The Redditors below came together to share the most amazing coincidences that they’ve ever experienced. From unlikely run-ins to impossible luck, these stories are almost too incredible to believe. We’ve all experienced these moments, so now it’s time to reflect and realize we’re living in a much stranger world than we can even imagine. Here are 50 real-life stories about utterly unbelievable coincidences.
1. Samesies
I met a guy at my staff Christmas party with the same name, birth date, and was in the same career. We met through our girlfriends at the time, both named Jennifer. We shared many of the same physical features. Same colored hair and build. I still google him from time to time to see if he has passed on yet. If he expires first...I win.
2. Luckiest Santa
My old work ran a secret Santa once, the week before Christmas. It was a $10 limit and the person I was buying for I didn't know very well. I left my buying to the last minute because I just didn't know what to get her. So I was in town and walking past some shops when lo and behold, I see an old copy of Oliver Twist in the window of the second-hand book store.
It just called to me, so I went in and picked it up. I checked the first page for the cost and guess what? $10—perfect. So come the day of the secret Santa, we were all opening our gifts, some 150 people. I never, in a million years, expected what happened next. Out of the corner of my eye, I see some people crowding around a woman who is crying. I keep listening and people are calling out for the person who was her Santa.
I go over and reveal that it was me. The lady I had bought for was crying and hugged me. She said 10 years ago her house burned down along with all her of possessions. The book that I bought her was her favorite and also the exact same edition, so it had the exact same cover she remembered. Because it was a second-hand book it was even weathered in the same places she remembered, so it was as if I'd grabbed the book off her shelf before the fire and delivered it to her 10 years later.
3. Photographic Memory
I took a job in a somewhat remote area of northeast China about 20 years ago. I had two roommates (one American and one Canadian) and we were part of just a handful of foreigners out of about two million Chinese in that area. Fast forward 10 years and I'm back in the USA. I was dating a girl who was going on a girls' trip to Mexico.
She and her girlfriends went out to a bar and got to talking with another group of people. One of the guys there started showing photos from his travels and lo and behold—there I am. He was my roommate from China a decade before and while chatting with these girls decided to share the pictures of his travels.
After a few of those "prove that you know him" questions they both flipped out. Small world.
4. The Man in the Phone
I picked up the house phone to call a friend and he was already on the line. He had called me and I had picked up the receiver just before it had a chance to ring. Blew my freaking mind.
5. Educating Each Other
I sold my LSAT study books to a half-price bookstore. Two years later, I found them on the bookshelf of the man I would later marry.
6. Secret Travel Companion
Here in my little town in northwest England there's a good kebab shop from which the lads and I have ordered for years. We've been in there after countless nights out and had them deliver to our doors, so we know the guys who work there pretty well. They're mostly Turkish. Once a few of us got together for a short break in Turkey. Having got off the plane, we waited in the car park outside for another pal who'd been on a different flight.
As we stood, soaking in the ambiance of a new country, none other than the tall guy from our local kebab shop walked across the road right in front of us, 2,000 miles from home. That was weird.
7. Star-Crossed
My husband and I met in our late 30s in Indianapolis, Indiana, both living there. We were born in the same hospital, and lived in the same housing addition as children in Riverside California, and our fathers worked together.
8. Knock on Wood
I was at a Walmart with my dad just after a snowstorm when we found a dash cam on sale for about 5$. We thought hey, that's a good deal, and bought it. We finished shopping, hooked it up in his truck to make sure it worked properly, and drove away. As we left the parking lot, I looked at him and said, "You know, it'd be pretty funny if we got into a car accident on the way home." We laughed and continued on our merry way—but we weren't laughing after what happened next.
10 minutes down the road, some lady loses control of her car going around an icy curve and slams into us. Her cars totaled, our car's totaled, but thankfully no one is hurt. The authorities that arrived initially thought that we were at fault, due to how the tire marks in the snow looked, but thanks to the dashcam we literally just bought, we were cleared of any wrongdoing.
