Share your amazing coincidence story

[Doribe]

Our Midwest family was driving cross country to visit the Gran Canyon. My step-father and DM stopped for coffee in Amarillo, TX. As they were having a driving break and a cup of coffee in walks my step-father's brother looking for a cup of coffee. The brother was from California.

Two brothers that haven't seen each other in years, originally from Virginia, meet on a summer day in Amarillo. There was no previous planning, just coincidence.

 

[jollystomper]

When DW began doing research on a book about an overseas historical figure, she eventually located the grandson of the subject. The grandson was friendly but a bit reluctant to cooperate, concerned about what light DW would put the subject in (particularly since DW, though fluent in the subject's native language, is of a different race than the subject). DW shared her background with the grandson. It turns out he was a graduate student at the same university we attended as undergrads, at the same time. Then we found out he and I are graduates of the same high school.

The final and best thing was that after DW got her graduate degree, she studied overseas, and lived with a family that turned out to be best friends with the grandson... and, after digging up some pictures she had taken then (almost 40 years ago), DW found a picture she took with that family and some of their friends - which including the grandson. Needless to say, he has been very cooperative and very pleased with her work on his grandfather. Through him DW has gotten back in touch with the family she stayed with and they are thrilled to be in touch with her again - they live in the U.S. now, less than an hour from us - and at what she is doing.

 

[Winemaker]

My brother, who lives in another county, gave his 1994 Blazer to my cousin, he fixes cars up and resells them. Brother was just trying to get rid of it without going through the hassles of selling.

I needed some help a few years ago, tearing down a wall and rebuilding it. So I hired the 18 yo son of my SIL to help with the wheelbarrow work. He pulls up in my brother's old Blazer the next day.

 

[Lewis Clark]

I was planning a Caribbean cruise departing from Miami and wanted to visit my uncle in southeast Florida either before or after the cruise. When I called him to see if he would be available, he had to decline because he was also going on a cruise during that time.

When we compared notes about our cruises, we discovered both ships would be in Cozumel, Mexico on the same day. So we met and had a nice visit in Cozumel, instead of near his home.

 

[pacergal]

My DHs (boyfriend at the time) cousin and I lived in the same dorm, 3 rooms apart, in college, we both have the same first name and her sisters name is my middle name.

 

[kaudrey]

20 years ago my aunt and I went on a trip to Italy. In St. Mark's square in Venice, I hear my name called. I turn around, and see a casual friend of mine from home who was there with some of his buddies. Neither of us knew the other was in Italy.

 

[stephenson]

When my kids were of ball playing age in Northern Virginia, the parents, as part of the deal, assisted in refurbishing the ballfields and equipment around it each year - broken boards, attaching fencing, cutting back brush, fixing plumbing, etc.

After starting about 8 am, everyone is beat by around 3 pm and have pretty much finished up so have begun to leave. Towards the end of the exodus I was in outfield and had finished my assigned brush cutting and dragging, and started to leave when I notice a fellow still working on a broken PVC supply pipe down in a 4-5 hole - started to walk on by, but couldn't so went back, introduced myself and jumped down in the hole to help.

Started talking while digging and cleaning and gluing up the bits - where from, what did, etc. He was a pilot with the squadron at Andrews AFB that supported government VIP flights, I was a former Navy pilot - good discussion. For some reason turned to relatives' names - I told him I had the most interestingly named relatives, and started noting them: Uncle Basil, Uncle Moxley, Aunt Cupiden - he stops and stares. Tells me he has an Aunt Cupi who lives in Alabama ... my Aunt Cupi lives in Alabama. Same person. We are not related, but share an aunt and uncle.

Now the sad part - I have forgotten his name - a lot of water under my bridge. I regret this.

So, if anyone knows a former USAF Lt Col pilot with an Aunt Cupi(dean), please let me know.

