September 9, 2019 | Casey Fletcher

Dumbfounded People Share The Strangest Coincidence They've Personally Experienced


Life is full of strange coincidences. Every now and then, an unexpected connection or chance meeting happens so perfectly that you wonder if it was serendipity, fate, a glitch in the matrix, or perhaps a sign of something bigger. Are our lives really directed by destiny? When you experience a situation like the ones below, it's hard not to think so.

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#1 My Long Lost Brother Twinned With Me In College

When I was a baby, I was given up for adoption by my mother. She had a 10-year-old son and was going through a very rough patch in her life.Fast forward 20 years and I was a junior in college. I had never known anything about my birth family except for the first names of my brother and mother. I had never even seen a picture of them.

Anyway, my adoptive mom bought me an AncestryDNA test kit for Christmas. When I got my results back, my number one match was this guy named Vincent. I looked him up on Facebook and thought, “This guy looks like me!” I sent him a message explaining everything and he instantly knew that I was his brother. This isn’t the coincidental part. After talking for a bit through messenger, we realized we only lived 10 minutes apart. We decided to meet that night and reconnect.

As it turned out, we both attended the same university and had the same major and minor. He decided to go back to school and finish his degree 10 years later and happened to choose the same university as me. All this time, we thought that we were across the country from each other. This really makes one think about nature vs. nurture. We have a great relationship now and it’s amazing to have an older brother!

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#2 If You're Ever in Denmark, We'll Leave The Lights On

A few years back, my dad went on a trip to Denmark for a business trip. My mom, being Danish, decided that she was going to come along. She had always heard stories about the side of the family that never moved to America, but she had no idea where they lived or if any of them were still around. After a week in the country, my mom and dad were driving down a country road when their car got a flat tire. There wasn’t any cell reception so they walked up a random driveway to ask the locals to use their phone.

Well, they walked up the steps of this little cottage, knocked on the door, and an elderly woman came answered. Her eyes lit up, fixed on my mom, and she gave her a hug. My parents were understandably confused as the old woman’s husband was also excited to see my mom. The couple didn’t really speak any English, but they led my parents down the main hallway to their guest room. There, on the dresser, was a photo of my mom and her brothers from their high-school graduation. The old couple was my mother’s great aunt and uncle; the ones that never came to the USA. To this day, my parents still can’t explain it.

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#3 Ringtones That Restore Your Faith In Coincidence

I was traveling by train and there were six people in the same compartment as me. All of a sudden, someone's phone rang. I thought it was mine because it had the same ringtone. It wasn't. Sometime later, someone else’s rang with the same ringtone. Then another's. Mine did not but I had the same ringtone as the other three, and it was not the default one. Each time, I stopped myself to check if it was mine. What a coincidence!

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#4 I Photobombed My Girlfriend Years Before We Met

When I started hanging out with my girlfriend, she invited me over to her house. Her grandmother, who lives down the street, was friends with my parents. She worked for a doctor, who delivered me. But the coincidences don't stop there. We were sitting around looking at some of her old family pictures and there was one of a 4th of July parade in my neighborhood.There was a little boy in the picture that they didn’t know, but it looked an awful lot like me. I asked my dad and he said he remembered that day where he took us to our old street to watch the parade. When I was a toddler, I had wandered into my future girlfriend’s family picture.

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#5 Paying For Serendipity With A Credit Card

A few years back, while I was working in a little pub, a couple of two-seater tables next to one another were finishing up at the same time. I got them both their checks and both parties decided to split their bill. Upon trying to close them out, I realized that not only were the checks identical down to the cent, but each table had nearly identical credit cards—at least by the final 4 digits. Table one had a charge of $28.79 on card ending 1000 and another for $28.78 on card ending 5008. Table two's charges were identical, down to the last cent and last 4 digits on both cards. I've never gotten over how unrealistically improbable it all was.

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#6 A Dickens Of A Secret Santa Coincidence

My office ran a Secret Santa a week before Christmas. It was a $10 limit and I didn't know the person I was buying for. 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 saw 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? It was $10—perfect.

