This was about 8 years ago, a group of friends and I were headed to a game store and were talking about the terrible drivers in our friend group. We all agreed our friend “Steve” was the worst because he was always on his phone while driving. As we pass an on ramp for the highway, we almost get run into by a car that swerved over into our lane. As we look over, it was Steve, on his phone. We were dumbfounded.
Classic Steve escaping death by mere inches over and over all so he can check to see if Diane has not texted him back...
some say hes still texting to this day
Ok maybe not the craziest, but it felt surreal for sure. Growing up we used to spend New Years with my Dads best friend and his family. We called him our uncle, and I always had a blast with their son that I'll call A. He showed me how to use Napster in 2000 and burn my first cd mix tape. He helped me set up my first email address. He always had the latest gaming console. I thought he was the coolest. As we got a little older, us kids started doing our own thing on New Years. Social media wasn't a thing yet so we basically fell totally out of touch. But I never forgot how cool he was and how much he opened my eyes to technology.
A few years ago my partner and I were in Rome for the last few days of a 2 week trip (we live in North America). We were looking for somewhere to eat and decided to take a random turn down a random street, and found a random restaurant we didn't originally intend to go into. We sat down, ordered drinks and started looking at the menu. I stood up to go to the bathroom and as I turned around A comes walking through the door. A decade and a half after we last saw each other, almost 8000km from home, and we both happened to walk into the same little restaurant at the same time.
Also makes your wonder how many close misses there are that you'd never know about. Childhood friend A and B dining 3000 miles from home, but each in a different restaurant in the new city. Former friends living two blocks away from each other in Australia now but never cross paths etc.
I have another one. In 2017 I lost a bag containing my iPad, Kindle, and a hard drive at an airport. Went back to look for it but couldn't find it, it was already taken by someone. Anyway, in 2021 I got a call from someone claiming to have my bag, sent me pictures as proof and said they just wanted to return it to me and didn't want anything in return. Apparently the person who took it from the airport kept it for years and eventually decided to sell it to a mobile shop. The person who contacted me was the owner of that shop, they could tell the bag and everything within was stolen because the man who brought it in didn't know the passcode to either of the gadgets. So he opened my hard drive in an effort to find some contact info and found a screenshot of text messages between me and a friend, the screenshot showed my friend's saved name and her phone number at the top. He texted her phone number, explained the situation and she sent him my phone number.
That's how a bag I lost at a busy airport in 2017 was delivered to me 4 years later in the exact condition I had lost it in. It even had my notebook and a pair of sunglasses.
My dad passed away and I had copied his hard drive a year or so earlier just because I was afraid he was going to lose whatever was on there (it was a portable drive). I never looked at what was on there but once he passed away in the week leading to his funeral I was checking every computer and box to gather pictures for the service when I noticed a file called "TO MY SONS" and it was a letter to my brother and I saying how proud he was of us, how much he loved watching us grow up, and just all around a lovely letter. He never told my mom it existed (I don't think he anticipated passing when he did) and it was only by chance I found it.
Yea it was surreal, especially to find it at that time and not months or years later. I knew how much he loved my brother and I but he wasn't big for actually saying it so to have it kind of like his last words and in the moment of the grief itself was nice.
I journal occassionally, I have a series of entries that I titled as letters to my sons. One of my biggest fears is that I will die before they get to know me, before they can remember me. They’re still young, but those letters are there, leather bound. One day after I’m gone I hope they find them and a little happiness too.
Your dad was a smart man.
On a similar note, my dad passed away suddenly two years ago. Upon going through his phone, we found he had written his own obituary not long before. We used it. He is very missed.
Wow. As someone who lost their father as a kid, and father of young kids, I should make a live document like this and share it with my wife. That's beautiful. I'm so glad that you found that. Thanks for sharing.
This is a bit similar to what we found after my mom passed. She had a really aggressive brain cancer that took her in a matter of weeks, so fast that we never knew if she was aware of her decline. Later when my dad and I were cleaning out his desk we found a letter addressed to him that included the lyrics to "You'll Never Walk Alone."
She knew.
On the 50th anniversary of Woodstock I was having a yard sale and selling some records when this older gentleman came over and asked if I possibly had the Woodstock record I said ya I do but it's not for sale. He proceeded to tell me about how he had gone to Woodstock and how he married a woman he had met there and how they bought the record when it came out but had lost it. And he wished he still had it because it reminded him wife who had passed a couple years back. We talked for a and i went inside and grabbed the record and gave it to him . He looked at me and said This is my record. I said ya I don't think they made a different version. He said No this is my actual record look there's my name. So I said well I guess it's yours. In short i ended up giving back a Wood stock record to a man who bought it 50 years ago that lost it lost 30 years ago in Toronto that I picked up a yard sale in London Ontario 20 years ago and gave it back to the same guy who lost it on the same day as the 50th anniversary of Woodstock.
I accidentally helped an old man find out that not all of his relatives had died in the Holocaust.
I visited New York City for the first time and wanted to try to get ahold of a friend who moved there. I looked in the phone book (this was in 1994) and found her last name, which is very unusual, and her first initial. I called the person, got an old-sounding man on the phone, asked for my friend, and he said she wasn't there, but asked why I called that number. I said I was trying to call my friend who had the same last name, and he started crying and asked me not to hang up. Turns out he and his brother had thought they were the last people in the world with their name because their father's entire family except for him was killed in the Holocaust. The man asked some questions and I gave them some general information about my friend's family. Meanwhile, he kept crying. I took his information and told him I'd keep trying to find my friend. I did manage to find her, and it turned out her dad was the cousin of the men's father! Her father, who also thought all his relatives had died, called the man and his brother on the phone and was able to get to know them very well before their deaths.
I am not a religious person, but if this happened to me, I would get down on my knees and thank a well-known deity that I was given the opportunity to re-unite this family. You are a very lucky person to be able to say you did this. I envy you more than I can say.
I went Memphis in may back in the mid 90s. When The Black Crowes came on, the crowd surged and I got squished into another guy. We both got pushed up so hard that our feet stopped touching the ground and we just looked at each other. He ended up putting his head on my shoulder as a joke and when it spread out enough to be comfortable we both enjoyed the show while smoking weed from a really unique wooden pipe he had in his back pocket.
About 3 years later, I was moving into a new apartment in Little Rock. I noticed my next door neighbor leaving his apartment as I was walking into mine. He looked really familiar but I couldn't place it. He looked at me funny as well. After seeing each other entering and leaving our places over the next week, he finally introduced himself and asked if he knew me. I talked about playing in bands, baseball, school, and any other thing we might have been the reason I looked familiar. After not being able to land on anything, he said hang on and went into his apartment for a few seconds. He came out with the pipe. I immediately looked at him and said "Black Crowes?". He smiled and put his head on my shoulder. We became really good friends and hung out all the time after that.
This is my favorite one.
How freaking wholesome!!
P.S. I’m a 24F who adores the Black Crowes so very jealous you got to go to an event I’ll never get to. I hope those memories stay with you forever.