 

[Koolau]

I've actually mentioned this one before in other threads. Within one week of moving to the Islands, we met a couple and somehow I mentioned my old university where I'd not only gotten a couple of degrees but also taught part time. The lady mentioned there was a couple in our complex and the Mr. had gone to that same university. Well it turns out, it was at the same exact 4 year stretch. Not only that, he grew up in a small town adjoining my home town, so we grew up within 10 miles of each other. I'm sure our paths had (literally) crossed before but we didn't recognize each other. With perhaps 25,000 students, and different majors, the fact we hadn't formally met until age 60 wasn't surprising.

We became close friends and remain so with his widow to this day.

 

[Tom52]

I remember another coincidence from my past w@rking days. I hired a new employee for my department from a sister company that was shutting down. Shortly after relocating the new employee and I were having a get to know you discussion. It came up that his son and my daughter graduated high school the same year. He then asked me what month my daughter was born. When it was discovered they were both born in April, the obvious next question was what day. Lo and behold this son and my daughter were born on the same day. We were sitting there sort of amazed at the coincidence, then we looked at each other and the next obvious question was, what time were our kids born. I said our daughter was born at 12:37 PM. His son was born 1:45 PM. But wait! His son was born in Michigan and our daughter was born in Iowa. So considering the time zone change our children were born only 8 minutes apart.

 

[Winemaker]

DW had a daughter with her "practice husband" in 1979, and I have always considered her my daughter since DW and I were dating/engaged. When we moved to SW PA in 1991, my son got involved with youth baseball for several years. Once, during a trip to the snack bar with DW and DD, I recognized the older sister (who hated my frigging guts) of my high school/early college girl friend in front of us. I was never good enough for her sister, as the older sister was "high maintenance" and I was just run of the mill, and too "goody two shoes". Well, she wasn't in a "high maintenance" vantage point there in line, so I said hi and introduced her to DW and DD. Now, Ole Sis, was about to die, but I really had her wheels spin off, when she asked about DD's age, who would have been born about the same time I was dating her sister.

 

[Koolau]

Was attending a national meeting of my trade association at the Anaheim Convention center. Roughly 2500 miles from "home." As I was descending an escalator, I saw a guy from the lab where I w*rked (maybe a total of 80 people in our department). He had nothing to do with my specialty, so he happened to be there to learn about handling personal finances elsewhere in the center.

I guess this recurring national meeting was actually one of those confluence points in my life. FF a few years and I was sitting in a training session offered during the several-day meeting held that year in Canada. The leader wanted to do sort of a personal bio session (50 words or less sort of thing - that always stretches to 150 words).

I shared that my sister had passed and how that had changed my life in many ways - way too long a story for even 150 words as kids were involved. A woman came up to me after the session and I recognized her immediately. She knew my story because we had known each other well 20+ years earlier when she took my sister's then boy friend away from my sister (MY family was glad she got him so that my sister could find what we thought would be a better match - which, in our opinion, she ultimately did.) I mentioned to the lady that one of the items we retrieved from my sisters things was HER husband's HS class ring he'd given to my sister - and for perhaps "perversity" or minor revenge my sister had kept it. I offered to return it and that was accomplished subsequently. YMMV

 

[Boose]

When I was ages 2-5, my family and I lived in a triple-decker apartment house - that's New Englandese for a 3-story house with porches on each floor. Eventually my family moved elsewhere, I graduated h.s., went away to college, and got married. DH and I decided we'd rent in my hometown for a year to be near my family and save money for the down payment on a house. On our first foray through the ads in the local paper, we found a promising apartment; when I was given the address for the tour, I realized it was my former home! The apartment was on the floor above the one that my family had lived in more than 20 years before.

Of course we rented the place. And when I complained to my father about the motorcycle noise on weekends, he said, "Oh yeah, I remember that. The house is right in the middle of two biker bars." Thanks for warning me, Dad.

 

[Keim]

I was listening to the song Dead Mans Party when the Scout troop i was with came upon a suicide in the mountains.

 

[jazz4cash]

Flying Southwest Air and got stuck on a 2 stop flight from Indy to Syracuse. 2nd stop was Pittsburgh and a passenger boards and sits next to me. Starts making small talk:
Him: “where did you board...”
Me: “Indy”
Him: I used to live there! What part of town do you live in?”
Me: “ I live near (nearest major cross streets)”
Him: I used live near there too!

