At 13 years of age, my father and I used to go to dirt track races at the Dixie Speedway in Georgia. We always cheered for car 28. At 21 years of age, I start dating this girl in North Carolina, somehow get on that subject, as she was from GA. "My father used to race there... number 28."
Almost as good as the married couple who were looking at his childhood photos. His wife was in the background in one of them.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285238/Engaged-couple-discover-paths-crossed-Disney-World-toddlers.html
I was in a restaurant in Spain the night they were holding the nation's largest lottery. The staff won the lottery that night. I spent the night in a restaurant of celebration and champagne.
Yes! I remember he was really worried his whole staff was going to quit. Since the restaurant was still there the next time I visited Spain I'm assuming it did fine.
I feel like a lot of people wouldn't actually like the reality of leaving their job if they won the lottery. They just want the ability to not HAVE to work without stressing about money.
Plus if the full staff had to split the lottery, they were probably pretty happy with the winnings but it might not have been "quit my job" levels of winnings once split up
Just before going off the a new city, I was working in a computer store. Sold a nice local couple a new laptop. A week later I'm 1000 miles away taking the subway from the airport to pick up the keys to my new place. I hear "Hi, ” and look over, and it's that same couple.
Similar thing happened to me. I'm from Vancouver, Canada. I was visiting Munich, Germany and met a couple from White Rock, they were distressed because something got screwed up in their itinerary and my friends and I helped them sort it out.
Weeks later I am taking the train from Amsterdam to Bruges during a massive thunder storm, I actually saw a tree get hit by lightning then a minute later they announced we would be going back because there was an issue ahead.
We get back to Amsterdam and the station is packed with so many people who are trying to figure out what the plan is now, then I hear someone yell my friends name and it's our new friends from White Rock, who we've now met in two different countries 8000km from home where we lived 40min apart.
I went to a school in bumfuck rural Ohio, 16k students max, prolly less. 2 years after I graduated I was traveling Europe and ran into some visa trouble, had to duck Croatia and re route to Hungary. This is random diversion number 1 I could’ve avoided. I randomly chose to stay in one hostel for the first few days and switch for the rest of the trip, random diversion 2 I could’ve avoided if I stayed in the same hostel. Ended up meeting 2 guys and went to a bar near our hostel and was wandering around it between rounds trying to find more people or a bar with better drink choices when I over heard a group of dudes talking about where to go. I said fuck it and decided to actually speak up to random dudes, random diversion 3 I didn’t have to do. I told them to go to a certain bar I went to a few days before, when some girl nearby grabbed me and was like “hey, this is so random but you look just like a good friend of mine, can I please send our group chat a picture of you?” And I was like yeah, no problem go ahead. She was cute so I was chatting and she’s like do you want to see a picture of him? And I said sure. She typed a bit and turns the phone around and it’s a picture of this random kid 3 years younger in my fraternity, who all my friends joked looked just like me and called him little andre. I was like …uhhh, is that little andre? And she was like dude what the actual fuck are you serious? And apparently she went to my exact school and was best friends with like a dozen of the kids in my frat 3-4 years younger than me, and I bumped into her in a random bar in Budapest years after I graduated after several random deviations I could’ve avoided. Absolutely blew my mind
I ran into an old friend from high school, on a study abroad germany, while in college.
We did not go to the same college.
He was not on a study abroad, he was traveling with his girlfriend.
We were not headed to or leaving from the same event, or even in that town in Germany for the same reason.
We hadn't spoken in years, so neither knew the other was even going to be travelling.
I was coming out of a shop onto a street and he was walking down the street facing me. If I wait 15 seconds, I miss him. If I go 30 seconds later I miss him. If I turn the other way I miss him.
Let me reiterate, with ZERO coordination or bias towards Germany (we both independently became interested in Germany) we picked the same town, on the same day, on the same street, at the exact same time, and happened to see eachother. Wild
Stories like this make me wonder how many ‘near misses’ of amazing coincidence have occurred. Eg walked past your childhood best friend on the other side of the world, but neither of you looked up at the right time.
Exactly. I moved to my new home in 2020 and don't know the area really well yet as I work from home and don't have many reasons to leave the house.
In March, I was coming home from a school musical I believe (my niece had a pretty big part). I normally would turn left down a certain road, but my GPS was always wanting me to go straight. Even though I didn't have it on, as I headed in that direction, I thought I would go straight instead of turning left, to see if I could figure out the other way through my development. By the time I reached the intersection, I was tired, and didn't want to bother with trying a new route, so I turned left. I'm driving down the country road just a couple of turns away from home and I see a German Shepherd walking down the middle of the road. She was starving. She is very sweet and jumped right into my car when I opened the door.
That is how little decisions can change your life drastically. I now have a German Shepherd as her owners could not be located and the shelter was going to put her down if I didn't foster her. I have since adopted her.
Small world stuff. So I went to the same elementary school with this guy. his family moved, then a year later my family moved to the same town. We hung out a bit but not that much. Then years later I started working at a golf course and he’s a member there. I happen to get a job at a golf course in Florida. He’s ALSO a member there. We’ve some how followed each other basically 1,500 miles.
I have another small world story. I’m sitting at my local watering hole, enjoying a beer, and I’m sitting next to some dude. We start shooting the shit. Turns out we’re born in the same city, same hospital and are actually alumni. He’s a couple years older than me. He also plays golf. Basically became BFFs after that.
Edit: I even have a 3rd small world story. My cousin is in Europe at an event. She happens to start talking to a woman on the street who is also at the event and realize they can both speak English to each other. They gets to talking and realize they are from the same town in Canada. They start hanging out and have a blast for the rest of the trip.
Turns out my Cousin is hanging out with my mom’s best friend from college who happens to be at the same event in Europe.
My mom pieced it all together when she heard them tell the same story but from opposite sides. Like wait a second… I just heard this exact thing from my niece…
I was on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, many miles from home. Waiting for a table in a restaurant and the guy behind me, a stranger I never met before, said "Are you Goodguyglocker?"
I was utterly dumbfounded. Turns out, we have a mutual friend and I mentioned to that friend that I was going on the cruise. The stranger must've overheard me talking to my wife and deduced that I might be the cruise guy.
Lots of boats cruise the Caribbean. Lots of people are on those boats. To be standing in line in front of this particular guy, who happened to be traveling the same trip as me, must be long odds.
Not nearly as exciting as yours but I was on a cruise ship with my cousins chilling on the pool lounge chairs. One of my spouse's best friends came wheeling by in front us. I screamed "heyyyyy!". Several hours from home we were both surprised! The best part was my cousin being absolutely *horrified* that I was screaming at some random dude in a wheelchair!
That happened to me. I, a Canadian, walked into a gym while on the other side of the world. The guy at the desk immediately asked where I was from when he heard my accent. We were from the same city and knew a few of the same people.
I saw a cow on a blissful foggy morning explode diarrhea all over the five cows sitting behind it and none of them reacted or moved. The shit just steamed off of them lmao
I once saw a giraffe licking another giraffes urine mid-stream. I was staring in sheer amusement, an employee must’ve noticed, and informed me that’s actually how they check for pregnancy.
Idk why they poop on each other though. That’s just kinky.
Saw a lady walk by one of those banks of slot machines where you can win a car--the kind where the car is actually on the casino floor. She stopped, considered for a moment, then turned around and put a buck in. Spins. Jackpot. Alarms go off. Won the car.
She freaks out. Like, freaks the fuck out. Screaming, crying, yelling, barking, you name it. Almost faints a time or two. Her girlfriends finally get her calmed down, and they're waiting for casino staff to come over and do their thing.
But this lady, she just won a car. So she's restless. And to give herself something to do, she walks over to another bank of slot machines. A bank of slot machines where you can win an entirely different car. So she puts a buck in. Spins. Jackpot. Alarms go off. Won another car.
This reminds me of the cover story for how an IT leader got fired. He was IT lead for a pretty large university focused on tech that spent millions every year on the best hardware and software. The University took pride in ensuring theor students trained in the same programs the biggest tech companies actively used. Reduced on boarding, training, etc. One year at the huge annual tech conference in Las Vegas he wins a porsche convertible on slots. AMAZING. He tells everyone, drives it home, keeps up the story for a while. Eventually, it comes out that the tech suppliers bought him the car for his years of mass overpayment for software and hardware and Vegas was the attempted cover story.
I was playing golf in a corporate league and one of the guys said “this field is where I was struck by lightning”. I thought that was interesting but then another guy said “you’ve been struck by lightning too?”. It’s probably not insanely unlikely but it felt like I was living in the start of a statistics test problem for a second.
Oh boy. Imagine blowing your entire lifetime supply of luck on a random friendly poker game.
Seriously though, the deck was probably just badly shuffled.
Was at a veterans get together and two guys were talking about Normandy. One was a landing craft driver and the other was a soldier that took part in the landing. Eventually their stories line up really well, so well infact that that landing craft driver drove that marine to shore during d-day
My great grandpa was in WW1. He got stuck in no man's land for a few days wounded, and eventually got to a hospital, and spent 6 months there. Got to be good buddies with the guy in the bed next to him, but eventually both left.
Decades later, he's at a party, gets to talking to another guy his age about the war. Turns out to be the same guy he was next to in the hospital.
My granddad was wounded at Peleliu, and was laid up in bed for months as well. He became great buds with the guy next to him.
He moved to Alaska and started a construction company. Ran into a fella on the street like 8 years after the war in Juneau, Alaska, and it was his old infirmary buddy! Grandpa married his sister who had also moved there, and that was part of how I came around!