Still creeps me out that I called a car accident, and I avoid making that joke now out of fear that God will call me out again.
9. Pastry Pals
I live in Australia and have for almost my whole life, but I was born in Dubai. Every weekend in Dubai my mum would take me to the Hilton beach club and sit me in front of the pastry chef to eat. We moved away from Dubai really early on, so I don't even remember much. Fast forward to 17 years of age, a new kid at school had just moved from a nearby town.
We became friends, we both loved cricket, and we practiced a lot together. My dad and I were giving him a lift home after practice and dad asks, "Where were you born?" And he says, "Dubai." The conversation continues and I say I was too etc., then he says, "My parents used to be the pastry chefs at the Hilton beach club." And this blew me away.
Here we were, 16 years later, halfway across the world, and every weekend I sat in front of his parents and ate what they made for me. To this day I still get goosebumps thinking about it. I mean what are the chances?
10. Tall McCartney
Seeing Paul McCartney (The Beatles) on TV in 2001, I noticed he was tall. Next day I'm walking down a very quiet street, and walking towards me is a really tall guy. It was Paul McCartney. He must've seen my expression so he veered my way, stuck his hand out, and said, "Hi, mate.” I was shocked. 18 years later I'm still shocked lol.
11. Breaking the Habit
As a kid, my parents took me to Butlins one year (an all-inclusive kid-friendly holiday park in the UK) and got on really well with the neighbors. The next year we went to Spain and the same family was in the same hotel for the same two weeks as us. The next year we went to a different Butlins, and our first week there was the same family's second week.
My parents and their parents made plans to meet up again the next year, and we never saw each other again.
12. Hello, Luck?
A few years ago I got into a cab heading out for the evening in downtown Toronto. Shortly after being dropped off I realized I left my phone in the cab. I tried calling it with no luck. I called the cab company, but because I had flagged the cab and paid cash they had no real way of knowing which cab I was in. I figured the phone was as good as gone and went about my night.
Many hours later and having moved around the city quite a bit I am ready to call it a night, so I flag another cab. Sitting in the back seat I start to think the driver looks familiar and realize that I'm in the same cab I took earlier. He hasn't found a phone but I start looking anyways and sure enough there it is, jammed in the seat.
Me and my flip phone were happily reunited, only for me to put it in a washing machine two days later.
13. Bussed
I used to get two buses home from work. I got off the first one having left my phone and keys on the front seat of the bus without realizing. Got on the second bus, went to my favored front seat...and my possessions that I didn’t know were missing were waiting for me. The bus had changed driver and route. Still freaks my nut out to this day.
14. Buy My Album, Please
Ran into Passenger doing a street performance in Adelaide promoting his new album in 2015. Two weeks later I ran into him again doing another street performance in Sydney. I did not know of either of these performances before just stumbling upon them.
15. Kurt Two
When I was in college my girlfriend and I were doing the hostel thing in Europe one summer. We were broke, but her mom worked for a big airline, so the airfare was super cheap. After London, we went to Paris, and her mother suggested that we look up her old work colleague Kurt to see if we could stay with him. Free board? Sounds great.
So, we called and his wife answered—Kurt was out of town, but call back tomorrow once they'd had a chance to talk. We did, and Kurt said it would be fine. Gave us directions and we were set. When we got off at the Metro we were immediately lost, but we called Kurt back and he said just wait, he'd come get us, which he did. Everything was immediately super awkward, but what are you gonna do?
The small talk was even more strained: "So...you still work for Delta?" "No...I'm in technical writing." Weird, basic details just were not lining up. We got back to their house, I took a shower, his daughter came home from school, and it had probably been ninety minutes since we'd met face to face and Kurt decides to drop an absolute bombshell on us:
"Hey, listen, you seem real nice, but I don't think that I know who you are. I talked to my wife though, and if you want you can stay here for the night." "But you're Kurt." "I am, but I never worked for Delta and I don't think we've ever met." "True." We called back her Mom. Turns out we had Kurt's phone number ONE DIGIT OFF.
