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Coincidence

TownieDeac

TownieDeac

words are futile devices
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Listened to a podcast this morning that was all about coincidences.

Let's discuss examples you've had that are particularly striking.

I'll start.

I was on a 2 month, cross country bike trip after high school. We rode through 13 states, averaging about 70 miles per day, mostly through small towns on tiny back roads safe for cyclists. About halfway through the trip we were in central Colorado, and we went off the tour maps a bit looking for this one state park. We quickly got super lost going down unmarked roads and were having some trouble finding our way back. After about a half hour, we spotted a small town up in the hills where we decided to head for some breakfast and directions. Sitting down for breakfast, we overhear this guy at the counter asking for directions, who himself had gotten lost driving around, looking for a hiking spot. Turns out, it was an older buddy from back home (Wake grad, former poster). We were probably 10 miles out of our way and he was at least 20, each of us a thousand miles away from home at a diner in bumfuck, nowhere, Colorado.

People generally don't care about other people's coincidences. They're typically only meaningful to them, but try me.
 
I cooked trout for dinner this weekend and a friend of mine who was hundreds of miles away was....fishing for trout this weekend!
 
When I was studying abroad I spend a few days n Barcelona to visit two friends from Wake. I was staying at the Kabul hostel and one morning when I got up to go get some breakfast in the cafeteria area I noticed out of the corner of my eye that this person was staring me down, following me wherever I moved. I turned to say something and saw that it was one of my closest friends from HS who I hadn't really seen at all in 3 years. She was there by herself just bumming around. So she hung out with me and my Wake friends for the next couple of days and ended up dating the rando Australian dude on the bunk above me for a few months.
 
my wife and my sister were baptized by the same man in different states years apart (my wife is a year older than her). he was our Presbyterian minister in Pensacola, FL back in the 80s and baptized my sister in 87. he left to move to Lynchburg, VA and eventually became a Baptist minister. since Baptists are baptized later in life, he baptized my wife when she was like 12 or something. he was the best man in my wife's grandmother's wedding.
 
also, my wife's best friend growing up went to Elon, his roommate for 3 years was the son of my mom's 4-year college roommate/maid of honor.
 
I had a Styx song in my head this morning. Jumped in the car to drive to work and it was playing on the radio.
 
Went to a wedding back in 2000. Flew from RDU to New Orleans. In the row next to me were these Carolina fans and we good naturedly talked smack about basketball. At rehearsal dinner the next night it's stuffy and I step outside for some air. At the same time Carolina dude steps out of the building next door where he's attending a rehearsal dinner. Sunday I get on the plane to go home, and Carolina dude is of course on it. Arrive in RDU and waiting for luggage, mine comes out and I see the zipper busted open (pre-9/11 when you could lock stuff) and start to freak out and Carolina dude shows up and points out its his bag. We had the same luggage (would be less surprising if it were generic black/navy, but it was this odd green/gold style I've never seen another person with).

Edit: Friend just posted on her facebook, apparently today is their anniversary, so coincidentally this happened exactly 14 years ago.
 
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ended up standing next to my freshman year Wake roommate at one of the shows at Bonnaroo 2012. we both just arrived at that spot in the tent at the same time, hadn't seen him in prob 6 years.
 
In the summer of 1999, right before my senior year in college, I got into a fender bender at work in Greensboro. The car had frame damage, so it was totaled. About a year or so later, I was driving to Winston-Salem from Charlotte and pulled into a gas station maybe around Salisbury. In the space next to me was a car that looked way too much like my old one. I walked around to the back of it and sure enough, my Wake Forest sticker was still on the back windshield. I thought about hanging around just to find out who bought it and to let them know what had happened to it. I bet they had no idea.
 
Also, the summer before I went to Wake, I had a dream that I gave up attending Wake to go to DeVry institute instead. The next day when I checked the mail, there was a postcard from DeVry institute.
 
TownieDeac said:
People generally don't care about other people's coincidences. They're typically only meaningful to them, but try me.
Click to expand...

Dennis Reynolds: [interrupting her] You know what Dee, I don't want to hear about your dream [or coincidence], okay? I hate listening to people's dreams. It's like flipping through a stack of photographs. If I'm not in any of them, and nobody's having sex, I just... don't care.
 
I was picking up a friend at LAX. She was taking a while to get through customs. A guy taps me on the shoulder,"How have you been?"
"OK, do I know you?"
"Didn't you used to live in Havertown?"
I was puzzled. "Yep."
"You used to come into my pizza place."
It had been 20+years.
 
Ran into big time Wake booster Ashby Cook and his daughter at a gas station in Durango several years ago. My wife, then girlfriend, and I spent the night in a cabin up there and were headed back to Arizona. I used to sit next to him at football games a long time ago. Back then, big time boosters and random recent grads could each get seats on the 45 yard line.

The biggest coincidence I've had is the story I've posted before about running into the same acquaintance from grad school in DC on July 4 three years a row in three different places completely unplanned. One year at a club in Adams Morgan the night before, the next year on the mall, and the next year on the metro leaving the mall.
 
wfudkn said:
When I was studying abroad I spend a few days n Barcelona to visit two friends from Wake. I was staying at the Kabul hostel and one morning when I got up to go get some breakfast in the cafeteria area I noticed out of the corner of my eye that this person was staring me down, following me wherever I moved. I turned to say something and saw that it was one of my closest friends from HS who I hadn't really seen at all in 3 years. She was there by herself just bumming around. So she hung out with me and my Wake friends for the next couple of days and ended up dating the rando Australian dude on the bunk above me for a few months.
Click to expand...

I stayed at Kabul when visiting Barcelona as well! (that is not my coincidence though)

In Munich waiting around for the Glockenspeil (overrated), we asked some people near us to take our picture. Turned out one of the girls went to my HS and was like a year older than me and we had a bunch of friends in common.
 
The best one I have heard was from my wife.

My wife studied abroad in Spain when she was in undergrad. She and her sister went to a little cafe in the middle of nowhere Spain and ordered some coffee. A little later she noticed a man was looking at her a lot and he finally approached her and told her that it was probably crazy, but he thought he knew her. Well, my wife looks a lot like her mother did at her age. When her mother was in college she had run away to Spain for a year and dated a Spaniard to the point that they almost got married. After her dad dragged her home, they remained in touch for a number of years until she met my now father in law and they got married. It turns out the man in the coffee shop was the man she had dated 25 year before and he recognized my wife because she looks so much like her mother did. I can't remember the full details, but I am pretty sure it was a coffee shop he owned. She had never told my wife anything about it until this man approached her.

The most random that has happened to me was running into a high school classmate on the streets of Berlin. He had graduated the year before and I was a rising senior.
 
one i just thought of is what were the odds that columbus would discover america ON COLUMBUS DAY
 
I love coincidences/small world moments/whatever you want to call them.

My favorite is this: While studying abroad in Spain, made friends w/ a couple guys from another school. They got two weeks off in September as a fall break, and just bought eurorail passes and took off. I didn't know where they were going, neither did they. During this two week span, went to Interlaken. I was walking back to my hostel late at night and took a "shortcut" through a residential area. I see two figures approaching me, and as they get closer I think I recognize the voices... sure enough it's the two guys from the other school who also just happen to be walking down a residential street in Interlaken at the wee hours of the morning (from the opposite direction). No real reason for any of us to be there, and there we were.

Ran into a poster on the steps of the British Museum in London, shortly before the boards crowd-sourced his flight back to the ACCCG...

I have things like yodeacsgo's radio premonition happen all the time; they hardly register anymore.
 
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