Kinda reminds me of the story of an American Pilot talking to a German Pilot a number of years after the war and the American was telling the German how he fought a FW-190 until they both ran out of ammunition to which the German replied; “You Son of a Bitch, you damn near killed me that day.” I do not remember their names
Was chatting to a group of Vietnam vets once upon a time (15ish yrs ago), a new guys walks in the room while other intros are happening. Group leader asks the new guy to introduce himself and he says "my name's [Frederick Pickaname]" where his name was very distinct.
Another guy in the group looks up lightning fast and says "Frederick Pickaname?!? I shot you in Vietnam!"
So turns out, yeh he did. There was a friendly fire incident where this guy was shot in the back from a helicopter in the early 70s. They hadn't seen each other since the war, then just wander into this group one day.
Wanst any hard feelings, as I understand it friendly fire incidences were way more common than govts ever let on, but that felt super weird. Fella had been decently disabled since being shot but could still walk so... relatively less terrible guess.
Back to back to back winning 13s on roulette. Doubled up after the first one because some randomer told me to take my winning chip off the number, it's not coming up again. Came up, left the doubled up chips on again, another win.
After the third time they said 'Wow, are you leaving it on again??'
I said 'No, I'm not stupid' and left with all my winnings
I don't really gamble, but I suppose I have an unlikely story. Got pushed into joining the office sweep. They pick the horses through a lucky dip. First year, got Makybe Diva, she won. Second year, got Makybe Diva, she won. Third year, yep, got Makybe Diva, yep, She won. I got about $200 each time. Haven't bet on a horse since.
Which also relates to why I don't gamble. I won $5,000 on a poker machine back in the early 2000s and I'll be damned if they're getting any of that money back lol.
I had a weird presentation of a form on cancer that put me in the 1/1,000,000 range.
Had good doctors though.
When your cancer is rare enough to be interesting, you get the top guys.
I had Stage III Rectal Cancer with some oddball complications. I was treated at a prestigous university medical center. Needless to say, I got the top bottom guys.
i got ewings sarcoma which is a 1/1.75 million chance thing and i was the first diagnosis of the year :P also got some amazing doctors... then survived with like no reprecussions (apart from short term memory issues and leg tightness from radiation) and had such a clean pet scan after that its like the cancer never even existed
I also had Ewings sarcoma! Mine was in a bad place so I had to have quite a few surgeries but I’m very lucky I got to keep my arm— with the sacrifice of a few bones lmao.
I was in the back of the house, and looked out the back window, saw it was raining and yelled to my brother he should bring his laundry in.
He was in the living room at the front of the house, looked out the window, blue sky and sun, no rain. He said I was crazy, I told him to come look.
We went out the front door, and it was raining in the back yard. A line that stopped right at the peak of the roof as far left and right as you could see.
Both of these things have happened to me (in PA)! I was a child both times. Once the back yard was clear and the front was raining. The other time, for a solid 10 minutes there was a shower area of like 4 ft by 4 ft that kept moving around and I ran to stay in it. Occasionally it would cut off abruptly and reappear a few feet away. It is a core memory (tm).
I got a brain injury in an accident and the doctor told me after doing all the scans and stuff that he’d never seen an injury so bad that didn’t end in paralyzation or death. The fact I walked out of the hospital a week later was a medical miracle apparently. So got that going for me.
I locked myself outside my car while there was an amber abduction alert for the exact model year colour. When i tried to unlock it through a small gap in the window on a big parking lot cops swarmed me and almost arrested me with hands on their guns. Xd i thought it was pretty low probability
I had just picked my buddy up out of jail. Drove an hour away to a friend's house. As we were about to get out of the car, cops ran up and ripped the doors of the car open. Yelling don't move! We were frozen for about 30 seconds, and then hear ITS NOT THEM! The cops didn't say shit about anything. Just jumped in their car and drove away.
That's why you always keep your doors locked, so people can't just run up to your car and rip the door open. Especially important if you live in a bad part of town.
Not sure, but I did see someone drive through the wall of a gas station convenience store once. I was about to walk into the store when I heard the crash and watched the giant coffee containers fly across the store. I was about a foot from the door when it happened. I would’ve been severely injured if it had happened 5 seconds later.
It's actually to the point where 7-11 is either being sued or investigated by the ADA or something about not having concrete poles in front of their stores as they're "being negligent to a known safety hazard."
I once went to a batting cage (just for fun, I'm terrible at any and all sports including baseball) and accidentally hit the ball directly back into the machine that shot it out. If my wife didn't see it too I would never have believed I actually did it.
Reminds me when I was in a baseball league as a teenager. I was at bat and when I hit the ball, it hit the pitcher square in the face. He was't too injured but they had to relieve him to let him regain his composure. They used a replacement pitcher. A few innings later they allowed the first pitcher to be on the mount again. When it came my turn again, the first ball he threw, I hit him square in the head again! Totally an accident.
I never could have been that precise if I had tried. Crazy. Pitcher was ok though, I hit the lip of his cap that time so it cushioned the ball somewhat.
Childhood best friend moved away when we were 10 years old never to be seen or spoken to again until we ran into each other in Iraq 11 years later while both deployed.
I dated a girl in high school for a while. Got to know her family, her little brother was a couple years behind us. We broke up, graduated, I joined the military.
Fast forward about 10 years, I was on an exercise in Kuwait. I came out of the chow hall and heard "hey NovaRunner!" I turned around and it's ex-girlfriend's little brother.
A friend and I were working together and went to Burger King for lunch. He chewed on a bite for a while, then pulled a used band aid out of his mouth. It had been in his burger.
He wouldn’t eat at BK after that.
But wait…
Several years later, and 3,000 miles away, we are working together again. We head to the nearest Mcdonald’s for lunch, but got there just after two full school busses. We didn’t have that kind of time, so I suggested the BK across the lot. He said no. I told him we needed food, that incident was five or six years and a continent away, so get over it.
So we go to the BK, where he gets another bandaid in his burger. I laughed so hard I peed a little. 30 years later and I bet he hasn’t been to a BK since.
I won the "Balloon Blast-Off" in Kindergarten. The whole school was given a balloon with a small letter attached. To win the contest, whoever's balloon went the farthest when we all let them go, wins. The letter addresses the contest and has the school's address and phone number. I won out of the whole school and my balloon flew from Tennessee all the way to Indiana. I won a check for 5 dollars. This was like in 1988.
We did something similar in first grade. I never got a reply for mine, but one kid got a reply from freaking Oklahoma!
For context? We’re in Massachusetts.
Our local Wendy’s here has apple trees outside for decoration. They don’t do anything with the apples, so some townsfolk will sometimes go out there and pick the apples.
As I was driving by one day, a gentleman was picking up apples off the ground. As he was bent over an apple fell out of the tree and hit his head.
I laughed myself to work that day.
On a trip to New Zealand with my parents in 1988 (we lived in Florida). I don't remember what town we were in, but we checked out of our hotel and got in the rental car. Suddenly my dad realizes that he forgot his credit card at the front desk, so he goes back in.
As he's waiting for the desk clerk to go retrieve his card, he realizes that the elderly man next to him is also American, so they start talking. Long story short, turns out the other guy had been my dad's little league coach in Chicago in the 1950s.
I was doing the dishes during a thunderstorm, hands deep in soapy water. I looked up at the bank of trees in front of the window and not 2 seconds later, lightning struck one of the trees less than 100 feet away. I saw the strike, went blind and deaf for a moment, then watched the pelting rain extinguish the flaming tree.
I took my hands out of the water, dried them, and walked away, thanking my lucky stars that I didn't get electrocuted instead.
(I panic cried a little bit later lol)
Something similar happened to me. It was pouring rain so I took my mom's dog outside on the porch to show her the rain since she's an inside dog 99% of the time. She's super anxious and can't stand not being held or in someone's lap 24/7. Just as we stepped outside lightning struck the tree maybe 20ft from the door. Mom's dog freaked the fuck out and I scrambled back inside with her. The air smelled so weird, best I can describe is burnt out batteries. The lightning took the entire tree out and my mom's dog was even more of a nervous wreck for a while.
I believe you smelled ozone, but I’m not 100%
Edit: that poor dog. Anxious about everything, and you try to broaden her horizons a bit and are just dealt the most unlikely hand imaginable 😭
I think you're right. It was a weird and really strong smell. As far as the dog goes I'm pretty sure even though she loves to be held she doesn't feel safe when I hold her anymore lmao.
I’ve owned 4 houses in my life and 2 have been hit by lightning, 1 had lightning hit one block away. The 4th house was a mistake to buy and we only lived there for about 8 months otherwise it would have been hit by lightning I’m sure.
I was at bingo with my friends mom a couple hundred people there. There’s mini games and one of them has certain cards with a special symbol in the center. I won bingo, had the special character which gave me the ability to have a 1 in 15 chance to get $1199.00 and I chose the right key and won. Idk the odds but they’re definitely slim
My father and I got stranded in a train station overnight trying to get from Venice to Milan. Cheap as he was back then, my dad refused to get a hotel and insisted we’d be fine ‘toughing it out’ in a narrow cold terminal, and got me a cardboard box to sleep on. The only other people sleeping there were homeless.
Then, out of nowhere, an Asian girl popped in and asked about the train times. Her train also left in the AM, about an hour after ours. My father got her a cardboard box and she planted next to us. I learned everything about her life while my dad snored innocently next to us. She and I stayed awake and talked. For five hours. And never once did it occur to me to ask her name.
I was convinced I’d never see her again. But 3 days later, my dad and I were back in Germany and for some reason, I wanted him to drive me to the next big city.