We'd swapped a five for a two, called the wrong number, and got a DIFFERENT AMERICAN NAMED KURT living IN PARIS and then we'd GONE TO HIS HOUSE, PRETENDED TO KNOW EACH OTHER, I TOOK A FREAKING SHOWER, and then we all agreed we were total strangers. We called the right number, got the "Real Kurt" who lived like two miles away, and whose daughter was in the SAME CLASS at school.
Both Kurts were lovely, but we opted to stay with the one we knew.
16. Connected
Never could explain this payphone incident. Saturday night out with friends, we decide to call my friend Al to see if he wants to join us. This was in England long before mobile phones, so we had to use one of the iconic red phone booths. Someone was already using it so we had to wait a few minutes. Guy leaves and we cram in the booth.
Now, in those days, in order to make a call you would first get a dial tone, then call the number. When the person answered you would hear a bunch of beeps at which point you insert the coins. So I pick up the phone but hear no dial tone. I hang the phone up and try again. Still no dial tone. Seems to be still connected to the previous call.
I say "Hello?" to see if anyone is still on the line. Person answers "Hello?" It was my friend Al. He had just picked up his phone to make a call, and somehow, miraculously, without even dialing his number, we were connected. We all went to the pub after and tried to figure out how the heck this happened, but it remains a mystery.
If I did not have my friends with me at the time as witnesses, I would have believed it was my mind playing tricks on me.
17. They Know
Me and a friend took some acid one night and were tripping HARD. Decided to walk to a gas station and get some smokes or something. We walked by a car lot in the small town I'm from and all of the cars in the lot were cop cars. We were both walking ramrod straight all the way to the store, very quietly bought whatever we went there for, and took a back street back to his place. We just stared at each other for like an hour and didn't speak after we got there.
Turns out the city had bought a whole new fleet of cop cars and they had all been delivered there and were on the lot for just that night.
18. I Can Feel It
Was at the Texas American Legion Convention a few years ago. They had been selling tickets all week for door prizes as a fundraiser. I was talking to someone when they called the first number and got a winner. While the winner is going up on stage to get his prize the guy I am talking to says, "I better get my tickets out. They may call my numbers.”
I pulled five tickets out of my pocket and tore one off. I said, "Don't bother, they're going to call this one next." They did. I won a stupid baseball cap. Really? Freak event like that and I get a ball cap? Really?
19. The Truman Show
A couple of summers ago, I was in my kayak in a shallow inlet of my favorite lake in the Finger Lakes region of New York. I'd stopped to eat my sandwich and read the book I'd brought with me. One sentence read, "just then, a great blue heron flew overhead." I looked up and just then, a great blue heron flew overhead.
20. Click
In high school, my friend set me up with her boyfriend's cousin (let's call him Jack). Jack and I were walking around an amusement park and started talking about recent family spring break vacations. Turns out, both Jack and I had been in Las Vegas during the same week. We stayed at the same hotel. The conversation changed subjects when Jack stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. He only said six words, but they blew my mind: "I saw you in Las Vegas."
I thought he was full of it, there's no way he would remember some random girl among the thousands of people there. He told me the exact place he saw me, and that my sister and I were posing for a photo. We got back to my house and found the picture. There were Jack and his brother in the background.
21. Nosy Neighbors
Was sitting in a restaurant about 200 miles from where I live telling my mother (who was visiting from a different country) about a trip I had to another country (about 6,000 miles away) with a work colleague. The lady at the table next to us leans over and says, “I think you're talking about my son.” Turns out I was sitting next to my colleague's parents while showing my mum pictures of our trip.
22. Star-Man Rises
One time I pointed at the sky and told my little brother, "Watch this," and a freaking falling star came and went.
23. Rolling the Dice
I had a dream where I: Wake up and go to work on a Friday. Boss isn't there but five other coworkers are. 2/5 leave at lunch and won't be back. At 3:00 p.m. another leaves due to an emergency. At 4:00 p.m. the last two leave because they aren't getting any work done. I work till 5:00 alone and drive home. I perish in a car accident on the way home.