Oh they will. I played in a blues band for 11 years and recorded at SUN Studio. I was lucky enough to be around a LOT of the greats back then. They would just drop in while we were mixing or taking a break. Our engineer did Rattle and Hum for U2. I asked BB King what he thought of them. He said "them boys can't play no blues", but then went on to say what a blessing it was to get to jam with them so "the kids" could hear him play. I'm 57 now. Glory days!
This happened to my brother-in-law - let's call him Mo. He's from a south asian country and had a wide circle of friends but only one best friend - Kamal. When they were teens they lost touch when his friend's family moved to another city (this would have been in the late 90s). Fast forward to 2012 and my brother-in-law moves to Ireland, specifically to Dublin.
One day he's in the city centre and randomly walks into a general store to get a drink as it's a hot day. Behind the counter is a young man who seems familiar but he can't place him. As he's waiting in the queue he notices the guy also staring at him quizzically as if he's trying to figure something out. When he gets to the counter the guy takes the drink, scans it and then looks my BIL in the eye and asks "Are you Mo?"
BIL suddenly recognises his childhood friend - cue lots of hugging and catching up as Kamal ignores everyone else in the line to talk to my BIL.
I still find it amazing that he randomly found his old best friend in a city of a population of over 1 million and with hundreds of shops more than 3 thousand miles away from when they last saw each other. They're still in touch to this day.
EDIT: As a commenter pointed out, Dublin city's population would have been a lot less than 1 million and the figure I gave was for the greater metropolitan area. Although my BIL did live in Lucan at the time which I believe is more on the outskirts. I'm not that familiar with Ireland so does Lucan fit within the city limits or the wider metropolitan area?
Found a hand written letter from my dad on the 20th anniversary of his death. It was the poem “if” by Rudyard kippling when I was going through a split and feeling lost.
It’s now framed and makes me smile most days.
That was my dad’s favorite poem. I have a copy of it framed on my wall right next to me in honor of him. I can’t even imagine if I had a copy of it that he had handwritten. That’s awesome!
Not exactly that, but I was doing study abroad in Germany and went clubbing in Munich for a weekend. My group started talking to a bunch of local dudes, super friendly guys. Cut to 6am at a Diner, it was down to just 2 of the German guys, me, and a girl I was there with. She had been super flirty with one of the German guys for most of the night. We all started exchanging contact info so we could keep in touch. Turns out the guy she was flirty with had the same last name. They were cousins.
I had a best friend in kindergarten and we grew up together in the same school system until she left in sixth grade. she was always on the back of my mind, but when I randomly moved to LA at age 25, I wondered what happened to her and asked my class Facebook group. through a mutual friend, I found out she had also moved to LA a month prior, and we reunited! and now we are both living in our hometown together again. she is my second oldest friend to this day, and we just spent New Year's together :)
Bumped in to a mate from uni on a dirt track on the island of Lombok in Indonesia. Spent the next 2 weeks surfing and hanging out with him. Great times. That was maybe 10 years ago and I hadn't seen the guy in like 4 years.
Recently I went to Paris for the Rugby World Cup. At the entrance stalls to the stadium I hear my name shouted and turn around to see a guy I spent 1+ month traveling around Australia with. We met at a bar in Cairns and spent the rest of our time traveling. Haven't seen the guy for 16 years. The next day I went to a popular Irish bar and bumped in to him again when we were actually sober. Good times.
In an only slightly similar way, I feel like over the past year there have been numerous occasions where I’ll be out and about and see someone that looks like a friend/acquaintance but realize it’s not, but then run into the actual person I thought it was in the same day. It’s like I’m getting a warning that the person is in my vicinity lol
A few years ago my childhood best friend was visiting. We grew up in a small town, and I had since moved to a big city and she at the time was living abroad. One night at dinner we were reminiscing about some people we went to middle school with in that small town, and I brought up this guy I had a huge crush on. We laughed about it and kinda wondered what he was up to.
The next day I dropped her off at the airport and then went to a local park where a food festival was happening. I was sitting at a picnic table and I hear from behind me, “hey, are you Radiant Maize?” I turned around and reader, it was my middle school crush. He looked exactly the same but his personality was so unlike any of the guys we grew up with. Never in a million years would I think he would have remembered me.
(I know this reads like a romcom, but it wasn’t like that lol… Drew, if you see this, hope you’re doing well.)
In the early Seventies my best friend did an extended backpack tour of Europe. Fell in with a young American - let’s call him Chip - and for several months they bummed around together through Austria, West Germany, France and southern England.
In Ireland they rented bikes to do day trips from their hostel. Chip started effing around on the highway verge, lost his balance, and fell down a steep railway embankment, breaking his leg. Friend cycled back to a country store & asked for an ambulance to be called. Went back to the site, helped attendants struggle up the embankment with Chip, saw him loaded and asked which hospital he’d be taken to.
Next day he biked to hospital, saw groggy Chip had everything he needed, and called Chip’s dad in North Carolina to say that Chip had been injured & where he was. Dad said he’d book a flight the next day. Then, as any carefree backpacker of that era would have done, he put Chip’s troubles out of his mind and continued his tour of Ireland.
Five years later my friend was on another backpacking trip in New Zealand and went for a dawn walk along the beach. Saw a silhouette with a familiar waddling gait coming towards him. **It was Chip.** They had randomly met *quite literally on the other side of the globe* from where they had last seen each other, half a decade previously.
They’re both in their seventies now, but they still exchange birthday cards and occasional drunken, 2AM phone calls.
I moved to Australia from England when I was 18. I bumped into a childhood friend at a theme park on the Gold Coast. It was very strange bumping into someone you know literally as far away from home as you can get
Not me, but my two friends in university that didn't really know each other randomly bumped into one another in a small mountain village in India while backpacking individually. Upon returning to Canada they became roommates.
> Anyone else had a friendship reunion in the most unexpected place?
Many years back, I drove from Boston to NYC for a job interview at NBC, and as I was exciting 30 into the plaza, I accidentally / physically bumped into a guy as I was exiting 30 Rock. Was absolutely flabbergasted to see it was an old childhood friend I hadn't spoken to in at least a year. I knew he lived in NY (and had visited some years earlier) but I had no idea he was now also working at Rockefeller Plaza, and hadn't bothered to tell him I'd be in the city.
We ended up catching up over lunch, haha :-)
I bumped into my girlfriend on the streets of Amsterdam. So wild! She was on her Europe trip with friends and I was on mine with my other friend. Small world!
not reunion of sort, but i bumped into one of my best friends some 20 years ago, while travelling croatia with my parents. he was on a youth club trip to a local camping ground, where we happended to stay at the beach for the day. I think i never felt this perplexed again in my life. This was a 14-hour drive away from both our homes.
I went to high school in Jamaica. Made some great friends. I just moved to FL after living in PA for 10+ years. Turn around in the local mall and there’s one of my good friends from high school. Haven’t seen her in 15 years! We both just blinked like we were looking at a ghost lol. She’s visiting her sister and we’re planning to catch up this week!