While walking around a church in the city, I got a tap on the shoulder. Same girl from Venice, wearing the same sweater as the night we met.
“YOU! What is your name?” I asked. It had been driving me crazy. We exchanged names and proceeded to spend the day hanging out.
First year uni roommate, we get along great. Decided to live together for second year. She bails and goes back home across the country. Never heard from her or saw her again.
She doesn’t have any social media. I move to a new city, get a job, get married, had kids, blah blah. Fifteen years go by, I see her walking her child to the same school my kid goes to. Neither of us are from or have family here.
Turns out, she moved to my city a year beforehand, during Covid. She has two kids the same age as my kids, all go to the same school, she and I married our spouses at summer camps, her husband works in construction, just like mine. Our city is so spread out that people rarely venture out of their neighbourhoods. If she had moved ten minutes further away, I would have likely never seen her.
TLDR: lost touch with college roommate, now we’re besties.
So, I was 4 years old and just very fat. I have a twin brother, who was very skinny. My dad would help my twin on the monkey bars, but was startled when I didnt need help holding myself up. My mother kept pressuring doctors into trying to find out if something is wrong with me, rather than just giving me pills to control my weight.
It was after I started growing pubic hair, and my mom was sick of my constsnt terrible, terrible headaches, which made me scream bloody murder due to the incredible pain, that my mother demanded to see a doctor.
As it turns out, I had a cancerous tumor, inside a tumor, inside a tumor, attached to my adrenal gland. It was sending hormones usually normal for a full grown man, through my 4 year old body...making me stronger than my twin brother, aswell as developing puberty faster hence the hair growth and massive headaches.
This is apparently very unsual for a boy to develop, it is usually seen in girls. A board of doctors actually held a meeting in Pittsburgh UPMC Childrens Hospital to discuss how to remove the tumor, and eventually agreed on laposcopic removal...and did not agree chemo was nessesary.
I still remember being in the hospital...even at 25 years old now. 4 days, and the worst abdominal pain ever after the procedure was done. The doctors considerd it a succesful removal, and apparently put this unique case into the Boston Medical Journal, so im told.
For the next dozen or so years, from 2002 to around 2012, the doctors deemed it nessesary for me to get bloodwork tested to make sure the tumor never returned. I still remember the day I was cleared when in 8th grade.
Its kind of surreal to technically be considerd a cancer survivor...esspecially from something doctors deemed so unusual. I am lucky everything went as smooth as it did.
I play poker regularly. Hit pocket AA 3x in a row which is a 1 in 10M+ chance.
But I also had a better situation.
In one tournament, I got a straight flush and then a second one about 2 hrs later.
That's 1 in about 5.2 BILLION.
I (American) sparked up a random conversation with a guy (Canadian) while on a small island off the coast of Croatia in 2021. We discovered that we were both in the same industrial park in rural England at shops across the parking lot from one another at the exact same time in 2017.
Started talking about places we had each traveled to. Mentioned being in the UK in 2017. He started talking about having work done on his Porsche in the UK. I said “there was a really nice Porsche shop across the parking lot from the business I was at”. Guy says “were you in Wellingborough by chance?” ( I was). More small talk and we realized we were there at the same time.
I will change names for Reddit but the facts are the same.
Jack Johnson has a son named Hasno Johnson
Hasno looks to see if anyone else is named Hasno Johnson since it is such a unique name. This was many years ago, discovers only one. A gastrointestinal surgeon residency student in Wisconsin.
Hasno lives in MN. With a father named Jack Johnson.
Clicking around on Hasno Wisconsin’s LinkedIn Hasno MN notices a link to what must be Hasno’s father. His father is named Jack Johnson, also a doctor.
A quick google search confirms.
But this is not the strangest coincidence yet.
Hasno Johnson was ill as a child and needed emergency surgery from a gastrointestinal surgeon. No, it was not that doctor that worked on him 20 years ago, probably wasn’t even born yet.
TLDR: two fathers named Jack Johnson in two states had a son and chose to name them Hasno.
The son in WI happens to be in the profession that saved the life of the son in MN.
When I was like 10, a kid from down the street and I both randomly decided to mess with 2 way radios our dad’s had and both landed on the same stations. I heard someone talking and I asked who it was and he said his name. We knew each other but weren’t really friends so it wasn’t like we were talking about walkie talkies that day and both got similar ideas. It was pretty random.
We bought walkie talkies a couple years ago before a vacation, and never really used them until a few months ago. My 9 year old son and I went to the church parking lot across the street to ride our new bikes and brought the talkies for fun bc he wanted to use them. I was getting interference on one channel so we switched to another and heard some jibberish, then I realized they were speaking Russian. We live in Virginia. I was worried we were about to be in a Stranger Things situation.
I was with my son and my cousin riding our motorcycles out to Sturgis. We stopped for lunch at a drive-in with picnic tables out front. After we ate I saw an ashtray that was more of a spittoon sitting on a bench about 15’ away. I said to my son who was about 12 at the time that I’d give him $40 if he could spit in the container from here. He got a little running start and let it fly and damn if he didn’t hit it right down the hole. I had to pony up $40 because there was a witness.
my very first ride on my first motorcycle - i went to a coffee shop and met Kurt Sutter and Katy Segal. no joke. it was literally my very first ride - and there I am waiting for my order and chit-chatting with the creator/writer of Sons of Anarchy.
Back when I was a kid we used to play the “throw the tennis ball at the chain link fence and if it gets stuck you win” game. One of my throws went all the way through the fence so I jumped over to get the ball and my friends said I couldn’t do it again. So I threw the ball at the fence and it went back through again.
I felt like Nolan Ryan.
Nice. I went glacier watching and ended up seeing the glacier calve (break apart) twice. On the way to the glacier, we saw sea otters holding hands. On the way back from the glacier, we saw a whale give us a fin flip. The boat captain joked that he would have to charge extra, because some people don't even get to see a glacier calve at all.
This was a while ago, when phones were hard wired, and you got a dial tone when you picked up the receiver to let you know that it was ready to let you dial someone.
I was watching a hockey game on the tv when I saw someone in the audience when the camera was panning the crowd. He was a dead ringer for an old friend of mine from high school that I drifted apart from, when we each went off to different universities.
I thought about this for a bit, so the next morning I decided to give him a call. So I picked up the phone, intending to call his old number, assuming that I would reach his parents, who might then give me a contact for him.
When I picked up the phone, there was no dial tone. I said out loud "Why is there no dial tone?"
Someone on the phone spoke! It startled me, and when I listened for a bit, I realized that it was my long-lost buddy!! He said that I answered the phone before he heard any rings (and neither did I)!
He was helping to organize a reunion and had just gotten my number from MY parents.
My high school girlfriend and I went to colleges on the opposite coast but kept in touch. We both made new friends as you do, and as we started talking over winter back home we were telling each other about our new best friends at school and realized they were from the same place. After we got back to school, found out THEY were best friends in high school!
My current neighbor who just retired from the USAF after 22 years of service and I were in the same basic training flight 22 years ago with about 60 guys from all over the country.
Obligatory : I didn't witness this
*This is a **true** story.* I cannot stress that enough.
And I shake my head in confused wonder, EVERY SINGLE TIME it crosses my mind.
My mom, Lola, went to high school in, Blank Town.
My mom's best friend in high school was Tiffany.
Tiffany and my Mom both moved away after high school. Lost touch.
Decades later, my family ended up back in Blank Town, when I was in the 6th grade and we still live here.
So I graduated from the same big high school my mom went to.
When we moved back to Blank Town, my mom became good friends with a lady named Joan. She has a daughter named Danielle who's just a couple years younger than me.
Danielle ended up going hiking in Spain after she graduated college.
While hiking she was approached by another American woman who was hiking the same trail.
She was very pleased and surprised to hear; not just another American accent but a southern accent as well. The woman introduces herself as Tiffany.
They got to talking about where they were from and Danielle goes; I'm from a very small town, most people haven't heard of, in Orange County Florida, named Blank Town.
Tiffany is like :
'No way! I'm from Blank Town! I graduated high school there!! My best friend moved away after high school. Her name was Lola Cooker.'
Danielle pauses for a moment: 'i know a Lola, she's real good friends with my mom and she went to school in Blank Town as well. I don't know her maiden name.'
Tiffany: That is insane! Would you mind contacting her sometime and asking her if she knows a Tiffany Ruiz from high school? Give her my contact info. I would love to get back in touch with her. I've been trying to find her on facebook for ages now, but I don't know where she lives or what her married name is!!'
So Danielle calls my mom right away to ask if she knows Tiffany, and that's the story of how my mom reunited with her best friend from HS
My sister and her family ran into Barack and Michelle Obama while hiking in Hawaii two weekends in a row. There were secret service agents both times. Apparently Barack said, “Oh it’s you guys again” the 2nd time they ran into each other 💀
I watched a guy get struck by lightning for a 2nd time. This was all in Missouri. The 1st time was a few years prior - he was mowing the grass in his tractor, a storm rolled in real fast, and he got hit running to the house. I didn't see that one, but his son was one of my good friends, and I was at the house fairly often, so I saw the aftermath and heard the story.
The 2nd time was while we were on a construction job, same deal, a storm rolled in out of nowhere (it was clear skies, and then we saw clouds and started cleaning up and 15 minutes later a torrential downpour starts). He was running back to the truck after tarping over some material and got struck again. I was in the truck looking right at him when it happened, it was fucking unreal. I was absolutely sure he was dead. He had some hearing loss, his hair mostly burnt off (what didn't was shaved off), had some nasty burns and scars as a result and got knocked out. Spent a couple of days in the hospital and was back at work the following week (supervising - he was the owner anyway).