I woke up during the accident, chilled to the bone. On the way to work, I feel like the dream is happening. I get to work and the boss isn't there for some reason so I laugh and tell one of the co-workers about my dream. Lunch comes around and 2/5 say they are heading out to lunch, then home for a longer weekend.
My coworker instantly tells the other two the dream and I'm starting to get a bit weirded out. I ask the others if they are leaving early and all three say they are staying to 5. So, crisis averted, dream can't come true. At 3:00 one gets a call. Their wife's car broke down so he needs to pick up his son from school. Ha...okay, this is funny guys. Please stay til 5:00.
The other two are also starting to get freaked out but you know, we are all staying until 5:00. Then at 3:30, the company server goes down. We sit around for a half-hour and the other two say, "Dude, we don't want to make your dream come true but we are just sitting here doing nothing. They leave at 4:00.” Awesome.
I am in charge of getting the server back up so I'm still working...and it goes back online at 5:00. Right at 5:00. At this point, I'm sitting in my chair questioning everything. I figure, screw it. I get in my car and drive home because I don't believe in the Cosmic Owl. Craziest coincidence, especially given that I told three people about it and nobody diverged from the dream. Free will be doomed.
24. Fan for Life
I was playing beer pong years ago. Definitely past my limit on drinks. This really pretty girl shows up to the party and asks how to play beer pong. I start explaining the rules and when I got to "trick shot" she asked what they were. Never breaking eye contact, I threw my ball up, which hit the ceiling fan blades (which were going at full speed) and went straight into a cup.
After laughing for 10 mins, we all tried to recreate the hole in one. Never even slightly close.
25. Guardian Angels, Assemble!
I was hit by decompression illness (the bends) and lost the ability to coherently communicate; it’s very similar to having a stroke. I started wandering aimlessly down an island road and stumbled upon a random medical center, perfect! Upon entering, I realized I couldn’t speak properly and most people thought I was on drugs.
I was unable to tell anyone what was happening and as I’m being turned away, the dive instructor I was diving with was right behind me! Between where I was and the dive center there were easily three or four medical clinics he could have gone too, but he went to this one. He was able to fill in my forms for me as I couldn’t remember my name.
Even better, my landlord owned the only decompression chamber on the island, so she zoomed me straight in without having to wait for paperwork. Luckiest day of my life!
26. Great Minds
About ten years ago I tried to get into Six Flags with a tiny keychain Swiss Army knife. It literally had a dull 1" blade. They told me I could either throw it away, take it to my car a mile away, or rent a locker for like 10 bucks. So, I decided to hide it in the planter. I looked down and saw a big piece of bark laying in the dirt and figured it would be a good hiding place. I picked it up...and couldn't believe what I saw: Another freaking mini Swiss Army knife!
And that's not even the best part. I placed mine next to the first and went into the park. When I returned, the other knife was gone and a smiley face was etched into the dirt in its place.
27. No Escape
Worked a half day. Drove six hours from Southern California to Northern California for car camping with my wife. Chose obscure campground which was neatly deserted (off-season). Picked the most deserted and remote campsite location (we planned on rockin' the tent). Were bummed after setting camp and another couple selects site right next to us.
Turns out to be a co-worker I’d spoken with earlier that day.
28. Never Look Back
I was substitute teaching a gym class. The class was sitting at the three-point line. I was facing them, telling them what we were doing that day. Had a basketball on my hip. Kid raised his hand. "I bet you can’t even throw a basketball." I stared at him and tossed it backwards over my head with one hand. They howled in shock. Apparently, it went in. I never broke eye contact with the kid.
"All right. Line up." Cool cats don’t look back.
Flickr, franchise opportunities
29. A Much Needed Boost
I am an attorney. I met with a client pursuing disability benefits. Very sick and very sympathetic. She had an open-and-shut case, to the point I even suggested that she file on her own so she could avoid paying me anything. Then she said something that I never expected—and almost made me burst into tears: “You don’t know my maiden name, it’s (“Ms. Smith”), you represented my brother two years ago. You arranged for members of the community to rebuild his house. If I end up paying $10,000 it would not be enough to cover what you have done for my family.”