On the day of the Secret Santa, we were all opening our gifts. There were about 150 of us altogether. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw some people crowding around a woman who was crying. People were calling out for the person who was her Santa. I went over and revealed 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 was also the exact same edition she had. 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 of her shelf before the fire and delivered it to her 10 years later.

Ripley2179

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#7 Just In Time To Save My Life Again

I had a rare disease when I was four years old which hospitalized me for months. Doctors were dumbfounded and were unsure of how to treat me. A Japanese doctor who was touring hospitals in the U.S. walked in with a bunch of interns and other doctors. He recognized what I had immediately and helped to cure me. Six years later, the same rare disease hit me. It was slightly different this time, with different symptoms, but the same Japanese doctor at the same hospital walked in the door. I'm not sure how those stars aligned so perfectly.

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#8 Hope The Doctor Got An 'A' On That Thesis

We were on a family vacation in Arkansas at a big lake in our RV and my dad started complaining about stomach pains. It got worse and worse, and he ended up going to the emergency room. They told him it was just a stomach bug and they sent him on his way. The pain got worse and he went back to the emergency room for a second time, but they gave him the same diagnosis. We packed up and headed home for Alabama to our small-town hospital.

The doctor on duty was the surgeon and he immediately recognized the symptoms as the condition he had done his thesis on in medical school. What happens is part of the colon rolls over like a balloon animal and is blocked off. It's called twisted cecum volvulus. He probably would have passed away shortly after if we had accepted the stomach bug diagnosis. This small town surgeon saved my dad's life.

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#9 We Flew 2,000 Miles For A Kebab Coincidence

There's a good kebab shop in my little town in northwest England. My friends and I have ordered from it for years. We've been in there after countless nights out and have also had them deliver to our house, so we know the guys who work there pretty well. They're mostly Turkish. Once, a few friends and I got together for a short break in Turkey. After getting off the plane, we waited in the parking lot outside for another pal who had been on a different flight. As we stood, soaking in the ambiance of a new country, one of the guys from our local kebab shop walked across the road right in front of us, two thousand miles from home. That was weird.

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#10 A Private Eye Wouldn't Have Worn That Funky Shirt

Nobody believes me when I tell this story, but one day my husband and I ran into the same couple at three different places, in two different states. My husband and I had an errand to run out of state. We left early and stopped to get breakfast. The couple was sitting across from us. The lady had on a funky shirt, which is why she stuck out in my mind. After breakfast, we drove to the next, where we had an appointment. We were waiting in the lobby and the couple from the breakfast joint walked in! Weird! So we spent the day finishing up our errands and then we drove back home. I didn't feel like cooking, so we stopped to get some dinner at the pub. We sat down at the table and guess who was already eating at the table behind us? The same freaking couple!

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#11 I Hope It's Okay If Your Mom Sees These Photos!

I 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 leaned over and said, "I think you're talking about my son." Turns out, I was sitting next to my colleague's parents while showing my mom pictures of our trip.

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#12 No Way She Bought This Essay On The Internet

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, so she went to this big cupboard in the corner and pulls out a stack of copies. They were examples of a successful essay written during a past final exam. The topic of the exam was, 'What was the most pivotal moment of your life?'

There were three examples ranging in proficiency. We read through the first two, and I volunteered to read the last one aloud. I started reading... and then I stopped. 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 was pretty emotional about that one.

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#13 You Have To Wait For The Tamale To Come To You (Apparently)

My wife and I were in Tucson visiting my mother, who had just moved there. My wife decided she wanted a tamale. We drove around for two hours stopping in restaurants looking for tamales. We couldn’t find one. We went back to my mother's apartment and literally two minutes later, somebody knocked on the door of my mother's apartment asking us if anyone wanted to buy any tamales.

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#14 That Time The Wanted Man Pedaled Past

One day at work, an officer from a different police department was showing me a picture of a wanted man, who was wanted in a different part of town. They hadn't been able to catch this guy yet. As I looked up from the laptop where this guy's picture was being shown, I see someone riding by on a bike. It was the wanted man. He was literally five feet away from the squad car.

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#15 Did He Also Take Your Wedding Videos Himself?