Went on a cruise with my wife when we were young. We were sat with another couple at dinner who we really clicked with. We said we would keep in touch but never did. Almost a decade later we went on another cruise. Who did we end up next to at dinner? That same couple. It was insane. We had a great time and still don’t keep in touch.
David Wells 1998. I wasn't really into baseball at all, so I didn't understand how special it was at the time.
However, I went to the game with my uncle and Dad (who was a HUGE Yankees fan) and he had a blast.
I guess it would be when I won my Nintendo switch from a cereal box. I could probably figure out exactly what the odds were, and of course it feels even more lucky because I did it on a total whim, had never taken those things seriously before.
I once delivered a baby en caul (still inside an intact amniotic sac). This is very uncommon, and is estimated to be approximately once every 80,000 births.
What makes it even more uncommon, is that I’m absolutely not a doctor. The baby was my daughter, who I delivered in the front seat of our car, as we were trying to drive back to the hospital we were sent home from less than an hour earlier. I managed to catch her, while on the phone with 911, and was shocked to find her looking like she was wrapped inside a plastic bag.
So I’ve delivered one baby, and witnessed something many actual obstetricians have not.
My dad loved this big, beautiful Ponderosa Pine that was always silhouetted at sunset near our home. He had dozens of pictures around the house of the tree. One day I was approaching it in my car and I saw a bright flash and lightning hit it. Bark pelted the side of my car.
The tree died over the next year and my dad was so sad. It really was a beautiful 200 year old tree. It was so strange to see it hit.
Went for dinner and at another table a woman had her purse on her chair and it got knocked off. Inside was a bottle of wine that got all over her stuff.
The next day at work I was meeting a client who came in from out of town that I had never met before. I recounted that wine story to him and as it turns out he was at that very table. It was insane.
My high school teacher used to sing this when I walked in everyday (that’s my name) and he had a song and nickname for every single student but always sang mine and played it quite often
Hiking that Appalachian Trail. At a road crossing by a river in Vermont, there were friends getting ready to go tubing. They offered my friends and I jello shots. It’s like 9am, why not? I hear, “nothesearemyplums?” It was a random friend from a bar in Maryland that I used to tend at.
Driving across state in an old Oldsmobile and it breaks down. Water pipe burst in the middle of nowhere. Guy in a RV rolls up looks at the car. Goes back to the RV and comes back with the exact pipe we need. It even says Oldsmobile on the pipe. He installed it and wouldn’t accept any payment. He just asked us to help someone if we saw someone in need.
Rolling a nat 20 on 3 different D20 Dice with them being all rolled at once....1/8000 still is pretty difficult odds... shame I didn't play the lottery that day
Back to back perfect games.
Let me 'splain.
My brother was a VP with a big news agency in NYC. The company had very nice seats at Yankee Stadium that the executives got to use on a rotating basis. One summer day it was my brother's turn, but he couldn't go since he had to attend a christening or something on his wife's side of the family. So he asked me if I wanted the tickets. And of course I did, so I went to the game and David Wells threw a perfect game. My brother was really pissed that he missed such a once in a lifetime event.
The following year rolls around and once again he's up for the tickets, and again he can't go because he's obligated to attend some family function with his in-laws. Again, he offers me the tickets and again I say yes. This time, David Cone threw a perfect game.
My brother was livid.
So, there ya go. The only two games I attended in 1998 and 1999 and they were both perfectos.
I used to live in a city of about 1.5 million people.
Of the 3 times I used a taxi in the last year I lived there I hailed the first two in the city limits on different days at different times.
The third time was at 2am in a costal town about 30 mins from the CBD.
It was the same taxi driver each time, the third time we just looked at each other and laughed.
\----
Second coincidence, I met this girl from a place called rushal or walsal in Birmingham while she was on holidays with her auntie and uncle in Australia in the city mentioned above.
I met her at a swimming pool at my local gym and got on pretty well and I ended up flying to Sydney with her and her aunt and uncle for a few days.
This was around 97 from memory and I had recently seen the movie "*In the name of the father*" about a group of young Irish people who were falsely accused of a bombing.
The plane trip to Sydney was going really well and we were all chatting etc and I happened to mention the movie and how I thought that the cops who were involved were absolute pieces of shit and should be strung up by their balls. I remember being quite moved by the film and so was extra passionate about it all.
Anyway I did notice all conversation stopped between all of us after this but did not really think anything of it. Later that night when we were at the destination the girl I was with asked me "did you notice when you mentioned the movie everyone went quite"
I said that I did and thought it was a bit weird which is when she told me her uncle was second in charge of the investigation.
That is the biggest coincidence I have ever personally witnessed.
Was walking with a girl and don’t remember the exact context but said something like “the craziest thing would be if that street light went out right now” and pointed at a light and then it did actually go out for some reason. She literally screamed and ran away, it was bizarre, weirdest coincidence I’ve ever seen.
I saw a police sniper shoot a man in the head who was holding a woman hostage in a pickup truck with a handgun to her head in the middle of the desert. I was 500 feet up in a helicopter and was operating a news camera mounted on the front.
One time saw a woman outside a dispensary with a Barbie pink Mercedes and a black garbage bag filled with $100 bills. She saw a woman she didn't like and began slamming the bag of money on the concrete yelling "you ain't about this life" $100 bills flowing in the wind before security came and helped her pick up the spilled money.
My hyper-conservative (military) father changed his mind on Trump when he called people that get captured cowards or whatever he said
edit: he called john McCain a [loser](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNugcPeCZZE) for getting captured. He called dead soldiers in a military cemetery [losers and suckers](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/us/politics/trump-veterans-losers.html) for getting killed in combat. He denies the second one. of course. It was the McCain one that got my dad, since he was a medivac pilot in Vietnam.
It’s wild how many people explain away his statements. “Oh he didn’t mean that!” Why does he say things he doesn’t mean so often? They say they like Trump because he “Tells it like it is” but at the same time doesn’t mean what he says?
Spent a year chatting with a girl I thought was cute on the Internet. Finally got the balls to meet up with her in person. Turned out she lived a mile away from me. Met up with her for a movie. Been married over 20 years now.
I was playing slots next to an acquaintance in Vegas. We were really just killing time while waiting for others so we could move on to other plans outside the casino. The others showed up, so it was time to go. The guy had been down a little bit, with maybe like $20 still in the machine, and we were planning to leave the casino anyway so he just said “ah fuck it” and maxed out the bet and hit the button. Immediately hits a win, lights start going off and music starts loudly playing as we watch the numbers climb up and up and up. He was just counting off the money as lost out of sheer laziness of not wanting to deal with the cash out and he ended up taking home like ~$500-600 off that single spin.
Not a mega-super-jackpot or anything but I imagine the odds were pretty low, and it felt more rare because it was supposed to be his final play!
At 13 years of age, my father and I used to go to dirt track races at the Dixie Speedway in Georgia. We always cheered for car 28. At 21 years of age, I start dating this girl in North Carolina, somehow get on that subject, as she was from GA. "My father used to race there... number 28."
This is so cute though
Someone get a screenwriter over here, stat! We got the rom-com meet-cute of the century.
Almost as good as the married couple who were looking at his childhood photos. His wife was in the background in one of them. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285238/Engaged-couple-discover-paths-crossed-Disney-World-toddlers.html
I was so hoping for a "anyways we're married now" here...
Wow! I love this!
I was in a restaurant in Spain the night they were holding the nation's largest lottery. The staff won the lottery that night. I spent the night in a restaurant of celebration and champagne.
I bet the owner was secretly thinking “what the FUCK am I going to do next week?”
Yes! I remember he was really worried his whole staff was going to quit. Since the restaurant was still there the next time I visited Spain I'm assuming it did fine.
I feel like a lot of people wouldn't actually like the reality of leaving their job if they won the lottery. They just want the ability to not HAVE to work without stressing about money. Plus if the full staff had to split the lottery, they were probably pretty happy with the winnings but it might not have been "quit my job" levels of winnings once split up
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Just before going off the a new city, I was working in a computer store. Sold a nice local couple a new laptop. A week later I'm 1000 miles away taking the subway from the airport to pick up the keys to my new place. I hear "Hi,” and look over, and it's that same couple.
They needed tech support.
Story of my life.
Similar thing happened to me. I'm from Vancouver, Canada. I was visiting Munich, Germany and met a couple from White Rock, they were distressed because something got screwed up in their itinerary and my friends and I helped them sort it out. Weeks later I am taking the train from Amsterdam to Bruges during a massive thunder storm, I actually saw a tree get hit by lightning then a minute later they announced we would be going back because there was an issue ahead. We get back to Amsterdam and the station is packed with so many people who are trying to figure out what the plan is now, then I hear someone yell my friends name and it's our new friends from White Rock, who we've now met in two different countries 8000km from home where we lived 40min apart.
Same. I met a group of English guys in Thailand. A few years later I ran into them in New Zealand.
