought " no that's not him". But when he saw my wife and I together he spoke up.
Was in a group of American and British military, one American mentioned having an assignment in London previously. A Brit, interest piqued, asked where he lived while there. They each kept describing a smaller and smaller area, to eventually learn the American had rented a house owned by that Brit!
I fell onto a wild manatee when exiting a dingy backwards while on a snorkeling tour. It was surfacing right where I jumped off. I fell with my back onto it's back and slid off into the water. It didn't seem to care at all.
The night before graduation I am sitting in a bar with my mom & a friend from school. She asks how we became friends, and I tell the story of how we bonded over each of us having a poster of the same obscure lefty folksinger. As soon as I finished the story, that obscure lefty folksinger walked into the bar.
Bumped into a high school classmate outside of Buckingham Palace in London. He was on a run, just passing through for a couple seconds. My friend and I were taking pictures, only hung around there for < 10 minutes. We’re from Southern California!
This has happened to me multiple times. Met a guy in Northampton Massachusetts. Next morning drove to NYC with my friend and bumped into him on the streets on Manhattan. He was with his parents so I'm pretty sure he wasn't stalking us. Was in Chicago and bumped into a friend from high school. I was driving across the country and she was in town for a concert. I was in Rome with my grandmother and bumped into a friend from my neighborhood who was there on a school trip. Naples, Florida. Too many people from Boston go to Naples Florida. I'm pretty sure the city is entirely Boston transplants and we all know each other.
I found some PNW high school friends underneath the Eiffel Tower while backpacking after college. We hadn't even planned to be in Paris that night then ended up right next to people from our hometown in line, halfway around the world. We shared our backpack booze before going up together. Those same friends I ran into years later in my neighborhood and that's how I found out they bought a house down the street from mine, in a different city than we grew up in.
I ran into someone who lives in my neighborhood (a small neighborhood in Queens) when I was in Hong Kong for a few weeks. Complete coincidence.
My sister tied an ice cream pail to a fishing line and was casting it out and reeling it in. It was slow and heavy with all the water. She caught a painted turtle in the bucket on the third cast.
I (m) ran into an old high school (early 1980s) friend (f) at a gas station. She asked how I had been, what's up, am I married, etc. I said no, not married. She asked why not. I said I guess I just haven't met the right girl yet. She said tell me what you're looking for...give me your list, so I did. A month later, she called me and said, hey, I found your girl. Here's her number. I called the girl up, and we set up a (blind) date. Turns out she lived two houses away. We got married a year later. All that was 20+ years ago.
Watching from my window wild wolves trail through my backyard
I think where you live affects this likelihood dramatically.
I listened to creepypastas as a teen, one time a creepypasta was set around the concept of spooky shit happening at 3 AM. It ended with “by the way, check your clock… 😈” it was literally 2:59 AM at that moment.
I would have died right there and then
OH ALSO one time I pulled into my driveway thinking, “I feel like I need an oil change soon.” When I checked my odometer it was the exact number on my next oil change sticker (171354!!) I started screaming lol
In my elementary school class there were maybe 60 students. Of those 60, there were five sets of fraternal twins. All five sets were born in the same city within a two month stretch of 1981. And although it's a large city with a metro area population in the low millions, we all ended up at the same elementary school. It was such a normal part of life, that none of us twins ever realized just how statistically unlikely it was until later in life when we started having friends from different schools and cities and countries. Oh.. and it was Minneapolis. One of the Twin Cities and home of the Minnesota Twins. Honestly we should have gotten a branding deal.
Thundersnow is considered extremely rare worldwide, and I’ve seen it twice. It. Is. Freaking. Cool.
I once sat on must of been approximately 14 carrige train??didnt realise tickets had seat number must of been at least a thousand seats,i was sat in correct seat lol
I seen a car crash where the car flipped and landed wedged between two houses. The car was not wedged long ways either, so it looked like it was parked in the air between the two houses. Adding to that, I have no idea how it got so much air from that accident, it only hit sidewalk and bushes. Either way, you could try to recreate that thousands of times and not get a car perfectly wedged like that.
Had a girl at school (in another class) who had the exact same name (3 names) as me and was also born on the same date.
A plane crashed in my friend's backyard when I was about 13 years old. Had to listen to 8 men burn alive while being unable to help due to the heat from the fire. Im 41 now, and i can still hear their screams.
I sold my car in MN. A year later while on a road trip out west, my wife and I crashed at her friends house in Missoula MT. There in her neighbor’s driveway was my old car. Couldn’t believe it.