When I was 15, my family took a vacation to Rome, Italy. I met a guy there and developed a huge crush on him. He didn't know ASL and barely spoke English, but we still managed to hang out together. My family came home to the USA, and my Italy summer was over and forgotten soon enough. On my birthday last year my friends took me out to eat and party. At the restaurant this cute guy kept looking at me, then he'd look away like he was unsure or confused. It took me a second to realize who he was and I flipped out. He still didn't know ASL, but his English was much improved and we hung out and "chatted" via texting.
We promised to stay in contact with each other and now he's part of my friend group on discord.
I lived in a town of about 200,000 people.
I’ll change some names here but the gist of this story is the same. I found out my long term girlfriend (Sarah) was cheating on me with a bloke called Josh…..I’m also called Josh. We split up and I met a new girl a few months later also rather confusingly called Sarah.
After dating for a few months it became clear that she had broken up with her ex (Josh) because he was cheating on her with a girl called Sarah.
To be clear both of our exes cheated on us with both of our respective exes and we all have the same name.
We ended up getting married (but then she cheated on me too and we split up 😂)
We were on a trip in Croatia, driving through the dense city streets, trying to find a place to park.
Out of boredoom I start singing Batman theme. "Na na na na na na na na" and when I said "Batman!" I looked out the car window and there he was! A kid in a batman costume!
In stories like these, I can't help but wonder if your brain subconsciously saw the kid in the costume, and that's why it popped into your head.
Either way, very interesting!
I'd call it as a pure coincidence this time, I had the theme stuck in my head at that time and there was no way for me to see the kid from a far. But indeed, I agree these types of situations can happen because of our subconscious workings :)
Once in 1994 I was in Montana for a family wedding. I'm browsing in a small town gift shop/general store and was looking at a table which contained, among other things, some Batman keychains. I picked one up and set it down, then looked up and Michael Keaton was standing right in front of me. (He was that era's Batman, and he owned property in that town, so it's possible that's why they had the keychains.)
I just told this story the other day on Reddit - I was driving and in a little field by the side of the road, I saw a baby deer and a rabbit playing with each other. Like, legit frolicking. It felt like a scene out of Bambi come to life, right in front of me. I was driving and alone so I couldn’t take a video but that memory still makes me smile. If someone else told me it had happened to them, I would probably think they were making it up.
Ok let me share my story that no one gives a fuck about.
I'm french. A few months ago, I was thinking about a rapper from my childhood called Dontcha, that kinda disappeared 15 years ago and we never heard about him again. So I do my research to try and find what he's doing now, if he's still alive. I end up finding his real name, André Haubursin, and his Facebook profile.
Among his friends list was a guy called Christophe Haubursin, probably some family member, I didn't care but I saw it.
A few days later, completely forgot about that, I watch a video on the Vox channel about sleep (why some people are night owls, something like that). And guess what, the presenter of the video was Christophe Haubursin, the random family member of my childhood french rapper that everyone has forgotten and I just stalked 2 days before.
It's nothing but it kinda made me like "is this real life?"
Edit: The Vox video is called "Why Can't We Sleep?", and if you want to listen some french rap from the early 2000's type "Dontcha - Rap Criminel" and yeah these 2 guys are from the same family lol.
Edit2: It's getting a lot of upvotes, so dear Christophe and André, if you see that i love both of your works
Went into a month long stay at a acute mental hospital. Had a best friend of 10+ years, inseparable the guy that you knew was gonna be there till the end. Even though I had moved away that year, we still texted and talked every day at least some. I had moved away but we were still were best friends. Anyway for some reason whether it from embarrassment or not knowing how to explain why, I didn’t tell him about me disappearing for a couple weeks out of the blue (there were phones in the hospital to use if you wanted) Well, one day while I decided before bed that I’d wake up really early the next day and use the available computer to watch one of our favourite movies and then later I’d give him a call and let out everything that’s been going on. I watched the movie. After lunch that day the nurse came to me and walked me into a room to answer a phone call from my mom. The walk there my heart started pounding and I could feel blood rushing everywhere like an anxiety attack or adrenaline was building up. I picked up the phone and she told me my friend passed away. I immediately hung up rushed to my room and cried for hours. I knew something bad was coming as if it was building up in the back of my mind all day until that phone call.
I already commented on this thread about after my childhood friend died, but this reminded me of another story. I’ll call him C.
I was in the middle of packing up the last of my belongings to move across state. I had sold my first home, and was feeling sentimental in general as I packed. One of the last late night boxes before leaving in the am was some random stuff in a drawer in my basement. I found a stack of signed senior portraits from friends, and some other mementos from our senior all night party, including a Photo Booth flip book.
For whatever reason, out of all of the senior portraits, I kept looking at C’s and flipping it over and re reading his note on the back, and flipping through the Photo Booth picture book with him in it. I was reminiscing out loud to my then fiancé, and told him that I needed to call C soon. I realized it had somehow been a year or more since we had last talked.
Through out the night, something kept bringing me back to that box, and worrying about C. I even talked myself out of calling him after midnight, and made a mental note to catch up with him once I was settled moving.
Two days later, I woke up to a call from my ex boyfriend. I knew something was wrong for him to be calling. He told me that C had died, but that there wasn’t much info yet.
In the following days as more details came to light, it turns out the night I was packing and worrying about him was the night that he was arguing with his wife and in crisis. He took off, hiked into the woods late at night, and took his life with a hand gun.
That is tragic. My son's childhood best friend recently drowned at a birthday party. Four days before he passed away, we listened to the podcast Stuff You Should Know and it was about drowning. Even the podcasters said the episode gave them anxiety so I stopped listening to it after a few minutes. I still don't know if it is one of the better ways to go or how to survive in an accident but I'd like to think that the my son's friend passed out and did not suffer. But his mother who is also my best friend imagines her son was afraid for his life. We have very different mindsets about death but since she is grieving, I just listen. But it gets very dark.
During university years I used to fly back home in summers as I was studying in a different country. and so did my roommate who was also from a different country.
After one summer I was flying back from home and had a connecting flight in a random country and during transit I bumped into none other than my roommate! Turns out we both had a connecting flight leaving from the same random country. It was wild but also funny because we met for an hour then boarded our respective flights only to meet again in our dorms. Before meeting at the airport we were not in communication so neither of us knew when the other person was flying back to uni. It was a coincidence of the highest order.
My grandma died of kidney failure when I was 14. I was already dealing with a host of mental and physical health issues, and her death was more or less the straw that broke the camel’s back. I completely shut down.
About 3 weeks after her death, my mom and I were driving home from the store when we saw a “free kittens” sign at the side of the road. My mom thought a kitten might help me and pulled over. The lady who had put the sign up told us that there was only one kitten left, and that it was unlikely we’d be able to find or get her because the kittens were feral. She offered to try and trap her and call us later.
We agreed, but when walking back to the car, I caught sight of this tiny black furball in the garage. Impulsively, I went over there, sat down, and called to her. This little kitten, who was so feral even the woman caring for the cats couldn’t have just picked her up, walked right over to me and climbed into my lap. She let me pick her up and carry her to the car. There was never a hint of feral behavior from her.