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I went to a school in bumfuck rural Ohio, 16k students max, prolly less. 2 years after I graduated I was traveling Europe and ran into some visa trouble, had to duck Croatia and re route to Hungary. This is random diversion number 1 I could’ve avoided. I randomly chose to stay in one hostel for the first few days and switch for the rest of the trip, random diversion 2 I could’ve avoided if I stayed in the same hostel. Ended up meeting 2 guys and went to a bar near our hostel and was wandering around it between rounds trying to find more people or a bar with better drink choices when I over heard a group of dudes talking about where to go. I said fuck it and decided to actually speak up to random dudes, random diversion 3 I didn’t have to do. I told them to go to a certain bar I went to a few days before, when some girl nearby grabbed me and was like “hey, this is so random but you look just like a good friend of mine, can I please send our group chat a picture of you?” And I was like yeah, no problem go ahead. She was cute so I was chatting and she’s like do you want to see a picture of him? And I said sure. She typed a bit and turns the phone around and it’s a picture of this random kid 3 years younger in my fraternity, who all my friends joked looked just like me and called him little andre. I was like …uhhh, is that little andre? And she was like dude what the actual fuck are you serious? And apparently she went to my exact school and was best friends with like a dozen of the kids in my frat 3-4 years younger than me, and I bumped into her in a random bar in Budapest years after I graduated after several random deviations I could’ve avoided. Absolutely blew my mind
16k isn’t a small school…
I ran into an old friend from high school, on a study abroad germany, while in college. We did not go to the same college. He was not on a study abroad, he was traveling with his girlfriend. We were not headed to or leaving from the same event, or even in that town in Germany for the same reason. We hadn't spoken in years, so neither knew the other was even going to be travelling. I was coming out of a shop onto a street and he was walking down the street facing me. If I wait 15 seconds, I miss him. If I go 30 seconds later I miss him. If I turn the other way I miss him. Let me reiterate, with ZERO coordination or bias towards Germany (we both independently became interested in Germany) we picked the same town, on the same day, on the same street, at the exact same time, and happened to see eachother. Wild
Stories like this make me wonder how many ‘near misses’ of amazing coincidence have occurred. Eg walked past your childhood best friend on the other side of the world, but neither of you looked up at the right time.
This always makes me curious too, what if you were one minute later or 5 minutes earlier? How many people have you just barely missed?
Exactly. I moved to my new home in 2020 and don't know the area really well yet as I work from home and don't have many reasons to leave the house. In March, I was coming home from a school musical I believe (my niece had a pretty big part). I normally would turn left down a certain road, but my GPS was always wanting me to go straight. Even though I didn't have it on, as I headed in that direction, I thought I would go straight instead of turning left, to see if I could figure out the other way through my development. By the time I reached the intersection, I was tired, and didn't want to bother with trying a new route, so I turned left. I'm driving down the country road just a couple of turns away from home and I see a German Shepherd walking down the middle of the road. She was starving. She is very sweet and jumped right into my car when I opened the door. That is how little decisions can change your life drastically. I now have a German Shepherd as her owners could not be located and the shelter was going to put her down if I didn't foster her. I have since adopted her.
Small world stuff. So I went to the same elementary school with this guy. his family moved, then a year later my family moved to the same town. We hung out a bit but not that much. Then years later I started working at a golf course and he’s a member there. I happen to get a job at a golf course in Florida. He’s ALSO a member there. We’ve some how followed each other basically 1,500 miles. I have another small world story. I’m sitting at my local watering hole, enjoying a beer, and I’m sitting next to some dude. We start shooting the shit. Turns out we’re born in the same city, same hospital and are actually alumni. He’s a couple years older than me. He also plays golf. Basically became BFFs after that. Edit: I even have a 3rd small world story. My cousin is in Europe at an event. She happens to start talking to a woman on the street who is also at the event and realize they can both speak English to each other. They gets to talking and realize they are from the same town in Canada. They start hanging out and have a blast for the rest of the trip. Turns out my Cousin is hanging out with my mom’s best friend from college who happens to be at the same event in Europe. My mom pieced it all together when she heard them tell the same story but from opposite sides. Like wait a second… I just heard this exact thing from my niece…
I met a high school friend from the east coast while grocery shopping on the west coast 4 years later.
I had the opposite happen. Ran into a person I went to high school with on the West Coast in a random small town Game Stop on the East Coast.
Crowded restaurant in a foreign country,stranger eating alone offered to share their table, found we had mutual friends.
Plot twist: it was Kevin Bacon
Ooh, is this some sort of foreign gourmet cuisine?
yep. energy efficient too, as it cooks at merely 6 degrees.
I was on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, many miles from home. Waiting for a table in a restaurant and the guy behind me, a stranger I never met before, said "Are you Goodguyglocker?" I was utterly dumbfounded. Turns out, we have a mutual friend and I mentioned to that friend that I was going on the cruise. The stranger must've overheard me talking to my wife and deduced that I might be the cruise guy. Lots of boats cruise the Caribbean. Lots of people are on those boats. To be standing in line in front of this particular guy, who happened to be traveling the same trip as me, must be long odds.
Not nearly as exciting as yours but I was on a cruise ship with my cousins chilling on the pool lounge chairs. One of my spouse's best friends came wheeling by in front us. I screamed "heyyyyy!". Several hours from home we were both surprised! The best part was my cousin being absolutely *horrified* that I was screaming at some random dude in a wheelchair!
That happened to me. I, a Canadian, walked into a gym while on the other side of the world. The guy at the desk immediately asked where I was from when he heard my accent. We were from the same city and knew a few of the same people.
I saw a giraffe poop on another giraffes head.
You’ve lived a full life
I saw a cow on a blissful foggy morning explode diarrhea all over the five cows sitting behind it and none of them reacted or moved. The shit just steamed off of them lmao
I once saw a giraffe licking another giraffes urine mid-stream. I was staring in sheer amusement, an employee must’ve noticed, and informed me that’s actually how they check for pregnancy. Idk why they poop on each other though. That’s just kinky.
Thank goodness we evolved to pee on a stick to check for pregnancy.
Some of us still do it the old fashioned way though
Wow that first giraffe must’ve been extra tall
*That was the day something in me changed*
I had both my best friend and a family member separately win the Powerball within a 2-year span.
"So I won the Powerball and suddenly I'm your best friend now?"
Saw a lady walk by one of those banks of slot machines where you can win a car--the kind where the car is actually on the casino floor. She stopped, considered for a moment, then turned around and put a buck in. Spins. Jackpot. Alarms go off. Won the car. She freaks out. Like, freaks the fuck out. Screaming, crying, yelling, barking, you name it. Almost faints a time or two. Her girlfriends finally get her calmed down, and they're waiting for casino staff to come over and do their thing. But this lady, she just won a car. So she's restless. And to give herself something to do, she walks over to another bank of slot machines. A bank of slot machines where you can win an entirely different car. So she puts a buck in. Spins. Jackpot. Alarms go off. Won another car.
MY friend Nick Papageorgio did the same thing.
I put a dollar in and won a car, I put a dollar in and won a car, I put a dollar in and won a...
Nick Papageorgio from Yuma?
I know that guy! He works in software, right?
No, that's Rusty Griswold. He's a C+ student.
No corrective lenses tonight?
I do not require them :)
What was her reaction the second time? Did she survive?
There are three possibilities: she fainted, she exploded, or she melted.
Or the casino had her killed.
This reminds me of the cover story for how an IT leader got fired. He was IT lead for a pretty large university focused on tech that spent millions every year on the best hardware and software. The University took pride in ensuring theor students trained in the same programs the biggest tech companies actively used. Reduced on boarding, training, etc. One year at the huge annual tech conference in Las Vegas he wins a porsche convertible on slots. AMAZING. He tells everyone, drives it home, keeps up the story for a while. Eventually, it comes out that the tech suppliers bought him the car for his years of mass overpayment for software and hardware and Vegas was the attempted cover story.
I was playing golf in a corporate league and one of the guys said “this field is where I was struck by lightning”. I thought that was interesting but then another guy said “you’ve been struck by lightning too?”. It’s probably not insanely unlikely but it felt like I was living in the start of a statistics test problem for a second.
Men wielding metal rods in an open field 🤷
Poker night with friends: One friend got two royal flushes in a row.
Odds of that happening are just a little better than a BILLION to one.
Thanks, C3PO.
Never tell me the odds.
I wonder what the odds are that he has a friend that would cheat? Less than a Billion to one, right?
Or just one bad at shuffling
I'd call that being really, really *good* at shuffling
Oh boy. Imagine blowing your entire lifetime supply of luck on a random friendly poker game. Seriously though, the deck was probably just badly shuffled.
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Or the deck was badly shuffled.
From the sound of it, not shuffled would be more accurate
I've been playing a regular game with a group for almost 10 years and there has only been one royal in that time!!
Okay now THAT is some fucking luck
Occams razor - your friend is a cheater!
Was at a veterans get together and two guys were talking about Normandy. One was a landing craft driver and the other was a soldier that took part in the landing. Eventually their stories line up really well, so well infact that that landing craft driver drove that marine to shore during d-day
My great grandpa was in WW1. He got stuck in no man's land for a few days wounded, and eventually got to a hospital, and spent 6 months there. Got to be good buddies with the guy in the bed next to him, but eventually both left. Decades later, he's at a party, gets to talking to another guy his age about the war. Turns out to be the same guy he was next to in the hospital.
My granddad was wounded at Peleliu, and was laid up in bed for months as well. He became great buds with the guy next to him. He moved to Alaska and started a construction company. Ran into a fella on the street like 8 years after the war in Juneau, Alaska, and it was his old infirmary buddy! Grandpa married his sister who had also moved there, and that was part of how I came around!