I was literally thinking about quitting what I do, just the day before.
30. You’re It
My family used to take little summer vacations. One summer (I was about seven or eight) we stayed at a campground about four hours from home. There were a bunch of kids there and one day we all started playing tag. I was "IT" and was chasing another young boy, and when I tagged him I pushed him too hard and he fell and broke his arm. I remember the scene vividly.
Fast forward to college. I became good friends with my neighbor in the dorm, and we ended up getting a place together our sophomore year. The following year (no longer living together) we went out for a few beers and the topic of broken bones came up. "I've only broken one bone, and it was my arm when I was seven. Some kid at a campground pushed me over while playing tag."
It was me. Still can't believe it.
31. Bought me a Drink
My sister, Emily, was on a ski lift in New Mexico when some younger girl across from her asked if her name was Emily. Apparently, the stranger, who kind of looked similar but underage, had found her lost ID the year prior and had been using it for a year to buy alcohol.
32. Memory Delivery
I was taken by CPS when I was two, adopted by the same foster family that originally took me in when I was five. Came with one baby picture and maybe a toy. No contact allowed with bio family, as per court ruling. Cue 20 some odd years later, I'm working as a pizza delivery driver. Quit, come back a year later when another job doesn't work out.
I'm friendly with one of the drivers there, an older guy who's driving for something to do after retiring from the social work field. I notice on Facebook he's friends with my half-brother. Ask him about it (thinking maybe it was due to his old job or something). Turns out he used to be married to my bio aunt, sister of my bio mom.
He babysat me a bunch when I was a baby, and his ex-wife left a ton of junk in the divorce. Including my baby pictures. He let me have them. Mom just about cried when I showed them to her.
33. Call for a Good Read
When I was in high school, I was aimlessly playing around our library one day. Like any large public high school, our library had literally thousands of books quietly tucked away in shelves that were rarely, if ever, touched. That day I pulled a book at random from a shelf in the back and sat down to read it. After opening it, a slip of paper fell out, and I quickly recognized the dashed ten digits written on it as a phone number.
I hastily read the number, and it was my older sister's number, who had graduated my high school years earlier. Someone wrote her number and tucked it away into a random book in the back, until I found it years later.
34. That’s Him, Officer
An officer from a different PD was showing me a picture of a guy they wanted to detain in a different part of town. As I looked up from the computer, I see the idiot riding by on a bike. Literally five feet away from the squad car.
35. Living In a Book
When I was young, I lived in Germany (military brat). My brother and I played with the neighbor’s son, who was about our age (younger than me, older than my brother). The German boy’s mother had an older sister who lived in the U.S. Jump years forward. I am in college. My wife and I were dating seriously then and I went to Chicago to meet her family for the first time.
While there, I discovered that her neighbor was the sister who had moved to the US—and that's not even the craziest part! Her oldest son owned a business in the town my parents had retired in. The final insane part of the entire coincidence is shortly after we married, I was offered a job in Pennsylvania. We moved and once we got a place met the neighbors.
One of them was the original German boy I played with as a child going to school here in the states. It’s been over a decade since and no other crazy run-ins, but never know what tomorrow will bring!
36. Found Footage
I once went camping with about five or so other friends. This was about three years ago now in Pisgah National Forest in the mountains of NC. There are some amazing waterfalls in this area, one called Rainbow Falls. It’s about 125 feet from river above to ground below. If you keep hiking past Rainbow Falls there is a much smaller waterfall in the river above it called Turtleback Falls.
It’s basically a very slippery rock with water running over it, which ends with about a 4-5 foot drop. This is really cool because you can climb up it using a rope someone attached to a tree above, walking out to the middle of the rock, and sliding down. There’s also another spot that’s about 1/3 of the way up the side of Rainbow Falls where you can climb up some branches, then basically rappel down a rockface, shimmy out on a ledge, and jump about 30-40 feet into the nice deep pool in the river at the bottom of the waterfall.