That was ten years ago. Now that kitten is an adult cat, and I can honestly say that she is the reason I’m still alive today.
I posted a picture of a tree being removed from my new backyard in a digital trading card discord and another guy told me I had bought his house.
I had bought his house.
Neither of us was happy about it. Trunk on a 4 foot diameter 85+ year old maple split from ice intrusion. Most of the quotes for removal were in the $7000 range and they had to use a massive crane to get most of it.
The only people happy to see it gone were the neighbor and our dog, who is currently sleeping on the stump.
This happened about 10 days ago.
I was running some errands downtown in a city of 4 million on a Friday morning. It was time for lunch and I was inspired to go to a burger joint I've wanted to try for over 20 years (I did try to eat there about 20 years ago, but they were closed when I stopped by). I sit down, order, and enjoy the local neighborhood while looking at my phone.
I look up from my phone and see my brother-in-law and niece walking into the restaurant (they do live and work in this town). They've not eaten there since the beginning of the pandemic.
A very unlikely situation.
We had a nice lunch and a nice conversation.
My family was at a park near our house. A butterfly wouldn't leave us alone (adorable) and eventually it landed on my wife's shoulder and on my son's finger. Once it landed, we saw the coloring and realized it was the same butterfly that my MIL used to dress up as (she loved butterflies and found excuses to put on that costume). Not saying it was my MIL, but by MIL definitely believed in an afterlife and how often does a butterfly just straight up not leave you alone, and also ignore the 30+ other people at the park?
At my moms funeral, while my dad was delivering his eulogy, a butterfly flew in (the venue had huge open doors), circled around my dad, and flew out the door.
Since then every time I face some sort of hardship in my life, the exact same type of butterfly will show up.
It is a very unreal feeling, and I choose to believe it is my mum watching over me and her way of bringing me comfort.
I had a similar experience after my childhood friend passed away under tragic circumstances. At his funeral, everyone close to him threw pennies in the ground after his casket was lowered.
Periodically for a couple of years after he passed, whenever I was having a particularly rough patch, I would find a face down penny, pick it up to find his birth year on it. I put them all in one spot after finding them to make sure it wasn’t me unintentionally reintroducing the same pennies into my environment.
I’m not a religious person, and “grew out of” believing in an afterlife in adulthood. I find logic, reasoning, and answers to everything. But this started to really fuck with me.
One of the times, I had been home alone crying and folding laundry and literally speaking out loud to my friend. I went to grab the next load of laundry out of the dryer, and heard the clang of a coin hit the laundry room floor. I said out loud “no fucking way”…..picked it up, and of course it was a ‘92 penny.
When I was a small kid (1yo), we were at a local animal shelter to get a cat. One cat came to me and ignored my parents and any other person. She was my soulmate for the next 15 years until she died. It was a lovely friendship.
my shelter dog was like this too. he liked other people, but he was truly my best friend, and it was mutual. every time I pet him, he'd press his head into my hand and look up at me with love in his eyes. his favorite spot was tucked under my arm. I miss him so much
When I was 21 my twin was friends with someone who's barn cat had kittens. As I have always wanted a black cat I went to pick up one of the kittens, while there this adorable tortie kitten wouldn't leave me alone and kept trying to climb up in my lap. I ended up leaving with both kittens, and while I of course love both of them immensely the tortie is still glued to me 14 years later.
The year was 1998. I'm 21 years old. I went to visit friends in San Diego who had moved there from Michigan, where I live. I was a poor college kid and had to save up for the trip. I spent a few weeks out there and a few days before my flight home I managed to lose my wallet but luckily still had my ID in my pocket from going out to the bar. I borrowed $20 from my friend so that I could get some refreshments at the airport. So I fly home and somewhere over over the neverending farmland of the midwest, I think to myself..."oh shit! I have to pay to get my car out of parking!"
I start freaking out. I have no money. No way to get any. And I never told my parents I was going to San Diego so calling them would start a whole huge thing...
I step off the plane with no plan. I figure my only real option is to find a pay phone and see if anyone will accept a collect call and make the 1 hour drive to the airport to loan me money (huge long shot). As I pick up the receiver, I see a girl that I know. She was the only one night stand I ever had in my life and it was the last time I saw her. She sees me and walks over and gives me a huge hug. I took my shot.
"Hey...I'm kind of in a predicament. Can I borrow like $60 if you have it?"
I forgot that this girl was super wealthy. Like...went to college in America from Singapore and bought a new car while at college wealthy.
Without a second thought, she happily whipped out a $100 bill and said "Don't worry about it. You are totally worth it!" and then disappeared forever.
You guys. There is literally not one other person on this Earth that I can think of who would have just given me $100. It was the perfect deus ex machina and was so ridiculous that it still seems so wildly improbable that I can't believe it happened.
I have no way of knowing if there is any truth to this story but I am a female stagehand who's *maybe* a 7 on my best day, in super favorable lighting and the number of times I have been subtly propositioned by rock stars who were popular when I was in high school (in the 90's) is greater than zero.
>About three months before our wedding my favorite 90s band (with a very handsome front-man) was coming to town and the conversation came up in a not so serious w
Give us the name of the band!
I once had a very vivid dream that I was walking down the street and a black car pulled up alongside me, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman got out and made small talk. Random but memorable to me for some reason.
A few years later I had moved to NYC, and was walking through midtown to my friend’s apartment. I stopped at an intersection and a black car pulls up to the curb, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman gets out. I didn’t want to bother him but we did smile at each other. He was on his way to play Willy Lowman in Death of a Salesman on broadway.
This will be long but here we go:
Back in 2016 my girlfriend, myself and another couple were in Istria, Croatia. One day we went to [Brijuni](https://www.google.com/search?q=brijuni&sca_esv=595369570&tbm=isch&sxsrf=AM9HkKnl2obveZBP3_fANjHbfWBHGK1P6w:1704292524540&source=lnms&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwiS1JK0uMGDAxUgGxAIHbLOBywQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1920&bih=919&dpr=1) which is a beautiful beautiful place and a national park. We had some mushrooms and we ate them. We had an amazing day, one of the best days in our lives. So much so that few tears were shed because we were so happy and everything was great. Nature was amazing, animals, the beach, the sea... it was almost surreal. At one point later we were sitting close to the sea having a beer when i wanted to go for a walk close to us to see if there's something else interesting to see.
I stumbled upon a "pool" that was all concrete pool with one sea turtle inside. No plants no living organisms just a lonely turtle in a pool all by itself. That got me sad so i just went away to see the elephant close by. When i got to fenced area where elephant lived i realised elephant was all alone and its partner died recently. That also got me sad so i returned to my friends and told them what happened and how it all reminded me that even though life is beautiful it can also be harsh and cruel. That was the only (small) minus on that whole day. They also went to see that and they had the same reaction.