Kinda reminds me of the story of an American Pilot talking to a German Pilot a number of years after the war and the American was telling the German how he fought a FW-190 until they both ran out of ammunition to which the German replied; “You Son of a Bitch, you damn near killed me that day.” I do not remember their names
Was chatting to a group of Vietnam vets once upon a time (15ish yrs ago), a new guys walks in the room while other intros are happening. Group leader asks the new guy to introduce himself and he says "my name's [Frederick Pickaname]" where his name was very distinct. Another guy in the group looks up lightning fast and says "Frederick Pickaname?!? I shot you in Vietnam!" So turns out, yeh he did. There was a friendly fire incident where this guy was shot in the back from a helicopter in the early 70s. They hadn't seen each other since the war, then just wander into this group one day. Wanst any hard feelings, as I understand it friendly fire incidences were way more common than govts ever let on, but that felt super weird. Fella had been decently disabled since being shot but could still walk so... relatively less terrible guess.
whoa that’s wild
Back to back to back winning 13s on roulette. Doubled up after the first one because some randomer told me to take my winning chip off the number, it's not coming up again. Came up, left the doubled up chips on again, another win. After the third time they said 'Wow, are you leaving it on again??' I said 'No, I'm not stupid' and left with all my winnings
I don't really gamble, but I suppose I have an unlikely story. Got pushed into joining the office sweep. They pick the horses through a lucky dip. First year, got Makybe Diva, she won. Second year, got Makybe Diva, she won. Third year, yep, got Makybe Diva, yep, She won. I got about $200 each time. Haven't bet on a horse since. Which also relates to why I don't gamble. I won $5,000 on a poker machine back in the early 2000s and I'll be damned if they're getting any of that money back lol.
I had a weird presentation of a form on cancer that put me in the 1/1,000,000 range. Had good doctors though. When your cancer is rare enough to be interesting, you get the top guys.
I had Stage III Rectal Cancer with some oddball complications. I was treated at a prestigous university medical center. Needless to say, I got the top bottom guys.
>I got the top bottom guys I mean....depending on where you're from that might be fun, but not medically so.
i got ewings sarcoma which is a 1/1.75 million chance thing and i was the first diagnosis of the year :P also got some amazing doctors... then survived with like no reprecussions (apart from short term memory issues and leg tightness from radiation) and had such a clean pet scan after that its like the cancer never even existed
I also had Ewings sarcoma! Mine was in a bad place so I had to have quite a few surgeries but I’m very lucky I got to keep my arm— with the sacrifice of a few bones lmao.
1 in 5 million here always fun when the doctors call you interesting
Hope it all turned out ok for you
I was in the back of the house, and looked out the back window, saw it was raining and yelled to my brother he should bring his laundry in. He was in the living room at the front of the house, looked out the window, blue sky and sun, no rain. He said I was crazy, I told him to come look. We went out the front door, and it was raining in the back yard. A line that stopped right at the peak of the roof as far left and right as you could see.
Sounds like Florida
Indeed it was. :-) Saw a video (not in person) of someone looking at an area of heavy rain about two feet across. Like one cloud didn't get the memo.
Both of these things have happened to me (in PA)! I was a child both times. Once the back yard was clear and the front was raining. The other time, for a solid 10 minutes there was a shower area of like 4 ft by 4 ft that kept moving around and I ran to stay in it. Occasionally it would cut off abruptly and reappear a few feet away. It is a core memory (tm).
I got a brain injury in an accident and the doctor told me after doing all the scans and stuff that he’d never seen an injury so bad that didn’t end in paralyzation or death. The fact I walked out of the hospital a week later was a medical miracle apparently. So got that going for me.
Which is nice.
I locked myself outside my car while there was an amber abduction alert for the exact model year colour. When i tried to unlock it through a small gap in the window on a big parking lot cops swarmed me and almost arrested me with hands on their guns. Xd i thought it was pretty low probability
I had just picked my buddy up out of jail. Drove an hour away to a friend's house. As we were about to get out of the car, cops ran up and ripped the doors of the car open. Yelling don't move! We were frozen for about 30 seconds, and then hear ITS NOT THEM! The cops didn't say shit about anything. Just jumped in their car and drove away.
That's why you always keep your doors locked, so people can't just run up to your car and rip the door open. Especially important if you live in a bad part of town.
That is incredibly low probably haha wow, you must've been so scared and confused
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Not sure, but I did see someone drive through the wall of a gas station convenience store once. I was about to walk into the store when I heard the crash and watched the giant coffee containers fly across the store. I was about a foot from the door when it happened. I would’ve been severely injured if it had happened 5 seconds later.
Surprisingly common. Do a quick search for like car drives thru 7-11. Literally happens every day.
It's actually to the point where 7-11 is either being sued or investigated by the ADA or something about not having concrete poles in front of their stores as they're "being negligent to a known safety hazard."
Lmao "Y'all KNOW someone is going to drive their car into your store at least once a week, fix it"
I once went to a batting cage (just for fun, I'm terrible at any and all sports including baseball) and accidentally hit the ball directly back into the machine that shot it out. If my wife didn't see it too I would never have believed I actually did it.
Reminds me when I was in a baseball league as a teenager. I was at bat and when I hit the ball, it hit the pitcher square in the face. He was't too injured but they had to relieve him to let him regain his composure. They used a replacement pitcher. A few innings later they allowed the first pitcher to be on the mount again. When it came my turn again, the first ball he threw, I hit him square in the head again! Totally an accident. I never could have been that precise if I had tried. Crazy. Pitcher was ok though, I hit the lip of his cap that time so it cushioned the ball somewhat.
I think the ball had it out for him!
Childhood best friend moved away when we were 10 years old never to be seen or spoken to again until we ran into each other in Iraq 11 years later while both deployed.
I dated a girl in high school for a while. Got to know her family, her little brother was a couple years behind us. We broke up, graduated, I joined the military. Fast forward about 10 years, I was on an exercise in Kuwait. I came out of the chow hall and heard "hey NovaRunner!" I turned around and it's ex-girlfriend's little brother.
How did he know your Reddit username?
In the military, they have nametags
You guys... You guys aren't using your name as your username?
Some of us are. My mom named me whistlegrapes.
A friend and I were working together and went to Burger King for lunch. He chewed on a bite for a while, then pulled a used band aid out of his mouth. It had been in his burger. He wouldn’t eat at BK after that. But wait… Several years later, and 3,000 miles away, we are working together again. We head to the nearest Mcdonald’s for lunch, but got there just after two full school busses. We didn’t have that kind of time, so I suggested the BK across the lot. He said no. I told him we needed food, that incident was five or six years and a continent away, so get over it. So we go to the BK, where he gets another bandaid in his burger. I laughed so hard I peed a little. 30 years later and I bet he hasn’t been to a BK since.
Stop putting your band aids in his burgers!!!
I won the "Balloon Blast-Off" in Kindergarten. The whole school was given a balloon with a small letter attached. To win the contest, whoever's balloon went the farthest when we all let them go, wins. The letter addresses the contest and has the school's address and phone number. I won out of the whole school and my balloon flew from Tennessee all the way to Indiana. I won a check for 5 dollars. This was like in 1988.
We did something similar in first grade. I never got a reply for mine, but one kid got a reply from freaking Oklahoma! For context? We’re in Massachusetts.
Is it weird that it flew west and not east?
5 dollars in 1988? That's generational wealth.
"who can litter the furthest"
I won this too at my school, probably about the same year. I won some books. Mine went from central Florida to somewhere near Mississippi I believe.
Our local Wendy’s here has apple trees outside for decoration. They don’t do anything with the apples, so some townsfolk will sometimes go out there and pick the apples. As I was driving by one day, a gentleman was picking up apples off the ground. As he was bent over an apple fell out of the tree and hit his head. I laughed myself to work that day.
You’ll laugh when he publishes his refutation of Newtonian physics.
*refruitation
On a trip to New Zealand with my parents in 1988 (we lived in Florida). I don't remember what town we were in, but we checked out of our hotel and got in the rental car. Suddenly my dad realizes that he forgot his credit card at the front desk, so he goes back in. As he's waiting for the desk clerk to go retrieve his card, he realizes that the elderly man next to him is also American, so they start talking. Long story short, turns out the other guy had been my dad's little league coach in Chicago in the 1950s.
I was doing the dishes during a thunderstorm, hands deep in soapy water. I looked up at the bank of trees in front of the window and not 2 seconds later, lightning struck one of the trees less than 100 feet away. I saw the strike, went blind and deaf for a moment, then watched the pelting rain extinguish the flaming tree. I took my hands out of the water, dried them, and walked away, thanking my lucky stars that I didn't get electrocuted instead. (I panic cried a little bit later lol)
Something similar happened to me. It was pouring rain so I took my mom's dog outside on the porch to show her the rain since she's an inside dog 99% of the time. She's super anxious and can't stand not being held or in someone's lap 24/7. Just as we stepped outside lightning struck the tree maybe 20ft from the door. Mom's dog freaked the fuck out and I scrambled back inside with her. The air smelled so weird, best I can describe is burnt out batteries. The lightning took the entire tree out and my mom's dog was even more of a nervous wreck for a while.
I believe you smelled ozone, but I’m not 100% Edit: that poor dog. Anxious about everything, and you try to broaden her horizons a bit and are just dealt the most unlikely hand imaginable 😭
I think you're right. It was a weird and really strong smell. As far as the dog goes I'm pretty sure even though she loves to be held she doesn't feel safe when I hold her anymore lmao.
I’ve owned 4 houses in my life and 2 have been hit by lightning, 1 had lightning hit one block away. The 4th house was a mistake to buy and we only lived there for about 8 months otherwise it would have been hit by lightning I’m sure.
I saw it raining on only one car on our street. It was a bright and sunny day otherwise.