I was at a convention and 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 were talking with friends and the convention came 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.

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#16 If They Charged Him Less For the Surgery, I'm Going To Get Angry

I have an uncommon last name and a not-too-common first name. One day, I was in the hospital for surgery and the person in the next room was there for the same surgery. We found out that we were second cousins. We never knew that the other existed. He had the same name as me and his wife had the same name as my wife.

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#17 It's Even More Amazing He Knew His Grandma's Maid Of Honor

During my first university class, I was talking to a girl and we discovered through the course of a two-hour long conversation that our grandmother's had been each other's maid of honor at their weddings. But the coincidences don't end there! My aunt and her mom have been best friends since childhood. Every time we have a conversation, I expect more and more crazy coincidences to pop up.

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#18 Waking Up To A Wrong Number Performance Review

Back in the early 90s, the phone system changed and you no longer needed to dial the area code for a long-distance in-state call. One morning, I woke up to the phone ringing and when I picked up, I recognized the voice on the other end. It belonged 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 that 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 and woken me up.

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#19 Same Tokyo Travel Agent?

Two years ago I was in Tokyo on holiday. I looked on Instagram and saw an old friend post a story showing he was also in Tokyo. We hadn’t spoken in a few years, but I sent him a message letting him know we were in the same city. Not even five minutes later, I walked into a bar and he was standing there. I managed to find him in a city with a population of more than nine million people. Also, this past November, I was in Toronto on business. After dinner, we went to a pub downtown. The first person I saw when I walked in was the same friend from Tokyo. We both live in Winnipeg.

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#20 That Cyber Thief Sitting Next To You In 8th Grade

When I was a kid, around 13 years old, I played a video game a lot called Diablo 2. I started a clan with a few people I’d met on the internet and we played every day. At one point, a random person asked to join our clan. We thought he was nice enough so we let him in. As part of this clan, we had a shared account that we used to store game items for each other. After about a month of playing, this new guy went in and changed the password. He stole the account and defriended everyone.

Fast forward a year later and my family moved to Texas. It was my first day at school. I was sitting in algebra class talking to the person in the seat next to me and he mentioned that he played Diablo. I told him that I did too and that I ran a clan. I asked his username, and guess what? It was the guy who stole my gaming account—two thousand miles away from where I first virtually met him and there he was sitting next to me in math class. When I told him mine, his face went into total shock and he didn’t know how to respond.

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#21 Hitting The Lottery Together Would Be Even Wilder

My best friend in high school had the same exact locker combination as me in a school of 1200 people. I saw a combination written on a piece of paper that he had and I asked why he wrote down my combo. He looked confused and said that it was his combo. The combination locks are changed and reassigned each year.

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#22 The Only More Memorable Scar Story Is Harry Potter

When my mom was about 13 years old, she lived on Midway Island with my grandparents because my grandpa was an officer in the Navy. She had a water skiing accident where she slammed her face into the sea wall because she didn’t let go of the rope in time. As a result, she now has a scar on her forehead that she covers with her bangs. Anyway, fast forward 45 years and she's now working at a retirement facility. Her job is to coordinate outings for residents.

One day, a new resident came in and she was talking to him about his life. He said he was in the Navy and my mom thought that was cool since her dad was too. He said that he was stationed at Midway Island, which my mom thought was super cool since it’s a tiny island and he said he was there during the same time she was (the 60s). He went on to say that he hated it because the only interesting thing that ever happened was when an officer’s daughter didn’t let go early enough while water skiing and slammed right into the sea wall and he had to save her. My mom was totally shocked. She pulled her bangs to the side to show him the scar and said, “I was that officer’s daughter." Coolest coincidence ever.

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#23 The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Dresser

I had recently graduated from a large state school and found a room in an empty house to rent. Since I was moving from my college apartment, I didn't have furniture and I decided to grab a dresser that a previous occupant had left in the basement. It was a bit older, but not antique. Three of my friends helped me move it upstairs while we were waiting for a fourth. The fourth friend arrived, walked into my room, and stared at my dresser for a long time before saying, "Why do you have my dresser?" It turns out that her parents had donated her childhood dresser to Goodwill and the previous occupant of the house, who was from the same tiny town that she was, had got his dresser at that Goodwill.