It was when my friends and I had climbed out on the ledge and were about to jump that we noticed there was another group of people hanging out in the river below us. They started cheering us on and encouraging us to jump (as it is slightly terrifying). Anyways, we ended up jumping and once in the river below we talked to some of the other group of people. They seemed pretty cool.
Fast forward one year. We had so much fun a year earlier that we decided to go back again. This time we camped a little further down the river, and we decided to climb on some rocks down-river from the waterfall, about 300-400 yards from the waterfall. I was climbing on one rock and found something that looked like a strap of some kind. Assuming it was trash, I didn't touch it. But when I pointed it out to one of my friends he noticed it was actually a go-pro camera in a waterproof case, so he decided to keep it.
Fast forward a couple of days, my friend and I purchased a charger for that type of camera and decided to see what was on it. We start watching the video and see some guys climbing up the place where we jumped off the side of the waterfall. The cameraman was also climbing. The cameraman starts to get closer, and we see something that made us instantly start to freak out.
On the back-left shoulder of the person in front of the camera was the exact tattoo that my friend has. When he gets even closer we realize that the person on camera was my friend who I was currently sitting right beside. Later, the cameraman gets up to the ledge and we see me and the rest of my friends from over a year ago.
There are also some pictures and videos of us jumping from the ledge. We watched the rest of the video in a stunned state, and the last 30 mins or so of the footage is of the cameraman going up to the river above rainbow falls, and sliding on turtleback falls, apparently losing his Go-Pro in the water after going over the falls.
The camera sinks to the bottom and you can even see fish swimming by and staring at the camera. Now think about where we found the camera, 400-500 yards downriver from the BOTTOM of the large waterfall. So, apparently, this camera made its way downriver, over a 125-foot waterfall, and got lodged in a rock 500 yards away, and my friends and I found it a year later with video footage of us from the previous year on it.
It took us a little while to decide on this as being the most reasonable explanation.
37. Meant to Be
Was at a convention. There were only a few people in the room. My friend and I wanted an autograph from a voice actor. He started singing in his character voice. There were two random guys next to me. One pulled out a video camera to record it. Years later, my husband and I are talking with friends, and the convention comes up.
The guy with the video camera was my husband. I also took a picture later that day of the crowds, and he is in that picture. I stood next to my husband years before I met him.
38. Testing my Sanity
When I was nine, I had a best friend named Naomi. The next year, I moved to another state and Naomi and I lost touch. Nearly eight years later, when I was taking a standardized test (to get into college), who do I run into at the test center? Naomi. Now here’s the best part: The test was in a different state to the one we previously lived in.
Also, all the candidates writing the test were randomly assigned test centers within the state. Best coincidence ever.
39. Special Delivery
This happened to me a few months ago, and it was pretty dang improbable. I'm walking through BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, it's the train station that takes you to and from San Francisco and elsewhere), where an average of 375,000 people pass through daily. I walk up the escalator to my train and pass by an envelope lying on the ground.
At first, I didn't think much of it, but I took a couple of steps back to pick it up anyways. The next part freaked me out. I looked at the address, and it was addressed to ME. I instantly look around to see if it was a practical joke, or if I'm about to get whacked or something. Neither of those were the case. The sender was a family friend, we'll call them the Johnsons.
I knew that Mr. Johnson took the BART daily, but I had never personally run into him. After work, I call him up and ask him about the letter. Turns out, he had about 300 letters with him on the BART, and was going to send them out for his daughter's graduation party. What in the world are the chances of him dropping the one letter addressed to me out of the 300, combined with the chances of me being the 1 out of 375,000 people to pick it up? Pretty wild.
40. Right Wrong Number
Back in the early/mid-90s, the phone system changed and you no longer needed to dial the area code for a long-distance in-state call (We're a small state with only one area code). One morning I woke up to the phone ringing and when I picked up I recognized the voice on the other end as belonging to my old boss from a few years ago. She had an unmistakable voice.