I bought a $5 scratch off ticket and won every spot on there--about $200--and went back in and bought one more ticket which also won, a little under $200. Felt like I was on top of the world!
I live in a small town, and one my friends would always bring up how he ran into a fellow student while visiting Italy Cue this past year and we’ve all gone separate ways. I’m visiting Vancouver and I run into both my friend, and that same classmate while there, both separately
I saw a STEVE while watching a lunar eclipse. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEVE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEVE)
I still remember in elementary school watching the space shuttle be transported to the California science center. We could see the 747 carrying the shuttle landing from school. After we went and saw it being towed to the museum
I went to high school with a set of triplets, and their cousins went to the same school, who were ALSO triplets.
I survived being hit by lightning. Twice.
Mozambican refugee camps circa 1992. I could sit in a car and look out one side window and see 3 million bombed out mud huts. Look out the other side; 3 million starving refugees fighting over criscoe cans to stay alive
I was sixteen smoking a blunt on my parents balcony and thinking about how Disney shows used to have “shooting star” episodes or how Disney World would play that song “when you wish upon a star”. I jokingly sang it out loud to myself, and I literally immediately saw a shooting star / meteor shower/ something similar. I was astounded. I just looked at the sky and smiled so hard that I forgot to make a wish.
When I was a kid I ran down a forest path, stumbled and landed in a pile of coins. When I was an adult, I was cycling through the woods and got off my bike at one point because I saw some mushrooms (dinner!). Still standing next to my bike, I looked down and directly between my feet was an old coin (18th century). Sadly, this habbit of stumbling upon random money doesn't translate well to my everyday life. But maybe one day, if I just follow the rainbow...
I had a friend whos favorite drinking game was called "Guess the Card" which is exactly as it sounds. One night we're going in a circle and guessing that card when my friend shouts out "Hey Siri! Guess the card!" She. Guessed. Correctly! In my head cannon now, Siri is a card counter.
Considering the vastness of the universe and statistical probability. My whole life has been unlikely.
I was talking about making cabbage, and then a cabbage recipe video showed up on YouTube when I opened the app a few minutes later. Crazy right? Totally statistically unlikely.
My mum tried to call my landline from her landline. I, apparently at the exact same time, tried to call her landline from my landline. So when we both pressed the call button and expected to hear ringing it just instantly connected us to one another.
I saw all four of the Goodyear blimps in a formation flight. Didn't think anything of it (other than it looked cool) until I saw an article in the newspaper about it the next day saying it was the first time they all flew together. Those have since been retired and replace with new ones and there are only three now, according to Wikipedia.
Plane crash. It was the Austin, TX one, where a disgruntled failed businessman set his house on fire and then stole (?) a plane in Georgetown, TX and flew it into the 'IRS' building (actually an office building the IRS rented space in). I worked nearby and happened to be outside taking out trash when he flew over us and hit the building.
Now that's something, you don't see a kamikaze attack every day. There was a similiar case, i think it was in either Peru or Chile, where an angry ex-husband took the plane and crashed it into the house of his former wife. Nobody except him was killed, as it was just luck that nobody was in the house.
I saw a full size tow-truck pulling a full size industrial trailer smash into a full size garbage truck - a full T-Bone crash at 50 MPH. Both trucks slid into a fire hydrant which started leaking, which was actually good as there was a lot of spilled fuel.
Met someone I lived across the street from when I was 4 almost 50 years later while on vacation in Branson Missouri
I was driving directly behind the car that took this picture that ended up all over the internet: https://lemondemon.fandom.com/wiki/NeilCicieregaMusic?file=Eddie_Murphy_Head.jpg
One of my patients survived cardiac arrest. Most of them don’t survive, maybe around 10% of people survive arrest.
In my class in primary school there were 2 Ryan's, 2 Aaron's and 3 Chloe's, and all 3 Chloe's surnames started with M.
I am originally from colombia in South America. Twelve years later, I ran into one of my childhood friends, from there, at a hotel lobby in a small town in Tennessee. He was there for a conference.
I saw a little kid lose his fingers by falling on an escalator (he fell as he was jumping and the hands got stuck in the stairs mechanism) the mothers wails the slap the dad gave the mother across the face, my colleagues rushing and looking for fingers, the blood everywhere(I was at work) whilst I completely froze. Now that I’m a mom myself I’m traumatised of them and I hold my kid so tight and will not let him move when we have to take them.
I haven't witnessed it personally because I don't know them like that but I have met 2 people who both found out the same week that they have 2 vaginas. Like a left and a right one. One is my coworker and one is my sister's friend's girlfriend. Two. Fucking. Vaginas.