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#24 His Humor Failed And Then He Did

A classmate of mine sent a fake email to select members of my class. It looked totally legitimate and said that we had failed a really important exam, which carries bad consequences for our career. After we freaked out, he let us know that it was just a joke, but when the results came out a week later, there was only one person who failed—my classmate that sent the fake email.

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#25 Happy Birthday From Your Friend, The Floor

Last year, I went out to buy myself a cake for my birthday. When I went to the register to pay, I found $20 on the floor. I asked the other people in line if any of them had dropped money on the floor and no one claimed it. It was my lucky day! I like to tell people that the universe bought me a cake for my birthday. It's a nice story to tell.

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#26 Our Brains Are The Same Make And Model

My best friend and I clicked right off the bat in college. Then, at odd times, our "spidey senses" would kick in and we would share the same thoughts, even if we were on opposite ends of the country from each other. The biggest coincidence that we had was when we both bought cars. We found out that we had bought the exact same car—same model, same year, same color, same everything.

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#27 We Have Photographic Evidence Our Stepkids Should Get Along

I had met my wife's kid a month before I met my wife. We were out at a swimming pool one day, about 500 miles from home. My son and step-daughter (though she wasn't my step-daughter at the time) met at the pool and played together all day. My son is even in my step-daughters aunt's pictures. Now we have photographic evidence that they should get along and not fight with each other!

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#28 Somewhere, I'd Learned To Speak Toy Penguin

When I was a kid, we had this plush penguin that would play Jingle Bells if you squeezed its stomach. One Christmas, it broke and just kept playing the song endlessly. This went on for hours. My mom tried stuffing it in the couch cushion, but we could still hear it. Finally, I got super annoyed, grabbed the penguin, and said to it, "This is really annoying, could you please stop?" It stopped immediately.

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#29 The Goodbye Didn't Last Through Second Grade

When I was in first grade, my parents sold the house that we were living in and we moved about an hour away. I said goodbye to all of my classmates and friends, thinking I'd never see any of them again. Well, about a month after we moved, the kid that I sat next to in my old school moved in across the street. That was an insane coincidence, but I was happy that I knew someone in my new school!

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#30 Not Dressed Like Quadruplets, But Close

When I was younger (about eight or nine years old) my family and I were at a water park on vacation nowhere near where we lived. As we were walking around the park, we found a pair of sisters that were wearing the exact same swimsuits as me and my sister. The girls were the same ages as my sister and I as well! I always thought it was crazy.

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#31 A Literary Whale Of A Coincidence

About 20 years ago, I was taking the Amtrak from Baltimore to New York. I was reading some kind of thriller novel. About five minutes into my book, I read about the protagonist casually noticing a giant whale mural on the side of a building in Wilmington, Delaware. I glanced out the window just as we were passing that exact same mural. I've never experienced a coincidence quite like that one.

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#32 Maybe For Our Next Birthday We Can Do A Root Canal

I was at the dentist getting a crown extension. After reading my file, the dentist said to me, "Hey, you were born on July 13th and so was I." The assistant immediately said, "Me too!" We all shared a look of surprise and familiarity with each other. Like we were longing to be closer to one another. Then they drilled the absolute heck out of my teeth. That fuzzy warm feeling didn't last very long.

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#33 A Mind Boggler About Beagles And Bagels

We were living in a small town in Texas at the time and we always took in dog rescues to help find homes for them. It got to the point where people would dump them in our back yard. One day, four dogs show up: two puppies, a brindle, and a beagle. We immediately got the puppies adopted out because they're young and cute.

Fast forward eight months. We've tried adopting out the beagle male and twice he's been returned to us. The brindle was the mother and the beagle was the father of the puppies. One fine Sunday, I decided that we needed to swing by my the animal shelter down the road from our house. I've never been because the owner and I know each other from around town and I do not care for her. But today I wanted to swing by because something about their new cages caught my eye. So, why not? Turns out, it's closed and no one is there.