We had a nice conversation for a bit before she realized she had dialed the wrong number. I lived in a different town in a different part of the state, but the number must have been off by only one digit from the one she'd tried to call. To add to the coincidence, I had overslept and would have been late for work if she hadn't called me and woken me up.
41. The Pineapple Predicament
Went grocery shopping with my girlfriend. We both bought pineapples. We checked out through adjacent lanes. When I got to her home, she realized she forgot to take the pineapple she had bought. So I told her she can have mine, and I will go to the store on my way home, and pick up hers. When I went to the car, I realized I forgot my pineapple too.
So imagine me going to one lane asking, "Did I leave a pineapple, here?" then walking to the next lane, (with a pineapple in hand) and asking the same question. Both cashiers had a "what the heck" look on their faces.
42. A Familiar Face
When I was a little kid my parents would take my sister and me to visit my great-grandmother in the nursing home. She was mid-90s, blind, and basically terrifying to young me. I hated going to see her, to be honest. Every time we went she would touch our faces (you know, because blind) and talk to us a little. Meanwhile, her roommate somehow knew my name and would always try and grab me. Even though my parents never said more to her than pleasantries. Always freaked me out—but I didn't truly understand how freaky the experience was until years later.
Fast forward to my mid-twenties. My dad mentions, just casually as anything, that the roommate was HIS grandmother, and my OTHER great-grandmother. She didn't know my name. I am a junior and look like my dad. So, she thought I WAS my father. She was senile after all. Apparently, there was a falling out when my dad was a kid, and he had no relationship with much of his extended family. She didn't recognize my dad because she'd never seen him as an adult.
The screwed up thing is they lived in a city nursing home. Pretty big city, too. And just by sheer freaking coincidence, my parents’ grandparents were roommates.
43. Best Bros Forever
When I was 18, I lived in a town a very long ways away from where I ended up moving. I struck up a friendship with this guy from work in that town. We’d play Halo, watch movies, etc., and he was awesome. I ended up moving suddenly due to a family emergency, and never got his contact information. I didn't even remember his name a decade later, but I thought of him often as he was an awesome guy through all the years.
11 years later I'm working at my job, carpooling with someone from my training class, and one night he asks if I mind his roommate being in the car. He was going to take the car after we got off at work and use it for the night. He introduces us, I turn around, and in the back seat is the guy from the town a very long way away.
We reconnected immediately and now live together. He's my best friend, for sure, and the godfather to my children.
44. Play it Back
I met my partner at the restaurant we used to work at together. We had similar interests: music, films, animals, speech and debate, etc. He even told me he went to film school, and that he made a documentary. I had to pinch myself. An educated art boi? I must be dreaming. I told him that I loved speech and debate too and that I even won a state competition in high school.
We eventually start dating and it is lovely. He finally ends up showing me the documentary. It is about people graduating high school and their different life stories. I’m enjoying the documentary so far. “PAUSE IT HERE, RIGHT NOW!” I exclaim midway through his show. He pauses it reluctantly.
“Rewind it, just a little bit.” My heart is almost palpitating at this point. He pauses it again, and we stare at each other in awe for a few moments. It was me. I was in the documentary. Years before we ever met, and he freaking filmed little 16-year old, pink-haired me. “That’s some soulmate stuff right there,” he said.
45. See You at Home
When I was eleven, I was in the park like half a mile from my house and I was flying a Winnie the Pooh kite. I was the only kid around with a kite at the time, and I was pretty zoned into it and didn't notice when the string came loose. One hundred feet of twine zoomed away and out of reach, and Pooh Bear was gone.
Later that night, my family and I went out to eat, and when we came home there was a string dangling from the gutter above our front door. My dad grabbed it and started pulling. The string seemed to go all the way up into the night sky, we couldn't see the end of it. A hundred feet of pulling later, there was my Pooh Bear kite.
It came back to me.