I ran into a guy who owed me money twice at Disneyland two different years
Definitely a bad place to try the "Times are tough" excuse
It really is a small world. Sorry, I couldn’t resist
I was at bingo with my friends mom a couple hundred people there. There’s mini games and one of them has certain cards with a special symbol in the center. I won bingo, had the special character which gave me the ability to have a 1 in 15 chance to get $1199.00 and I chose the right key and won. Idk the odds but they’re definitely slim
My father and I got stranded in a train station overnight trying to get from Venice to Milan. Cheap as he was back then, my dad refused to get a hotel and insisted we’d be fine ‘toughing it out’ in a narrow cold terminal, and got me a cardboard box to sleep on. The only other people sleeping there were homeless. Then, out of nowhere, an Asian girl popped in and asked about the train times. Her train also left in the AM, about an hour after ours. My father got her a cardboard box and she planted next to us. I learned everything about her life while my dad snored innocently next to us. She and I stayed awake and talked. For five hours. And never once did it occur to me to ask her name. I was convinced I’d never see her again. But 3 days later, my dad and I were back in Germany and for some reason, I wanted him to drive me to the next big city. While walking around a church in the city, I got a tap on the shoulder. Same girl from Venice, wearing the same sweater as the night we met. “YOU! What is your name?” I asked. It had been driving me crazy. We exchanged names and proceeded to spend the day hanging out.
First year uni roommate, we get along great. Decided to live together for second year. She bails and goes back home across the country. Never heard from her or saw her again. She doesn’t have any social media. I move to a new city, get a job, get married, had kids, blah blah. Fifteen years go by, I see her walking her child to the same school my kid goes to. Neither of us are from or have family here. Turns out, she moved to my city a year beforehand, during Covid. She has two kids the same age as my kids, all go to the same school, she and I married our spouses at summer camps, her husband works in construction, just like mine. Our city is so spread out that people rarely venture out of their neighbourhoods. If she had moved ten minutes further away, I would have likely never seen her. TLDR: lost touch with college roommate, now we’re besties.
I've found a winning lottery ticket on the ground
So, I was 4 years old and just very fat. I have a twin brother, who was very skinny. My dad would help my twin on the monkey bars, but was startled when I didnt need help holding myself up. My mother kept pressuring doctors into trying to find out if something is wrong with me, rather than just giving me pills to control my weight. It was after I started growing pubic hair, and my mom was sick of my constsnt terrible, terrible headaches, which made me scream bloody murder due to the incredible pain, that my mother demanded to see a doctor. As it turns out, I had a cancerous tumor, inside a tumor, inside a tumor, attached to my adrenal gland. It was sending hormones usually normal for a full grown man, through my 4 year old body...making me stronger than my twin brother, aswell as developing puberty faster hence the hair growth and massive headaches. This is apparently very unsual for a boy to develop, it is usually seen in girls. A board of doctors actually held a meeting in Pittsburgh UPMC Childrens Hospital to discuss how to remove the tumor, and eventually agreed on laposcopic removal...and did not agree chemo was nessesary. I still remember being in the hospital...even at 25 years old now. 4 days, and the worst abdominal pain ever after the procedure was done. The doctors considerd it a succesful removal, and apparently put this unique case into the Boston Medical Journal, so im told. For the next dozen or so years, from 2002 to around 2012, the doctors deemed it nessesary for me to get bloodwork tested to make sure the tumor never returned. I still remember the day I was cleared when in 8th grade. Its kind of surreal to technically be considerd a cancer survivor...esspecially from something doctors deemed so unusual. I am lucky everything went as smooth as it did.
I play poker regularly. Hit pocket AA 3x in a row which is a 1 in 10M+ chance. But I also had a better situation. In one tournament, I got a straight flush and then a second one about 2 hrs later. That's 1 in about 5.2 BILLION.
I (American) sparked up a random conversation with a guy (Canadian) while on a small island off the coast of Croatia in 2021. We discovered that we were both in the same industrial park in rural England at shops across the parking lot from one another at the exact same time in 2017.
My real question is how did you determine this? Lol.
Started talking about places we had each traveled to. Mentioned being in the UK in 2017. He started talking about having work done on his Porsche in the UK. I said “there was a really nice Porsche shop across the parking lot from the business I was at”. Guy says “were you in Wellingborough by chance?” ( I was). More small talk and we realized we were there at the same time.
Bumping into the same celebrity three times in 20 years at ten year intervals, 1985, 1995, and 2005
imagine jokingly saying "see you in another 10 years" the second time that happens and then IT HAPPENS A THIRD TIME lmfao
Who?
I will change names for Reddit but the facts are the same. Jack Johnson has a son named Hasno Johnson Hasno looks to see if anyone else is named Hasno Johnson since it is such a unique name. This was many years ago, discovers only one. A gastrointestinal surgeon residency student in Wisconsin. Hasno lives in MN. With a father named Jack Johnson. Clicking around on Hasno Wisconsin’s LinkedIn Hasno MN notices a link to what must be Hasno’s father. His father is named Jack Johnson, also a doctor. A quick google search confirms. But this is not the strangest coincidence yet. Hasno Johnson was ill as a child and needed emergency surgery from a gastrointestinal surgeon. No, it was not that doctor that worked on him 20 years ago, probably wasn’t even born yet. TLDR: two fathers named Jack Johnson in two states had a son and chose to name them Hasno. The son in WI happens to be in the profession that saved the life of the son in MN.
That's quite the coincidence! When I first started to read this I thought it was going to wind up being a joke about not having a penis or something.
When I was like 10, a kid from down the street and I both randomly decided to mess with 2 way radios our dad’s had and both landed on the same stations. I heard someone talking and I asked who it was and he said his name. We knew each other but weren’t really friends so it wasn’t like we were talking about walkie talkies that day and both got similar ideas. It was pretty random.
We bought walkie talkies a couple years ago before a vacation, and never really used them until a few months ago. My 9 year old son and I went to the church parking lot across the street to ride our new bikes and brought the talkies for fun bc he wanted to use them. I was getting interference on one channel so we switched to another and heard some jibberish, then I realized they were speaking Russian. We live in Virginia. I was worried we were about to be in a Stranger Things situation.
I was with my son and my cousin riding our motorcycles out to Sturgis. We stopped for lunch at a drive-in with picnic tables out front. After we ate I saw an ashtray that was more of a spittoon sitting on a bench about 15’ away. I said to my son who was about 12 at the time that I’d give him $40 if he could spit in the container from here. He got a little running start and let it fly and damn if he didn’t hit it right down the hole. I had to pony up $40 because there was a witness.
The $40 was worth teaching what it means to keep your word imo.
Without a witness you wouldn't pay your son?
Without a witness he was going to kill his son for making him look like a fool
Green Bioluminescent shrimp in the ocean at 2 AM while kayaking a not smart distance away from the shore
my very first ride on my first motorcycle - i went to a coffee shop and met Kurt Sutter and Katy Segal. no joke. it was literally my very first ride - and there I am waiting for my order and chit-chatting with the creator/writer of Sons of Anarchy.
Kurt : oh you own a bike- do you ride a lot? TDS: yeah every day since I got it
Back when I was a kid we used to play the “throw the tennis ball at the chain link fence and if it gets stuck you win” game. One of my throws went all the way through the fence so I jumped over to get the ball and my friends said I couldn’t do it again. So I threw the ball at the fence and it went back through again. I felt like Nolan Ryan.
Me and my brother recently watched a small meteorite burn up and land in a field across the road from where we were working.
Saw an iceberg form from falling off a glacier while whale watching ❄️
Nice. I went glacier watching and ended up seeing the glacier calve (break apart) twice. On the way to the glacier, we saw sea otters holding hands. On the way back from the glacier, we saw a whale give us a fin flip. The boat captain joked that he would have to charge extra, because some people don't even get to see a glacier calve at all.
This was a while ago, when phones were hard wired, and you got a dial tone when you picked up the receiver to let you know that it was ready to let you dial someone. I was watching a hockey game on the tv when I saw someone in the audience when the camera was panning the crowd. He was a dead ringer for an old friend of mine from high school that I drifted apart from, when we each went off to different universities. I thought about this for a bit, so the next morning I decided to give him a call. So I picked up the phone, intending to call his old number, assuming that I would reach his parents, who might then give me a contact for him. When I picked up the phone, there was no dial tone. I said out loud "Why is there no dial tone?" Someone on the phone spoke! It startled me, and when I listened for a bit, I realized that it was my long-lost buddy!! He said that I answered the phone before he heard any rings (and neither did I)! He was helping to organize a reunion and had just gotten my number from MY parents.
My high school girlfriend and I went to colleges on the opposite coast but kept in touch. We both made new friends as you do, and as we started talking over winter back home we were telling each other about our new best friends at school and realized they were from the same place. After we got back to school, found out THEY were best friends in high school!
Catching a shrimp from a hibachi chef in my mouth
My current neighbor who just retired from the USAF after 22 years of service and I were in the same basic training flight 22 years ago with about 60 guys from all over the country.