So we got out and looked around. I noticed that there was a green truck parked in the driveway. I shrugged it off. This woman came around the corner and asked us if we worked there. I told her no, but ask what she needed. She was interested in adopting a dog. She's been living in a different town 10 miles away for the last few months and since she was in town today, she wanted to check this shelter.

Her dog ran away about 10 months prior. So I told her we have two available for adoption. A brindle and a beagle. She says her dog that ran away was a beagle. Somehow, someway, we had ended up with her beagle in our yard. And then coincidentally we met her on a random day at a location I had never been to, but driven past almost every day. The brindle, it turned out, was his girlfriend from next door that would escape with him. So, she took the beagle—her beagle who had been missing for almost a year–home. The final coincidence was that we named that beagle Bagel. And his original name was Brownie. Food names!!!

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#34 Drive-By Sibling Sighting

I was driving home from a weekend of camping at the coast, about four hours from home. I was driving along a road, in the middle of nowhere, when I saw someone standing on the side of the road in front of a house. I thought that they looked familiar. Sure enough, it was my sister at her then boyfriend's parent's house. What are the odds of her deciding to go there that day and be standing outside by the road when I drove by? I made a quick U-turn and went back to say hi.

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#35 A Gameboy Where The Flight Magazine Should Be

My dad used to fly a lot for business and we had an annual family vacation where I brought my Gameboy Color. I lost it somewhere on the plane. My dad took a trip about a month later and saw something in the pocket of the seat in front of him. He grabbed it and it was my Gameboy Color, totally intact! The battery was dead, but my game and saves were all there. I was thankful for this coincidence!

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#36 Are You John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt?

When I was born, there was a different guy in the same hospital who was born with the same name as me, on the same day as me. That's not even the craziest part. Our moms also have the same name and are both nurses. Now, 17 years later, the coincidences continue! We’re in the same class and we confuse everybody with this crazy story. It's like our families were copied and pasted!

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#37 Mail A Ski, Get A Haircut, Make A Friend For Life

I was in Kathmandu for a semester abroad program. A buddy of mine and I were in a barbershop waiting to get our hair cut. There was another traveller getting his hair cut and he was wearing Jackson Hole Croakies (this was the 80s). My buddy noticed and told me this story about how he had been out there a year or two earlier on a massive snow day and had a wipeout. He looked everywhere, but couldn’t find one of his skis.

He finally gave up and asked someone from the mountain what he should do. They told him to give them his address, tell them what type of ski it was, and when the snow melted in the spring, if they found it, they’ll send it. Sure enough, come June, the ski arrived. The guy sitting in the chair whipped his head around and said the name of the exact ski that was missing and the run that it was lost on. He said he found that ski! Our minds were officially blown. We still see each other from time to time, 30 years later, and have to remind each other that it actually happened.

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#38 A Huge Pool Of Coincidence

While in Florida for work, I was browsing Facebook by the pool and saw an old friend from college had tagged herself as also in Florida. She posted a picture of her by the hotel pool. Upon looking closer, I realized that it was the same pool that I was at. I looked up and across the pool and there she was. So I walked over, and after talking further we realized that our rooms were next to each other. This hotel had over 1200 guest rooms.

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#39 So Maybe There's A Text-Scheduling Gene?

At least once a week my dad and I text each other at the exact same time. And I'm talking like, down to the millisecond. It's insane. It could be at any point in the day or in the week and it still surprises me every time. I know it’s not super strange, but I thought it was a strong coincidence. I mean, what are the chances that not only we text each other at the same time, but we do it every single week?

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#40 That Year I Learned My Microbiology Teacher Had Two Identities

In 9th grade, I found out that my microbiology teacher's mom and my grandma's long lost birth sister were both in the same local hospital when a lockdown happened. What a specific coincidence, right? It gets weirder. As it turns out, they're the same person! My grandma's long lost birth sister is my microbiology teacher's mom! My microbiology teacher ended up being my mom's first cousin.