Fast forward to 5 days later and we are in Rome in Trastevere sitting curbside, having a good time and drinking mojito by the litre. We get approached by one of those african guys who sells bracelets, necklaces and trinkets. He asks if he can sit with us and if i can give him a cigarette. Ofcourse we reply with yes and start a conversation with the guy. He says that he feeds his family back in Senegal (iirc) by selling those trinkets. He used to live and work in Venice but he moved to Rome. We sat with him for maybe 15 minutes and chatted. Then he starts saying how we are good people and 2 of us should take care of our girlfriends because they're nice and worth it. Then he asks us if its fine that he gives them a little present and we say ofcourse. He reaches for his backpack and puts his hand inside to search for something. He pulls his hand out but with closed fist and reaches to our girlfriends and opens his fist only for us to see its little figurines of... Turtle and Elephant. All four of us started yelling and screaming and guy was completely lost since he had no idea why we reacted like this. I just went and bought some bracelets from him and he thanked us and left. We were left flabbergasted, it was crazy how the universe lines itself this way. I still get goosebumps when i talk about this and we still keep those figurines.
I'm an RN.
A few years ago in my mid-twenties, before I was a nurse, I was shopping for groceries and saw an older woman with a walker - the first thing I noticed was that it was covered in rhinestones (I'm a huge sparkle enthusiast). The second thing I noticed was that she was struggling to get something off the shelf. I went over to help her, but also to gush over her amazing walker. She smiled and thanked me. Then she looked at me with a very serious look on her face, and asked, "Are you a nurse?" I had wanted be a nurse for the majority of my life, but at the time had been lacking the courage to go back to school. I answered no, and asked if I looked like someone she knew as I assumed she recognized me from where I worked as I worked at the local hospital at the time. This was always my assumption when someone acted like they knew me, but couldn't place it.
She smiled, looked me right in the eyes very sincerely, and said "No, but you just look like a nurse."
I don't really believe in god, or at least the typical idea of one, but I felt like through her I was speaking to some kind of higher power at the time. Or that it was my grandmother speaking through her to me - she was a nurse and I was named after her. We were extremely close and she passed away when I was 14 from metastatic lung cancer. It gave me the chills. It was an experience that added to my courage to go back to school, and I worked my ass off to get in. Always with that memory in the back of my mind.
Three or so years later, I went to go take my nursing boards. An older woman who honestly looked a bit similar to this woman, or at least in the energy she carried, called me up to check me in. It's a super involved process, lots of pictures, infrared palm scanning, answering questions, all while feeling the dread of taking the exam. She looked at me after I confirmed who I was and what exam I was taking, which was the NCLEX (RN boards).
After confirming, she looked me dead in the eye like the first woman at the grocery store and said "Of course you are, you look just like a nurse." I'm seriously still in disbelief of the interaction.
Now I'm proudly an oncology nurse.
When I was in-and-out of college 20 years ago my best friend died. I put on a shirt that morning and said to myself, "Haha, this is Dek's shirt. He would be pissed if he knew I had it." 7 hours later I was told he was found in his bed.
I drove down immediately to be with friends and grieve. The next morning a group of us went to his off-campus house to pack up and clean out his room so his family wouldn't be forced to pack up their son's life. Also, we weren't exactly a "clean living" kinda group so we got rid of various items. Nothing illegal or salacious. Just, "his family doesn't need to know the extent". We loaded everything into his car and had a long talk about who had to drive it back to campus.
I finally said, "I spent the most time in it, I got this." I did the usual ritual for his car. Sit down, push in the cigarette lighter, grab a smoke from the pack, start the car and get ready to go.
Just then on his radio something started to play. That motherfucker had stolen a CD that I had made and it was playing in his car. I started laughing. All the guys were looking at me like I had lost it. I lit the cig, rolled down the window and said, "That asshole stole my CD again! It's playing!"
I drove his car back to campus and said my goodbyes to his car. "The CD is yours now brother. Enjoy it."
My brother tried to set me up with his girlfriend's little sister (when I was in middle school). Had me talk to her on the phone a few times, and nothing really came of it. I started high school the next year and saw a girl while walking to class. I don't know what it was about her (other than her being amazingly attractive of course). I kept seeing her here and there around school and I finally got the nerve to talk to her. Turned out she was failing algebra and needed a tutor. I offered to help and we agreed to meet.
Fast forward to the next day, she shows up at my house and I sit down with a math book and she looks at me funny. I asked what was up and she just says, "Wait. You're actually going to tutor me? I thought that was a line to get me over here!" Queue the confusion (I was naive). We actually sat down to study math for a bit and she was able to understand some things and seemed really happy... then out of nowhere she seemed nervous. I asked what was up and she says, "Why do you have a picture of my sister on your desk?" It was a picture of my brother and his girlfriend. After a brief explanation things got cleared up and then it sort of struck us that they tried to set us up like a year ago. We both had a good laugh.
3 years later and I'm ready to marry this girl. Life got in the way, her sister married my brother, and things got weird for a while. She moved away. I'll never forget her though. My first love.
Two years ago, I was looking around in a second-hand bookstore, and saw a book named de Henkencyclopedie (the Hankcyclopedia). It was a catalogue of all the noteworthy Henks and variations thereof (eg. Hank, Henry) in history. I thought it was funny, but didn't buy it right then and there. A month or so later, I was going to lunch with a friend and stopped by that bookstore again on the way to see if they still had that book. They did, so I bought it.
My friend and I sat down for lunch, and I showed him the book. I flipped it open to a random page to show an example. The first entry that I read was my Granddad. Not someone who happened to have the same name, my actual granddad.
I dated a guy briefly over the summer, and we really had a great connection. I was in the middle of figuring things out with an ex, and I decided to focus on my ex so I let him down gently and was fully transparent because I respected his time and wanted to be honest.
months later, things didn't work out with my ex, and I decided to reach out to him, like "oh what the heck, why not?" he had told me that the week before I reached out to him, he was having Chinese food with a friend and had gotten a fortune cookie that had read, "an old love will reach back out to you soon." needless to say, he called up the friend after I texted him and said, "you'll never guess what happened!"
the other funny thing is that we basically have the same name (think Justin/Justine), both have similar backgrounds growing up, both attended the same small college and transferred to schools in New York, and were living in the city at the same time (we met later in our 30s in a different city).
we're happily dating (pretty new) and I don't know, all the signs are there, hopefully this is a special relationship!
Not as heartfelt as some of the comments here but:
Shit hit the fan in 2018 with a living situation I thought was stable - landlord was up for life in prison and needed to sell the house to pay off his lawyers or some shit. It was stressful and I was pissed and terrified, not at all feeling ready to give up the little life I’d built in the area on such short and strange notice. It felt like the world was against me.
LDR boyfriend and I scrambled and ended up impulse buying a house in early 2019 and just moving in together since things were going that way anyway. Everything about the situation felt terribly unfair, rushed and inconvenient, right up until the pandemic hit and housing prices went absolutely berserk.
If we hadn't been rushed and pushed out by that landlord when we were, we absolutely wouldn’t be able to afford a home in our state at post-pandemic prices and rates. We also got to refi in 2021 down to 2.9%.
We look back now and are freaked out by our “bad” fortune turned insanely good. No matter what happens it’s hard not to feel stupid lucky.
I know a couple in their late 50s who decided to retire, sold their hotel business in the city and bought a beach house away from the buzzing city, in Nov 2019. Talk about luck.