Turns out he lived in the house directly across from our house. He had moved out years before we moved in. He named another neighbor and asked how they were doing so I was convinced.

 

[oldphd]

Interesting reading...

Several years ago when DW and I were living in Ohio, we took a 3 week trip to Utah to visit the National Parks. One day we were on a hike in Canyonlands. Coming back down the trail, we ran into a couple we knew, neither of us had a clue the other would be there. She was a long time friend of DW, and the couple had moved to Idaho several years prior. They were on a road trip to New Mexico and were taking a day or two break in the Moab area. Ended up meeting for dinner that night.

 

[EastWest Gal]

1. DH is adopted. Many years after his adoptive parents passed and we moved across the country, he receives a package with information that indicates that the sender was his biological mom. In the intervening 44 years, she had 3 other children. She was flying out to visit one of them in NYC. DH called her and they talked for a long time. He and she agreed to meet in Philadelphia, which was convenient by train from NYC and from central PA.

It turned out the one of his half sisters lived just a couple of miles from where we used to live, and his bio mom stayed with her during the week and went to her home in Sonoma County on weekends. Her place was just a few miles from where had had extended family for many years.

2. My high school boyfriend, through whom I met DH, and with whom we maintain a good friendship, shared with me that he had a great great grandfather buried in a cemetery near where I now live. We were both creating family trees through Ancestry. That cemetery is associated with a historic church building where DH and I have been performing concerts for 20 years.

 

[SunnyOne]

These are always interesting to me.

Once I was staying in a hotel near the Seattle airport. I reached into the drawer of the nightstand only to find a novel left behind by a previous guest. The man's business card was tucked inside. I noticed the address was close to a friend's house in Connecticut. I called her. She knew him. She called him and hed asked if I would please bring it home with me and mail it to him. LOL. I was living in NYC at the time.

Another one....A few years after becoming estranged from an old college roommate, I happened to spot her on the NYC subway during my first morning commute to a new job. I decided not to say anything to her. Several months later, I quit that job. On my last commute home, I spotted the same former friend on the subway. NYC, what are the chances of that lol.

 

[RetireeRobert]

1972, 3 years out of college at UW in Seattle, I was transferred by employer to San Fernando Valley branch office. One of the other employees at that branch was a dorm-mate from UW college dorms. We otherwise had no connection or friendship with each other, just enough recognition to know we had each lived in same dorm.

Wind back some decades to early-mid 1950's when I was maybe eight or nine. Was driving with folks on vacation from Seattle area and heading south. Folks stopped the car in Portland at a random grocery store along the way to get a few things. Car right next to ours in the lot had a kid who was a grade-school mate of mine back home. We recognized each other and were shocked---"Is this true"? was the look on our faces. Then my Mom came back out of the store talking to another woman. Other woman was my grade-school-mate's mom. Our two mom's had run into each other inside the store!

Amazing, but true. Small world.

 

[Tom52]

My mother, when a young girl, and grandmother were abandoned by my grandfather. For nearly 50 years she never knew where he went or what happened to him. Growing up I heard a few stories that he was a womanizer and all around not a very nice person. I had never even seen a picture of him. My mother never had a good memory of her father or wanted to talk about him.

By chance my mother was contacted by people claiming to be half sisters to her just a few years before she passed. I knew about this contact but my mother didn't have any interest in starting a relationship with her newly discovered siblings. They lived several states away.

About seven years ago I had the sad task of cleaning out parent's house after they both passed. While sorting through some old black and white photos of people I did not know, I suddenly realized these photos had to have been sent to my mother from her half siblings. I know this because one photo was a picture of a man posing with his family. My heart literally skipped a beat as the man looked exactly like me. I'm talking very nearly identical twin resemblance. My mother never mentioned it to me.

 

[Koolau]

I've actually told this one at least twice before in FIRE Community.