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#41 Hopefully It Was The Bluebird Of Happiness

I was about three or four years old at the time. My grandfather took me out for a walk one day and suddenly, I had this very intense feeling of synchronicity. Without thinking, I raised my palm in front of me and in that instant bird droppings landed right on it. It's like I knew that was going to happen at the exact time that it did. I'm still not sure why I needed to put my hand out to catch that, though.

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#42 So Which One Of Us Was Paying It Forward?

One summer, when it was blazing hot outside, I was leaving Home Depot and there was a guy panhandling at the exit. I gave him an ice-cold water out of my lunch cooler and went on to my job. When I got there, the homeowner  said to me, "It sure is hot today, would you like a water?" He brought me out the exact same kind of bottled water I just gave away.

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#43 If You Weren't Both Bilingual, This Moment Would Be Lost

When I was about 12 years old, my family and I flew to Hokkaido, Japan to go snowboarding. We were having breakfast at the motel we stayed in and a man couldn't help but notice that we were speaking both English and Japanese (I grew up bilingual) and he came to say hello. He also understood a little bit of English and we had a short conversation. Fast forward to the next year in a small island called Saipan (Guam's sister island, and we used to live there).

My classmates and I went to the local donut shop to get some donuts, and what do you know? The same man we met in a small motel in Hokkaido a year before was sitting in the corner drinking coffee and eating donuts as well. Our eyes met and the look on both of our faces was priceless. We talked a bit and mentioned how small the world is and all. He was a very nice man but I haven't seen him since.

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#44 When Having A Persistent Kid Is A Good Thing

So my family has a cabin. When I was about 11, my dad and I went fishing at a pond that's a short drive away from there. When we'd finished for the day, my dad wanted to go back the more direct way, which is about a five-minute drive. I wanted to go on the backroads, which are more scenic but take about 15 minutes. I was so annoying about it that my dad agreed to go the backroads instead.

So we drove along and came out onto the road that led to our cabin. As we crested a hill, we saw a crowd gathered around a tractor-trailer that had careened off the highway and jumped the barrier onto the access road. A crowd of people from our campground were around it. It was just in front of the entrance to the campground, on the section of road that we would have had to travel on to get back the direct way. My dad asked some of the crowd what had happened, and they said that about ten minutes ago it jumped the barrier and crashed, rolling over. Ten minutes ago would have been roughly the time that my dad and I would've passed through there.

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#45 The Accidental (Or Really Ordinary) Copycat

The person who sits next to me at work copies everything I do, except she has no way of knowing. And it happens every single day. I wear a blue sweater, she wears a blue sweater. I bring leftover spaghetti, she brings leftover spaghetti. It's the weirdest thing, and while I know it's definitely unintentional, I can't help but think that she's spying on me somehow, copying my every move before I get in to work.

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#46 Dreaming Reality

For over a decade, I very rarely remembered any of my dreams. One night, I had a very vivid dream that I was busted by the cops and sentenced to prison. The dream itself was agonizingly paced as if in real-time. Days turned to weeks, to months. The pain of losing everything and everyone in my life had sent me into catatonic despair when all of a sudden, I awoke. I instinctually checked my phone only to find a ton of missed texts, emails, and phone calls from a friend who was arrested that night while I slept and had been trying to get me to bail him out.

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#47 Childhood Congruence

I was best friends with this girl in preschool. After that, we didn't go to the same schools so we lost touch. Flash forward to my junior year in high school and I meet this girl. I was walking her home one day and we passed that preschool. We both realized we went there and figured out that we were the friends back then. We've now been together for 15 years and will finally be getting married in October for our 16th anniversary.

Image result for couple datingNeedpix

#48  Birthdays And Flights

I have two. So first off, I met my oldest friend when we were 14. We discovered we were born three hours apart. I demanded to see ID because I thought someone was playing a joke on me. Seriously, I made my friend show his ID to prove it. Took us three years to figure that out. Secondly, I ran into my cousin in California at an airport. Neither of us was flying home. We hadn't even spoken in weeks. But we had layovers at the same time at terminals that were right next to one another in a different state. It was so freaking weird. We took a picture to prove it happened.