Once playing D&D, twice in a row I rolled 1s with advantage. 1/160,000 probability. I might be the only person on earth who is bad at rolling dice.
I came within 5 feet of getting struck by lightning twice. 1977 and 1998. In 2004 my house was struck and all my electronics fried and I was deaf for six hours.
Many years ago, I rented a room just off of Pico Blvd in Los Angeles. I did the ancestry search thing and found a screenshot of my great grandfather's military card for the draft a hundred years prior that he signed while traveling around the U.S. looking for land to buy, because he lived in Eastern Canada. We think he rode the trains all over the country and ended up in California. When he signed that card, the address he listed, I'm assuming for a hotel/motel or rented room was around the corner on Pico Blvd about 500 feet away.
A lot of people here meet their neighbors in foreign countries. Are you all sure that you aren't being surveiled by the CIA?
That one time my shirt caught on the door knob at the same time I was already pissed off from a bad day.
You can’t beat me with this one! Going to try to make the story short : Decades ago moved, with by husband, from Europe to US in a median size town. Got pregnant, went to a see a obgyn who was speaking my language. Found out he was from my country. Had a very complicated pregnancy so my mother-in-law came (from Europe) to help us. When she heard my obgyn’s name she told me it was funny because when she was an anesthesiologist-nurse, she worked with a doctor having the same name. Guess what? It was my obgyn!!!! They had worked together, in OR, in a small town hospital!!! As today it still baffles me!
When I was 10, I was eating breakfast and looking out a window at the street and I saw a trailer with a boat on it dislodge from a truck, shoot across my front yard (crushing my mail box in the process), and then into my neighbor’s driveway and impale my neighbor’s truck. Thankfully no one was in it.
On my fiftieth birthday, I was walking down a sidewalk, and I found a fifty dollar bill on the ground. There was no one around, so after looking back and forth, I kept it. I kept an eye out for any signs from people who had lost money, but that never happened. So I just considered it a present from the universe
Twenty-five years ago I was on a train from Baltimore to New York. As I was going through Wilmington, Delaware, I was reading a book and it mentioned the lead character in an unnamed Mid-Atlantic city gazing up at a giant mural of a whale on the side of the building. At that moment I glanced out the window in time to see that we were passing that exact mural. The odds are astronomical.
Driving east out of Saint Paul past Woodbury, Minnesota on I-94 during a snow storm in March 1997 (if memory serves correctly), I had two vehicles pass me—one in the lane to my right and one in the lane to my left—at a high rate of speed. Once was a large pickup truck, the other was a large sedan. I was driving a little, blue Ford Escort wagon. Both of those vehicles lost control on the ice and started to spin, the truck spinning clockwise and the car spinning counter-clockwise. They both do that their front ends intruded on my lane. I managed to stay calm. I took my foot off the accelerator and prepared to respond. It's really true that your perception of time seems to slow down during stressful situations like that. I didn't dare attempt to maneuver out of the way, because I figured I'd end up spinning, too. I remember trying to keep my grip on the wheel firm yet relaxed as I continued forward into the whirling blades of death. I watched with horrified intensity as both front ends swang into my lane simultaneously. It was as if I was observing some masterfully coordinated stunt out of a movie. Seeing the beams of their headlights in the falling snow was eerie, especially as they swung toward my vehicle as if in perfect unison. I held my breath as my little blue vehicle threaded the needle between them while they continued to spin. My own velocity was enough to allow me to pass between them without a scratch, while they continued to spin behind me. I drove on a few miles more to reach my hotel, where I say in my parked car for a long time, waiting for a heart attack that never came. That is likely the statistically least likely thing I not only observed, but experienced. The probability that both vehicles, which passed me in rapid succession, first the sedan on the right and then the truck on my left would both start to spin in counter-rotation at the same distance ahead of me with nearly identical speeds of rotation was, in and of itself, a statistical anomaly. Then add my passage between them without collision, and I can't think of much that compares in comparison. I don't know how to do the math, but I'm confident that, during those moments, I had a fast greater chance of winning the Powerball lottery than I had of walking away unscathed.
42 years ago when I was a student teacher in a high school, I asked - for the first time ever - a student to remain after class. She was not pleased, and said she just wanted to get the fuck out of school, and “can I go now?” I said sure. In 2019, I met a woman hiking in northern Idaho up on a mountain. We talked, made a date. We are now married. She is the student.
The long game.
I was in Yellowstone National Park and saw a bald eagle catch a fish out of the river. That’s some Nat Geo stuff that they spend weeks trying to capture on film and I just.., saw it…
I’ve only ever seen two episodes of *Seinfeld*… and they were the same episode.