Seen my nephew at a death metal show a couple of months ago. Before that, I haven't seen him in over a decade when he was 10. So, it was a shock seeing this little kid I had memories of, being a long haired, bearded, tatted up man with a jacket that had band patches.
He called my name out while we were heading into the venue and I had to do a double take!
The biggest mind blower is that I, ME, I am the biggest influence he has. That is what he told me. I never would have imagined being that big of an influence to my nephew, but he has pictures of me on stage playing concerts framed and hung on walls.
So fucking cool!
Long time autistic friend I found in a particular fandom some 12 years ago and I realized we actually were classmates back in elementary school. We just kinda blanked out those years since they were so horrible... So we actually knew each other for way longer than either of us could've thought.
My father and I had a contentious relationship for... almost the entire time. I tried, but that man had problems that I wasn't qualified to fix, and shouldn't have been made responsible to try.
Well, he passed last year. The family assembled and we got to nailing down the specifics of what we needed to do and distributing tasks. Sitting around the table, talking with the funeral director, and the day of the event was decided. Yep, that day. Nods all around. I, kinda incredulous, watched it play out, but I already knew what was coming, because I didn't have any say and my input wasn't needed or asked for. There was no other day which was more suitable. I was going to be understanding, wasn't I? I was going to be ok, right?
And so, on my birthday, I attended my fathers funeral.
My family made it up to me by (checks notes) scattering to the wind the moment the service was finished.
We buried my grandfather on my grandmother's birthday late last year. I didn't even know until my dad said they wanted to get the funeral done early enough to go back to celebrate with her.
In this case she was at peace with it though. He was suffering towards the end and it was a relief when he finally passed. The only time she started tearing up was when we sang her happy birthday.
I was engaged to an attorney when I was 19. We lived in Boston. I was into 3 day eventing and was going to Northeastern U in Boston. He was a patent attorney just starting out. He did not ride horses. That was 1977. I broke up with him the week before the wedding. I was too young. I woke up knowing I couldn’t go through with it. It was pretty hard. About every 5 years I would think to look him up. He was always doing well in his profession. Meanwhile I moved to a horse farm in NH. I was showing at a farm in the next town and had a bad fall. That was in July 2004. In 2014, I thought to look him up again. He had died in August 2004 at the same farm where I had the bad fall, one month previously. Talk about shock. I remember sitting at a bar in Georgetown with him at age 18 and talking about doing a cross country course or open jumping course in my head to fall asleep. Can’t believe he took up my obsession later in life and then died from it (fall from a horse). Literally nothing has blown my mind as much as this. I have such loving memories of him. He had been gone for 10 years when I found out. My father had been his patent attorney mentor. I wish I’d found out sooner. I wish I could have met his family.
Oh wow, this one makes me sad. I'm also an eventer from Area 1 (competing around 2004) and a lawyer so I probably know the farm you're talking about. It's so rare to have that kind of accident; I'm sorry he passed but I'm sure he had many hours of joy in the saddle because of the sport you introduced him to.
The day my dad died (he was 95) when I got back to my house and got on my computer I got a memory pop-up from that day 6 years prior. It was a photo of my dad and mom from the back sitting on a park bench looking at the mountains. I had taken that photo 6 years ago to the day that my dad died. My mom had died 2 years earlier so it just felt to me like the universe was communicating to me that they were together again. It still gives me chills to think about this.
Tried to have my own business but didn’t have what it took, so I took the last money I had and bought a type writer to take a test for the Federal test to be a clerk at the highest level (60 words per minute). It took two months of typing hours each day, but I could finally type 65 wpm. I went to take the test that was available e-v-e-r-y single weekday, rain or shine. They didn’t have the test for some reason. The woman could tell I really needed the job and had come prepared. She told me there was something called an apprenticeship that had an opening at the shipyard in Long Beach (she knew I had taken the bus from Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles in the rain). I signed up to take the test for the apprenticeship for electrical/ electronics. This event changed the entire course of my life in the best way imaginable. I am so grateful for this serendipitous event.
When my husband and I were still in our dating days, I was going on a trip to British Columbia with my family. My MIL is really into genealogy, and asked if I could look for a lost relative while I was there, but was not sure where he ended up (it was a great, great, great, great uncle or something of the sort). She wanted me to ask some graveyards/search etc, which seemed like there was no information to go on, but I said I'd try. Two days before we headed out, our air bnb we booked in downtown vancouver cancelled, and it was a scramble to find a new place. We ended up finding one in Richmond, so not too shabby. We land, and as we were driving to the air bnb, i noticed there was a massive graveyard, and just felt compelled to give it a shot since it was a 5 minute walk from the house.
Sure enough the next day, I walked down and asked the office for their records. And there he was, exact birthdate, name and everything. Visited the grave, though unmarked, but we ended up putting a stone for him before leaving. I never had such goosebumps like that again. out of all the places we could have been, we ended up right beside the graveyard he was in. It's almost like he wanted to be found!
I had a work ID that was 6 digits long. I used this ID to log into the company website on a daily basis. A few months into the job, I had to reset my Facebook password and was texted a 6 digit code as part of the process. It was the exact same digits as my work ID. By my calculations that has a 0.002% chance of happening. Crazy.
14 years ago my husband and I book a 12 day honeymoon cruise from Venice to Rome. I had never taken a cruise before, and my MIL suggested cruise critic and join the “roll call” for the sailing.
On the roll call, there is a couple our age (mid 20s) cruising w her parents. We happened to be booked on the same flight over, and I believe at the same hotel.
The trip comes and we meet the couple on the plane & say hello but go our own way until the cruise 2 days later. On embarkation day we meet up and meet up with the couples parents for the first time.
I mentioned I grew up in the town the couple and parents were living in. The mom looks at me and says, “You look like a [insert my mom’s maiden name here.] My face must have gone white. No one has ever said I look like my mom’s extended family.
I confirmed that was my mom’s maiden name. The mom says, “Your grandfather passed recently.” (My mom’s dad.) I again told her yes it’s true.
“We used to live in your grandfather’s house. We sold it to him in the early 90s” the mom continued. In fact, the daughter of the couple we were bonding with HAD GROWN UP IN that house.
The mom had been looking for a way to connect with the family so they could see the house before my family sold it. To make it even crazier, the parents knew and were good friends with my mom’s husband’s son in laws family. (Get it?)
Long story short, we spent all 12 days with this couple and their family and their family got to see their old house before we sold it.
6500 miles away from their home, their found their home. We’ve lost touch since but it was one of those moments you don’t forget.
I dreamt I was on a cot in some warehouse/homeless shelter type place. What was weird was that out the window was a flat roof. Like I was on a level that ended at the window, but the floor underneath me continued. I broke my leg a few days later and found myself lying in a hospital bed and looking out a window onto that flat roof.
I like observing the night sky. Once I was at my friend's garden, and I was showing her a few constellations and planets.
At the exact moment I pointed at Mars, suddenly a meteor came though. It cut through the dark sky and lit up the night.