Image result for person in airportPixabay

#49 The Butterfly Effect

I got a new computer and was scrolling through pictures on the old one with my little brother. I had a picture of two butterflies (one blue, and one yellow) on a large purple flower. I loved this picture and always thought about how lucky I was to have captured it. The colors were so vivid and I was grateful the butterflies let me get three shots in before they flew away.

My brother was in awe of it and I said, "Wow you really like this one?" He pulled out his phone and said, "No, I took this photo." Sure enough, he had been to the same park the summer after I took my picture. His photo had the same species of plant and butterflies, in the same park, and around the same area and time of day. What are the chances? This was years ago. I'll have to see if he still has his and I'll try posting them later.

Image result for two butterfliesPxfuel

#50 The Water Cycle

One summer when it was blazing hot, I was leaving Home Depot and there was a guy panhandling at the exit. I gave him ice-cold water out of my lunch cooler and went on to my job. When I got there the homeowner was like, it sure is hot today, would you like a water? He brought me out the exact same kind of bottled water I just gave away. Stupid but with all the brands of bottled water there is, it just was like dang, the universe just gave me my water right back.

bottle bottled water drink drinking man person thirsty water wrist watchPxhere

#51 Unexpected Reunion

I'm from Canada. When I was 20, I went to Australia to travel for six months. While I was there, I ran into a couple of guys I had gone to college with. They were staying at the same hostel I was staying at. They didn't come with me when I went to the bar that night, but I ended up walking back with three other Canadians. While chatting to them, I mentioned the other two guys I knew in the hostel, by name. Let's call one Cyrus. One guy stopped dead in his tracks and repeated, Cyrus?! Turns out, my friend was his childhood best friend he hadn't seen in 12 years. We went and woke him up at 3 a.m. for a very cool reunion.

Image result for guy friendsFlickr

#52 Karma Comes Back Around

When I was a kid, someone in my family broke a glass vase on the wood floor. My mom cleaned it up as best she could but wanted us to wear shoes in the kitchen for a few days just in case she’d missed some, and she continued sweeping to try and get the last little bits. I was loudly complaining about the injustice of having to wear shoes in my own house when I stepped on that final piece of glass.

Image result for broken glassPxfuel

#53 A Close Match

A few years back while I was working in a little pub, a couple of two-seater tables next to one another were finishing up at the same time. I got them both their checks, and both parties decided to split their bill. Upon trying to close them out, I realized that not only were the amounts split identically down to the cent, but each table had matching sets of cards, at least by the final 4 digits. (I.e. Table 1 had a charge of 28.79 on a card ending 1000 and another for 28.78 on a card ending 5008. Table 2's charges were identical, down to the cent and last 4 digits on both cards) I've never gotten over how unrealistically improbable it all was.

waitress the waiter restaurant free photoNeedpix

#54 NYC Adventure

My mom and I went to NYC for a week one summer when I was in high school (we lived in CA). Her youngest cousin (also from CA) was a Ph.D. student at NYU at the time, but we didn’t tell him we were in town because she had work. On our way somewhere, we took the 6 train the wrong direction and realized after two stops. We got off somewhere in midtown to switch sides. Lo and behold, there was her cousin standing on the platform looking at us in disbelief. He was going somewhere out of his ordinary routine and we should never have been at that stop. It was awesome and we all saw Avenue Q the next night together.

Image result for new york trainFlickr

#55 Double Coincidence

I have two.

The first was in Mexico when I was 16. At the resort, there is a spot to paint pottery and I was there is my dad who was sitting across from me. Next to us was another father and his daughter, they were both from our hometown! I asked the daughter what high school she went to and it turned out to be the high school my recent ex went to. It turns out she did, she is his girlfriend! It was crazy and we both thought it was so cool. Meanwhile, our dads are finding it so strange and we’re confused why an ex and a current girlfriend were excited to meet each other.

The second coincidence was at my work. One of my coworkers was the same age and it turns out his birthday was two days before mine. I asked him where he was born. He was born at a military hospital in Oklahoma. The hospital I was born at. We were both in the same hospital, the same nursery, just feet away from each other! It was one of the coolest moments of my life.

Image result for babies hospitalPikrepo


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