Greyowlphotoart
350 posts
Jan 12, 2011
10:55 AM
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Something came up in another thread that made me think about coincidences.
Many years ago, my wife and I and two kids plus tent set off down to the West Country in the UK. We were heading for the Lyme Regis area but hadn't booked a camping site. We were just approaching the area when we were right behind another car that looked a lot like my mates. Long story short, it was him and his wife and two kids (had no idea they were taking a holiday). After honking on the horn they pulled over and totally surprised by us being there said they had booked a site in nearby Charmouth and why don't we join them. Had a brilliant holiday. The following year we planned the same trip together and it rained all week!!!
The best one I heard was this true story:-
I recall my Brother-in-law telling me of the time years ago when he went on a backpacking trip with his girlfriend to South America.
One day they bumped into to some good friends high up in the Andes in a sleepy little village in Peru, neither couple knowing the others were on holiday, let alone on another continent......!!!
Have you had any coincidences in life which left you thinking' 'what are the chances?'
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MrVerylongusername
1481 posts
Jan 12, 2011
11:15 AM
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I once went on a camping trip to a remote campsite on the West Coast of Scotland where I bumped into my mum and dad! I didn't even know they were going on holiday!
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mercedesrules
85 posts
Jan 12, 2011
11:27 AM
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.....One Christmas time we were eating in the dining room of a hotel in Honolulu and heard the people at the very next table discussing the Telluride (Colorado) Film Festival. When we looked over we saw that they were people we had stood next to in line to see a movie at the 4-day festival. The festival is not the Superbowl; there are only a few hundred attendees at the level we were. The festival is in Sept. One had to make reservations to eat in the dining room. Neither group lives in Telluride or Hawaii.
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ncpacemaker
116 posts
Jan 12, 2011
11:57 AM
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My Aunt went on a trip to Russia where she met a lady with the same name as hers and the lady has a brother with the same name as my Aunt's brother(my uncle) They live not to far from each other but never met until they were both on a trip to Russia at the same time. (cue Twilight Zone Music)
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My YouTube Channel
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eharp
1086 posts
Jan 12, 2011
12:16 PM
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my wife and i share the same birthday.
every year we find a restaurant that gives free dinner on your birthday and we stick it to them.
one year we hit denny's 4 times. 3 different denny's actually.
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Buzadero
699 posts
Jan 12, 2011
12:16 PM
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I was on a workboat, anchored over a submarine tracking array that we were doing some work on out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, not far from Kwajalein. This is a boat about 250 ft long, with a crew of about ten and a diving crew of about 20.
It's late at night, and I'm up on the bridge trying to check weather status on a typhoon track off to the east. The Mate is up there, sitting for his 'anchor watch' and listening to some music. I'm awaiting a radio-fax and we start chatting about music. Pretty soon, the talk turns to the usual, where are you from. I tell him I live out in a remote valley of NE California that has a population of less than a hundred people, that no one has ever heard of and is nowhere where somebody can drop in and claim they "were in the neighborhood".
He asks for a bit more detail, and I give a little more. After a few minutes, we narrow it down that he is the brother of the guy that sold me my ranch some ten years earlier.
We get a big chuckle out of this, and within a week I was flying back to the US and the job was over.
Flash forward another couple of years. My wife and I are in New York City, having dinner with some friends on a vacation that centered around our attending a wedding out on Long Island. I'm sitting there when this same dude walks up and asks if I'm the same guy who bought his brother's ranch. Up until this point, I had forgotten all about the original encounter on the boat a decade earlier, and had never remembered to mention it to my wife.
Imagine her and our friend's amazement when in the middle of New York a guy walks up and asks if I'm the guy that bought his brother's ranch, some 3,000 miles away.
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~Buzadero
Underwater Janitor, Patriot
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nacoran
3643 posts
Jan 12, 2011
12:56 PM
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I live a life free of coincidence, except every morning when I go into the bathroom there is someone standing there staring back at me who looks just like me. He even mocks me. I move my right hand, he moves his left. I had the last laugh though, because I looked over once while he was peeing and, well, now I just feel sorry for him.
If I think of a better one I'll stop back.
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Nate
Facebook
Thread Organizer (A list of all sorts of useful threads)
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Greyowlphotoart
351 posts
Jan 12, 2011
1:29 PM
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:) You are one funny guy, Nate!
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LittleBubba
13 posts
Jan 12, 2011
1:44 PM
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@Verylongusername,etc., I too was on a camping trip about 1200 miles from home and when we shot down into Denver and stopped for breakfast, one of my buddies said, "Hey Jeff, isn't that your parents over there in the corner?" Same deal.
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BronzeWailer
63 posts
Jan 12, 2011
1:50 PM
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Lived in a guest house in Japan 25 years ago. A Dutch guy who spent a couple of weeks there was named 'Haiko'. I remembered because it sounded like a Japanese girl's name.
Two years ago my mom came to stay at a backpacker's in Sydney (in my defence, I have a quite small house); the manager's name was Haiko. Same guy. He remembered I was going out with an Aussie girl (now my wife)...