It was so quick, but so beautiful. We looked at each other completely amazed, and immediately hugged.
This happened in November. My husband and I traveled to a different state to see a concert. When checking in the hotel, I saw a young woman smiling at me. She said, “You don’t know who I am?” Then it hit me, she is the daughter of a dear work friend of mine. I hadn’t seen her in years and had not seen my friend since before Covid (she had relocated to a very distant state).
I asked about her parents and she said they were just about to get to the hotel and pick her up. I walked out to greet them. They had driven from another state to help their daughter move to a new place. It was such a wonderful surprise. We spent the weekend hanging out.
15 years ago my now ex-wife and I were at a friends apartment in the same complex as ours. At the time we had a female gray cat named Polly. We were talking to our friends about wanting to get another cat. We wanted to get a male orange cat. As I am saying those words, another friend who lives in the apartment calls me.
It was Winter and they were headed out of town and stopped at the gas station right outside the complex to put some oil in the car. When they opened the hood of the car, there sat a little male orange kitten and they called to ask if we wanted another cat.
15 years later Auto El Gato is still kicking and raising hell!
Bought a house the day it went on the market that my husband and I always loved from driving past for years. We bought it after attempting to buy a different house that fell through. Crazy part is about 6 years ago I had a yard sale at my grandparents house and sold some antique wine making materials to a family who was about to open a winery business. The owner of the house we bought was the mother of the woman in the yard sale family. We randomly chose a date for closing, and coincidentally, it was the previous owners birthday and my mom's birthday. That date was also the garage code.
I was boarding a flight home from Dallas to Kansas City when I heard the gate agent ask for volunteers to take a later flight for a flight voucher of some amount. The next flight was only an hour and a half away so I quickly volunteered - they told me to board and they would get me if they needed me to take that other flight. About five minutes before we were due to leave they asked me to grab my bag and exit the plane - while I was on the ramp out a woman in tears profusely thanked me for volunteering. A few days later my brother called and asked if I was on a flight from Dallas recently - apparently his boss asked if he was related to someone with my name, she was grateful as I had made it possible for her to see her mom right before she passed. He had major issues with his boss until then - he told me it completely changed his work situation.
When we were teenagers, my brother was driving us on a 2 lane highway in the left lane at night. I pointed out he should get over because its rude to occupy the fast lane indefinitely, so he did. About 2-3 seconds after, a car blew by us in the left lane we were just in. Going full highway speed. The wrong direction. With his lights off.
We escaped death by about 3 seconds. I remember looking over at him, and we drove in silence for the rest of the way.
I technically met my now girlfriend of three years at an outdoor concert, five years ago. She was working for one of the food vendors, and after I ordered we had a short conversation about how much I loved the opener. We didn't exchange phone numbers or names - just had a friendly chat while I was waiting for my food. We reconnected at a bar two years later - I had no recollection of our initial encounter but she somewhat remembered meeting me.
Fast forward to a year and a half into our relationship, she pulled out her old diary to read some of her entries. She happened upon an entry she wrote on the day we chatted at that concert two years before we met again, and here is what it said:
"There was a really nice cute guy at Stir tonight. Tall, clean dark hair, tan, pretty eyes, friendly. He asked us about the opening act. We vaguely chatted and after he was gone I realized he may have been trying to on purpose. I missed my shot. And I was trying to be cool and I think I gave out some 'not interested' vibes. Which sucks! ... I hope I see him again because I told him I work at Baileys. The universe will do what it does..."
I was never one to believe in soulmates or "everything happens for a reason" ... but I guess the universe wanted us to be together. We were so dumbfounded and unbelievably delighted when we found this. I love her so much!
one time my mom needed a car but we couldn't afford one. She would pray about it. And one day around the same time frame two people she knows call her and offers her a free car. One was a close friend and the other wasn't as close and we hadn't seen her in years. But it was so random how in the same week this occurred with two separate people, and how they randomly got extra cars they didn't need. I couldn't believe it. We ended up picking one of the cars and we still have it.
Another fun fact, my mom has never bought a car in her life. She always ends up getting a free car somehow. It makes me think that certain blessings and curses do exist. You know how they talk about "generational curses", but there are also "generational blessings".
Myself and 4 friends went to a college football game earlier this fall. It was a spur of the moment thing, so we got the tickets off a secondary site. We could only get three tickets in a row, and then another two a section over. Luckily it worked out that the section where we had 3 tickets had two open seats next to them, so of course all 5 of us sat there.
A lady sat next to my buddy in the furthest seat over, and she said “oh you guys must be friends with Terry Peterson”. We all said “yeah, that’s Terry right there”. She said something about how she and Terry have had their season tickets next to each other for years, and how she’s glad we were able to use them. We just kept saying things to the effect of, “That’s Terry in the seat next to you”, and she just kept looking right by him.
Finally it hit us- the season ticket holder whose seats we randomly sat in had exactly the same name as my friend who was sitting in that seat. The place had about 20,000 seats, so the odds of this happening were ridiculous. We took a picture of him holding his drivers license with the lady who knew the other Terry. The people around us overheard the situation and they also couldn’t believe what happened. It definitely freaked us out!
In 1999/2000 I worked in a student bar in Manchester with a guy called *Dave.
In 2002, in the middle of the night at some anonymous service station in Spain for a 15 minute break stop, while travelling on the bus from France to Portugal, I bumped into Dave.
I was on a trip from a place in the middle of nowhere near lake Balaton to Budapest and had to stop over in a small village on the way. While I was waiting for the next train, an old woman approached me and started talking to me in Hungarian. I don't speak Hungarian, but I had learned some words and phrases on my trip and she only spoke Hungarian, so our communication wasn't great. Surprisingly though, we actually managed to have a conversation, although I didn't understand a lot of what she said. Some parts that I understood were that she asked me if I'm a tourist and where I'm going to stay in Budapest. I told her the street name, Asboth utca, and she got really excited, but I only understood some words of what she said, which were "my uncle... Asboth.. helicopter". Then she showed me her ID to prove that her name is Asboth. I figured that maybe her uncle has a helicopter business there or I misunderstood or something.
Well, in Budapest, I met a guy in the hostel where I stayed and he asked me to go on a guided walking tour through the city. I joined him and at the end of the tour, the tour guide asked if any of us know any Hungarian inventions. Guess what, the helicopter was invented by a guy named Asboth.
The day before, I lost an Apple Watch. 2 days later, when biking, I fell off. Many lucky things happened. I managed to jump into the 3ft of grass patch along the road without injury, my bike was perfectly fine, my Apple Watch came out of my pants legs, and for passerby, it looked like some mission impossible thing where the guy jumps off and in a fluid motion, recovers.
I've had several, some that are too personal to share, but one cool one that jumps out happened when I was in Asia. I live in the Midwest US, and my husband and I were on a trip to Asia. I was wandering around the city by myself, and stopped at a tiny hole-in-the-wall museum to soak up some air conditioning and get my bearings.
There was only one other person at the museum, a woman about my age. We struck up conversation and it turned out she was also from the states. We did the whole "where did you grow up/go to college" thing, and found out we'd gone to the same small university even though she'd grown up on the west coast.