I was 20, working on learning to fly. About 5th or 6th lesson (memory fades) the engine of the aircraft I was flying (with instructor) exploded. Instructor put the plane down on a winter wheat field (roughly approximating a bare lawn that's been planted in new grass.) I did go on to get my Private License a couple of years later.

FF to age 40. I still lived in home town and mom gave me a balloon ride for my 40th BD. If you know nothing else about balloons, you probably know that they go where the air currents take them. So the pilot stopped at a couple of his usual launch sites but didn't like the nearly still air. If you launch too close to the city and don't get blown to the country, you could be forced to land in town - not a good idea in general.

So we headed to one of his out of town launch spots. The wind was so calm, that I suppose we traversed perhaps 3 miles in an hour - very pleasant. But as we were running low on fuel (and time) the balloon passed over the exact same field where my airplane had landed 20 years earlier. From there, the pilot was already in contact with the ground crew which would help pack up the balloon - we could see the truck waiting perhaps 1/4 mile ahead.

But just past the field I'd ditched in we felt a puff of wind which is virtually unheard of in a balloon since you typically ARE the wind, so to speak. It meant there was a sudden change in wind (in our case from almost no wind to suddenly, we were going perhaps 15 mph the wrong (opposite) direction from the chase truck. We floated back across "my" field and were heading for a forested area as we were literally running out of fuel (IOW we WOULD be landing very soon.)

To avoid that being into trees, the pilot pulled the cord that ripped the velcro stays at the top of the balloon, allowing the balloon to come down. It did - into the last yard without trees before the forest. We hit hard and DW was injured - suffered bruising and pain for a few months. Not a biggie as these things can go, but I now visit that field every year I'm back "home." I consider it my own personal Bermuda Triangle.

 

[DrRoy]

DW is a big fan of Jeopardy. Last year we took a trip to Grand Teton National Park. One morning, we were hiking around Taggart Lake and Ken Jennings went by.

 

[Dtail]

We were in a restaurant one day and I noticed a friend from sleepaway camp which we attended over 30 years ago. He had a distinctive look and just knew it was him.
We spoke and became friends again, as he lived in the same town. The restaurant was 30 minutes away.

 

[MRG]

I went to night school for programming. There were 4 major languages we learned that year as well as some shorter subjects to give you some exposure.

In my carreer I became an expert in something called CICS, it's an environment that old green screens run under. I also has several mentors but one guy in particular was more than a mentor, truly a friend. We'd know each other almost 20 years when he mentioned he had taught CICS at the night school I'd attended. He was my instructor.

Another guy started working at Megacorp, 25 years later, and shortly after I met him he told me he was an instructor there and had taught me a language too. I didn't believe that until he told me details about the class and facilities we had used.

 

[latexman]

Not really amazing, but . . .

In the early '80's I was travelling a lot to Newark, NJ. One flight I was bumped up to Business Class. The guy seating beside me was Harry Reasoner.

In '83 or '84, DW and I were in NYC for the day to have a nice meal, do some window shopping, and get two'fer tickets to a Broadway play. While walking to our play, we passed Gene Berry.

In 1985, while going to our favorite Mexican Restaurant in Princeton, NJ, my wife and I and two friends saw Brooke Shields backpacking it to/from class at Princeton University.

About 2008, I was eating lunch at Houston Hobby Airport waiting on my flight. The waitress brought my burger and hurriedly departed before I could ask for ketchup for the fries. I asked the guy at the high top table next to mine if he'd share his ketchup. He said, "no problem, I have all I need". He was Rex Linn.

In 2018 I was either coming or going to LA. I was making my way to my seat in the back. I spotted Niecy Nash in business class.

 

[latexman]

This one is amazing . . .

About 2003, a co-worker and friend quit and went to work for a different company. He was still in the the same field as I, the "resin mafia" as we in the field call it. Since then, he and I have found ourselves on 4 of the same flights. Granted, we fly out of the same airport, but this seems uncanny. None of the times were we going to the same end destination, like a convention, or something.