I found a photo of us together the ohter day and am going to give him a copy.
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Greystonesman
17 posts
Jan 12, 2011
2:09 PM
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@Greyowl, my wife and I were in Lime Regis only a few weeks back. We spent quite a lot of time in a great little pub in the High Street, called The Volunteer, I think. Superb beers, and Rattler scrumpy cider. We visited a local cider farm too, and took a couple of gallon of Jack Ratt Scrumpy cider home with us.
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MrVerylongusername
1482 posts
Jan 12, 2011
2:28 PM
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@LittleBubba
Hey another Coincidence! LOL!
@thread
There were some very odd coincidences around my wife and I meeting.
We met in a nightclub, she was a student I was a few years into my first job. We had a great evening together, but at the end, Cinderella style, she had to rush off. She was travelling back to her parents for Christmas and I wouldn't get to see her for a couple of months. All I knew by the end of the evening in the club was her first name (Karen) and the course she was doing (Russian).
My best friend's sister was a course administrator for the university she was at. Because the course she'd mentioned was quite small, she was able to work out who she was easily. I managed to get a Valentines card delivered to her - completely out of the blue, via her course tutor. I made the card myself with enough clues so she'd know exactly who it was from and a telephone number. She rang me, we reconnected, 3 years later we married. Cute story eh? but you're asking where's the coincidence? well...
My best friend soon started dating some guy she'd met in the same nightclub (I guess people had presumed she and me were an item until I started showing up with my girlfriend). We saw less of each other for a while whilst we spent times with our new partners. I didn't get to know her new boyfriend too well for a while, but I did meet him at his student digs one time (she ended up marrying him and now we're good mates). My wife never met him at all. After the summer holidays I came to see her in her new flat. deja Vu. Yup. It was my mate's boyfriend's old flat.
It doesn't stop there. Remember my mate's sister who was instrumental in getting us together? Well once my missus graduated, she applied for an administrators job at the same Uni. Without my wife knowing it, guess who had just left the job she got?
weird huh.
There are lots of weird synchronicitous things like that in our lives together
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LittleBubba
16 posts
Jan 12, 2011
2:44 PM
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Those constitute a pretty weird set of coincidences, no doubt. I was thinkin' the other day how connected all of us harp players are, and how many of us have been influenced, and even mentored and taught by some of the same harpers around the country. There's lines runnin' all over the place.
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harmonicanick
1052 posts
Jan 12, 2011
3:08 PM
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nice OT thread Greyowl!
Last Edited by on Jan 13, 2011 1:04 AM
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MrVerylongusername
1483 posts
Jan 12, 2011
3:17 PM
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Good article - good old science sets it straight!
That thing about people being connected by just two mutual acquaintances - it's true!
At our wedding my wife's cousin realised that my Uncle was the surgeon who had operated on their child a few years earlier.
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eharp
1089 posts
Jan 12, 2011
3:26 PM
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was it kevin bacon?
i dont want to show the article to my wife because she thinks the odds are fairly close to "lottery" proportion.
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MrVerylongusername
1485 posts
Jan 12, 2011
3:48 PM
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At university I lived in the flat below Susannah Reid who went on to become a BBC newsreader who worked with BBC political reporter Andrew Marr, who had a cameo in Dr Who with David Tennant, who was in a Harry Potter movie with Miranda Richardson, who was in a film "Falling Angels" with Kristin Adams who was in "Where Truth lies" with Kevin Bacon!
Phew. Who else wants a go!
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garry
19 posts
Jan 12, 2011
6:50 PM
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so i'm on the long drive home from returning my daughter to DC (from NJ), and i'm kinda bumming because i miss her already. the radio is playing CSN's "Carry On":
Where are you going now my love?
Where will you be tomorrow?
Will you bring me happiness?
Will you bring me sorrow?
a car passes in the left lane. its license plate reads:
NOSORRW
ok, got it. message received.
Last Edited by on Jan 12, 2011 6:51 PM
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Aussiesucker
717 posts
Jan 12, 2011
7:38 PM
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Have had a couple of what I feel are unusual incidents.
We were in a region of Tasmania on the Freycenet Peninsula & we love bush walking so set off at 6am for a walk across to Wineglass Bay. Before leaving on such hikes it is necessary to put details in a register to which we log off after return. My wifes name is Davina and I am David with a surname Thomas from Brisbane . We then took off on a 4 hour or so trip and saw no one, nothing except kangaroos & birds, until we were halfway back to the start when a fellow coming the other way shouted D.Thomas from Brisbane & we both responded yes when he told us his name was also D (Doug) Thomas from Brisbane. The only 3 entries in the book on our return.
Some years ago we were in Washington DC & did a tour of the White House etc. We also went into the main building where the US Senate was in sessions. I clearly remember seeing Ted Kenneddy in 'full flight'. It was over 20 years ago and security was not anywhere as tight as it is today. Only on leaving we had to sign out in a visitors book and I noticed about 6 entries above mine was another David Thomas from Brisbane Australia but what was freakish was his handwriting could easily have been mine. If it were a common name like Smith or Brown I guess it happens all the time.
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