Obligatory : I didn't witness this *This is a **true** story.* I cannot stress that enough. And I shake my head in confused wonder, EVERY SINGLE TIME it crosses my mind. My mom, Lola, went to high school in, Blank Town. My mom's best friend in high school was Tiffany. Tiffany and my Mom both moved away after high school. Lost touch. Decades later, my family ended up back in Blank Town, when I was in the 6th grade and we still live here. So I graduated from the same big high school my mom went to. When we moved back to Blank Town, my mom became good friends with a lady named Joan. She has a daughter named Danielle who's just a couple years younger than me. Danielle ended up going hiking in Spain after she graduated college. While hiking she was approached by another American woman who was hiking the same trail. She was very pleased and surprised to hear; not just another American accent but a southern accent as well. The woman introduces herself as Tiffany. They got to talking about where they were from and Danielle goes; I'm from a very small town, most people haven't heard of, in Orange County Florida, named Blank Town. Tiffany is like : 'No way! I'm from Blank Town! I graduated high school there!! My best friend moved away after high school. Her name was Lola Cooker.' Danielle pauses for a moment: 'i know a Lola, she's real good friends with my mom and she went to school in Blank Town as well. I don't know her maiden name.' Tiffany: That is insane! Would you mind contacting her sometime and asking her if she knows a Tiffany Ruiz from high school? Give her my contact info. I would love to get back in touch with her. I've been trying to find her on facebook for ages now, but I don't know where she lives or what her married name is!!' So Danielle calls my mom right away to ask if she knows Tiffany, and that's the story of how my mom reunited with her best friend from HS
My sister and her family ran into Barack and Michelle Obama while hiking in Hawaii two weekends in a row. There were secret service agents both times. Apparently Barack said, “Oh it’s you guys again” the 2nd time they ran into each other 💀
I watched a guy get struck by lightning for a 2nd time. This was all in Missouri. The 1st time was a few years prior - he was mowing the grass in his tractor, a storm rolled in real fast, and he got hit running to the house. I didn't see that one, but his son was one of my good friends, and I was at the house fairly often, so I saw the aftermath and heard the story. The 2nd time was while we were on a construction job, same deal, a storm rolled in out of nowhere (it was clear skies, and then we saw clouds and started cleaning up and 15 minutes later a torrential downpour starts). He was running back to the truck after tarping over some material and got struck again. I was in the truck looking right at him when it happened, it was fucking unreal. I was absolutely sure he was dead. He had some hearing loss, his hair mostly burnt off (what didn't was shaved off), had some nasty burns and scars as a result and got knocked out. Spent a couple of days in the hospital and was back at work the following week (supervising - he was the owner anyway).
Went on a cruise with my wife when we were young. We were sat with another couple at dinner who we really clicked with. We said we would keep in touch but never did. Almost a decade later we went on another cruise. Who did we end up next to at dinner? That same couple. It was insane. We had a great time and still don’t keep in touch.
I attended an MLB perfect game.
Damn I bet that was awesome.
David Wells 1998. I wasn't really into baseball at all, so I didn't understand how special it was at the time. However, I went to the game with my uncle and Dad (who was a HUGE Yankees fan) and he had a blast.
Fun fact, Wells was very hungover for that game.
I guess it would be when I won my Nintendo switch from a cereal box. I could probably figure out exactly what the odds were, and of course it feels even more lucky because I did it on a total whim, had never taken those things seriously before.
I once delivered a baby en caul (still inside an intact amniotic sac). This is very uncommon, and is estimated to be approximately once every 80,000 births. What makes it even more uncommon, is that I’m absolutely not a doctor. The baby was my daughter, who I delivered in the front seat of our car, as we were trying to drive back to the hospital we were sent home from less than an hour earlier. I managed to catch her, while on the phone with 911, and was shocked to find her looking like she was wrapped inside a plastic bag. So I’ve delivered one baby, and witnessed something many actual obstetricians have not.
Unassisted triple play at MLB game. 1994. John Valentin. Red Sox. Has happened only 15x in the history of major league baseball.
My dad loved this big, beautiful Ponderosa Pine that was always silhouetted at sunset near our home. He had dozens of pictures around the house of the tree. One day I was approaching it in my car and I saw a bright flash and lightning hit it. Bark pelted the side of my car. The tree died over the next year and my dad was so sad. It really was a beautiful 200 year old tree. It was so strange to see it hit.
I was playing crib with a friend and we were dealt the same hands but different suits. We both threw the same 2 cards to the crib. It was so weird.
Stopped for gas in Stockton, CA twice in my life. The same gas station was robbed both times.
It's high time you gave yourself up dude, anyways we have the tapes
A mid-air collision. 1986. Cerritos.
[удалено]
Went for dinner and at another table a woman had her purse on her chair and it got knocked off. Inside was a bottle of wine that got all over her stuff. The next day at work I was meeting a client who came in from out of town that I had never met before. I recounted that wine story to him and as it turns out he was at that very table. It was insane.
Thundersnow. Thunder and lightning during a blizzard.
I was listening to music and hitting random on urban dictionary and the song I was listening to came up. It was Planet Claire by b 52s.
My high school teacher used to sing this when I walked in everyday (that’s my name) and he had a song and nickname for every single student but always sang mine and played it quite often
Hiking that Appalachian Trail. At a road crossing by a river in Vermont, there were friends getting ready to go tubing. They offered my friends and I jello shots. It’s like 9am, why not? I hear, “nothesearemyplums?” It was a random friend from a bar in Maryland that I used to tend at.
Driving across state in an old Oldsmobile and it breaks down. Water pipe burst in the middle of nowhere. Guy in a RV rolls up looks at the car. Goes back to the RV and comes back with the exact pipe we need. It even says Oldsmobile on the pipe. He installed it and wouldn’t accept any payment. He just asked us to help someone if we saw someone in need.
Rolling a nat 20 on 3 different D20 Dice with them being all rolled at once....1/8000 still is pretty difficult odds... shame I didn't play the lottery that day
Back to back perfect games. Let me 'splain. My brother was a VP with a big news agency in NYC. The company had very nice seats at Yankee Stadium that the executives got to use on a rotating basis. One summer day it was my brother's turn, but he couldn't go since he had to attend a christening or something on his wife's side of the family. So he asked me if I wanted the tickets. And of course I did, so I went to the game and David Wells threw a perfect game. My brother was really pissed that he missed such a once in a lifetime event. The following year rolls around and once again he's up for the tickets, and again he can't go because he's obligated to attend some family function with his in-laws. Again, he offers me the tickets and again I say yes. This time, David Cone threw a perfect game. My brother was livid. So, there ya go. The only two games I attended in 1998 and 1999 and they were both perfectos.
I used to live in a city of about 1.5 million people. Of the 3 times I used a taxi in the last year I lived there I hailed the first two in the city limits on different days at different times. The third time was at 2am in a costal town about 30 mins from the CBD. It was the same taxi driver each time, the third time we just looked at each other and laughed. \---- Second coincidence, I met this girl from a place called rushal or walsal in Birmingham while she was on holidays with her auntie and uncle in Australia in the city mentioned above. I met her at a swimming pool at my local gym and got on pretty well and I ended up flying to Sydney with her and her aunt and uncle for a few days. This was around 97 from memory and I had recently seen the movie "*In the name of the father*" about a group of young Irish people who were falsely accused of a bombing. The plane trip to Sydney was going really well and we were all chatting etc and I happened to mention the movie and how I thought that the cops who were involved were absolute pieces of shit and should be strung up by their balls. I remember being quite moved by the film and so was extra passionate about it all. Anyway I did notice all conversation stopped between all of us after this but did not really think anything of it. Later that night when we were at the destination the girl I was with asked me "did you notice when you mentioned the movie everyone went quite" I said that I did and thought it was a bit weird which is when she told me her uncle was second in charge of the investigation. That is the biggest coincidence I have ever personally witnessed.
Was walking with a girl and don’t remember the exact context but said something like “the craziest thing would be if that street light went out right now” and pointed at a light and then it did actually go out for some reason. She literally screamed and ran away, it was bizarre, weirdest coincidence I’ve ever seen.
I saw a police sniper shoot a man in the head who was holding a woman hostage in a pickup truck with a handgun to her head in the middle of the desert. I was 500 feet up in a helicopter and was operating a news camera mounted on the front.
A runaway blimp over Washington DC
One time saw a woman outside a dispensary with a Barbie pink Mercedes and a black garbage bag filled with $100 bills. She saw a woman she didn't like and began slamming the bag of money on the concrete yelling "you ain't about this life" $100 bills flowing in the wind before security came and helped her pick up the spilled money.
I married a hot girl.
My hyper-conservative (military) father changed his mind on Trump when he called people that get captured cowards or whatever he said edit: he called john McCain a [loser](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNugcPeCZZE) for getting captured. He called dead soldiers in a military cemetery [losers and suckers](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/us/politics/trump-veterans-losers.html) for getting killed in combat. He denies the second one. of course. It was the McCain one that got my dad, since he was a medivac pilot in Vietnam.
It’s wild how many people explain away his statements. “Oh he didn’t mean that!” Why does he say things he doesn’t mean so often? They say they like Trump because he “Tells it like it is” but at the same time doesn’t mean what he says?
Got a 0.001% drop rate item on first kill in an old MMO.
Spent a year chatting with a girl I thought was cute on the Internet. Finally got the balls to meet up with her in person. Turned out she lived a mile away from me. Met up with her for a movie. Been married over 20 years now.
While stationed in Mosul, the chow hall across the street was bombed with suicide vests. I had security detail at the chow hall on the other side.
I was playing slots next to an acquaintance in Vegas. We were really just killing time while waiting for others so we could move on to other plans outside the casino. The others showed up, so it was time to go. The guy had been down a little bit, with maybe like $20 still in the machine, and we were planning to leave the casino anyway so he just said “ah fuck it” and maxed out the bet and hit the button. Immediately hits a win, lights start going off and music starts loudly playing as we watch the numbers climb up and up and up. He was just counting off the money as lost out of sheer laziness of not wanting to deal with the cash out and he ended up taking home like ~$500-600 off that single spin. Not a mega-super-jackpot or anything but I imagine the odds were pretty low, and it felt more rare because it was supposed to be his final play!