Flickr, Rusty Clark ~ 100K Photos
46. The Internet Can’t Save You Now
When I was a kid, around 13, I played a lot of a video game called Diablo 2. I started a clan with a few people I’d met on the internet and we played every day. At some point, we were helping some random person and he asked to join. We thought he was nice enough so we let him in. As part of this clan, we had a shared account we used to store game items for each other.
After about a month of playing this new guy goes in, changes the password, takes the account, and defriends everyone. Completely disappears off the map with all of our stuff. Fast forward a year later and my family moves to Texas and it’s my first day at school. I’m sitting in algebra class talking to the person in the seat next to me and he mentions he plays Diablo.
I said me too and that I ran a clan and everything. I asked his username and it was him. 2,000 miles away from where I first virtually met this guy he’s sitting next to me in math class. When I told him to mine his face went into total shock and he didn’t know how to respond. It was awkward for sure. Ended up telling him I didn’t care and was over it, but, well, let’s just say we didn’t end up becoming friends.
47. Set in Stone
Went to college, met a cute girl. "Where'd you go to high school?" she asks. "You've never heard of it," I reply. I grew up in a town of 1,200 people, graduated in a class of about 90. "Try me," she says. And that was the beginning of finding out that not only had she heard of it, she had almost attended it because her family had lived in one of the neighboring towns very briefly when she was growing up.
We shared dozens of mutual friends and had apparently spent our young lives narrowly missing each other. Later, after we started dating, we learned that one of our mutual friends had been trying to set us up with each other for YEARS. She was overwhelmed with laughter when she saw that we were finally together, completely without her involvement.
I asked her to marry me, she said yes. We went out to dinner with our parents so they could finally meet. Her folks arrive at the restaurant and see mine. Her mom goes, "Oh hey, [my dad's name]. So this is your son, huh?" They had been co-workers years ago.
Of course. We've been married for eleven years now. Got a good thing going. We intend to keep it.
48. Witnesses Witnessed
I was once mugged by four guys on one of the main shopping streets of Nairobi, Kenya. One of the guys had me in a chokehold and just before I was about to pass out they dropped me and ran. At the time I didn't know why. 12 months later, sitting on a beach on an island in Thailand, I met a British couple who did business in Kenya.
We start talking about how dangerous it was getting for foreigners. They described an incident the year before of turning a corner and seeing a white guy being mugged. A shopkeeper rescued him by hitting one of them over the head with a bat. They were on the same street, on the same day, at the exact same time I was there. It was me who they witnessed being mugged.
What are the odds of randomly meeting up on a beach in Thailand a year later?
49. I’m Not a Stalker, I Swear
When I was in college in Texas (back in the early 90s) I took a summer trip to England. My flight left on the last day of classes. I had an English paper due that day, and the prof insisted that it was due in his box by noon. Of course, I procrastinated and didn’t turn it in until 1:00 (and mine was the only paper in there). I was sure I had screwed up, but I had to go catch my flight.
I got to London and the next day I was on the Tube, telling my friend that I was sure I had failed the class because the prof never got my paper. “It’s going to be hanging over my head the entire trip,” I said. “There’s no way I’ll know if he got my paper.” We arrived at our stop, the doors opened and there was my prof, waiting for the train.
“Professor X! Did you get my paper?” “Uh... yes, yes I did.” “Great, thanks,” I said and went on to enjoy my holiday.
50. Good Example, Great Sister
In grade 10 English class the teacher didn't have anything planned for us to do and it was close to the end of the year I guess, so she goes to the big cupboard in the corner and pulls out a stack of copies. It's examples of a successful essay written during a final exam, so we can learn what a good one looks like and how to build a narrative, etc. The topic of these was, “What was the most pivotal moment of your life?”
There are three examples, ranging in proficiency. We read through the first two, and I volunteer to read the last one aloud. I start reading... and I stop. The essay was about...me. My big sister had gotten a really good mark six years earlier on her final exam essay, which she wrote about the day I was born. I got pretty emotional about that one.
Sources: , , ,