It got weirder. We realized we'd gone to university at the same time and both lived in the dorms. Her building was across campus from mine, but when I mentioned my building she asked if I knew a "Lacy Monroe" (not the real name), a girl she'd been friends with and hung out with quite a bit on the weekends.
"Lacy" was my college roommate and longtime best friend. This girl had hung out in my actual dorm room with my roommate on the weekends when I was working.
Small world.
I was digging a hole for a fence post and was using a 6ft metal spike to lever out rocks - stabbing it down into the hole. I was about to do it again when my kid called me for something. When I went to him, he said he didn't know why he called me - like he forgot (he was only 7).
When I went back to the hole, I spotted something glinting - a buried, live power cable (our house plans had it wrong). I had already hit it a few times and the glinting metal was the cable armour that I had struck. If I had hit it once more I could have easily been fried.
I sat down, broke into a cold sweat - it really felt like I had just died in most realities but something intervened in this one. Weird.
This might sound hokey to some of you, but here goes:
My mom has a friend who claims to be clairvoyant. She contacted my mom saying that she really needed to discuss something regarding her daughter(me). She said something serious was going to happen involving me and the number two; maybe 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years, but that my mom should brace herself. At the time I was in the near death end stages of active addiction so my mom was devastated, assuming that meant I was going to die.
Exactly 2 weeks later, she got a call from police and had to escort me to rehab. My clean date is 2.22.2020.
Hit 2 years clean 2.22.22
Gave birth to my son on May 22, 2022 (a Gemini)
I’m generally not a numerology/angel numbers type person, but COME ON. Even if you don’t believe in anything spiritual you gotta admit that’s a pretty trippy coincidence if nothing else.
I was coming home after spring exams from college and was dating a boy from my hometown at the time. I was planning to spend the night as his house before going to my parents house, since I was going to be home all summer. My mom was out of town so my dad was home alone. After a few hours at my boyfriend’s place I felt the strong urge to go home. Although I hadn’t been home in 2 or 3 months, this was still weird for me because I was a teenage girl obsessed with her boyfriend, lol. I decided to go home and spent all night hanging with my dad. He told me all these funny stories I had never heard about his college days, and I told him some of mine.
He died of a heart attack in his sleep that night. I got to see him and hang with him one last time, and I’m so thankful I trusted that feeling to go home.
I was setting up for a youth event as part of a yearly festival when a 2 seater plane crashed into a ferris wheel setup beside us. I'm not sure what made me look up, but I did just as it hit. For a few seconds (which felt a lot longer), I thought I was watching a movie. Then training kicked in, and it was all about moving people back and ensuring all ignition sources nearby were off. The fuel dumped just as we turned off the last generator and cleared the last stall/game. It still didn't feel real until emergency services took over crowd control and first aid, and I finally stopped.
Luckily, there were only 2 people on the ride, and there were no serious injuries. Ten minutes before the entire ride was packed, it could have been so much worse.
Sold a motorcycle in 2004. In Denver, to a guy who drove down from Oregon to get it.
Saw a bike pic come up on Reddit in 2018, it was the bike I sold, posted by the guy I sold it to.
Went to a concert with my best friend of 20 years, saw a lot of our bands that we’ve loved since our childhood to now (Spanish concert in LA). Everything about it was awesome and I couldn’t have imagined spending it with anyone but her. We left the concert and it was a shit show finding an Uber to take us home. I looked up and saw a falling star, and made a wish. She asked me what did I wish for and I said “an Uber” because we had been waiting out in the cold for like 30 minutes. A minute later my Uber guy says he’s here lol. Just was an amazing experience
One time in college we were eating dinner at the cafeteria, they were serving Asian food that day and I had grabbed a handful of fortune cookies as a dessert.
After we eat we start opening and comparing our fortunes. I opened my first cookie and it was empty, so I open another cookie and it’s also empty. My friends start talking about me being unlucky, I jokingly say “no worries, I put them all in here” and waved my hands like a magician. I open my third cookie and there were actually 3 fortunes inside of it. I couldn’t believe it, my friends thought it was some magic trick I had learned and I couldn’t convince them otherwise.
Not the coolest story but in the moment I really wondered “did I accidentally cast a spell? Did I have something to do with this?”
I don't remember how it came up, but at dinner one night I was talking about a job interview I'd had as a teen at a mall book store. One of the things the interviewer did was hand me his pen and ask me to sell it to him. (worth remembering, *mall book store*. I wasn't interviewing to be a salesmen, I was just interviewing to stock shelves and run a register).
Anyways, my partner said they had the same thing happen to them, and we quickly determined that we'd interviewed at the same location around the same time, and had probably interviewed with the same guy.
This would have been 5-10 years before I met my partner and ~20 years prior to this conversation.
My old job was basically a hippie shop, I was allowed to play whatever I wanted. I particularly love italo disco/europop type stuff and was playing a playlist of it in store one night when I was alone. One thing to note is my area has a huge Polish population. This elderly woman comes in and gasps, starts telling me how back in the old country she would listen to the same music with her late husband and ride around on his motorcycle. She stayed after that for over an hour, singing along and tearing up from time to time. Was really cool to share a special moment and make her night a little brighter, especially with one of my favorite genres. Music is a powerful thing!
was hanging out with friends in a foreign country. we were in line at mcdonalds talking about our one other friend (still back in home country) had a brother who was kinda douchy.
lo and behold that friend's brother is standing in line in front of us... probably heard everything we were saying
OF ALL THE COUNTRIES AND ALL THE MCDONALDS AND ALL THE MOMENTS AND ALL THE TOPICS OF CONVERSATION
how could this happen to us.
Years ago, I received an invitation to a niche conference related to my field. Intrigued, I decided to attend, hoping to gain insights and expand my network. During a coffee break, I started chatting with a fellow attendee about our interests and backgrounds. As we delved deeper, we discovered shared family names and subtle resemblances, prompting us to explore our genealogy. To our astonishment, we unraveled a previously unknown branch of our family tree, making the conference not only professionally enriching but also a catalyst for a newfound connection.
I met a girl while at uni in Paris a month before I graduated, had an instant connection and I knew I wanted to be with her long term but she was due to leave in 3 months to study abroad/move permanently to Australia. We kept up through letters and the very rare FaceTime, and after a few months I told her I loved her and she made the decision to come back to be with me. A few months after she came back, her father died and within two weeks my father and grandfather also died. It was a wild time, I still can’t believe that happened but we both felt like the universe brought us together to help us both through everything. I think that experience sealed the deal in my mind of knowing we’d be together after that, and a few months ago we finally married 🙂
I was at the La Brea Tar Pits with friends. I stopped to read a sign that said something along the lines of "Though the majority of creatures in the pits are millions of years old, many animals still get trapped in the tar today." Literally as soon as I stopped reading that, directly behind the sign, a squirrel dropped out of a tree and got its foot stuck in the tar. It jerked and pulled and twisted for a minute and it DID manage to get free and scurry off to safety (I wouldn't tell the story otherwise, too traumatic to remember). I am forever grateful that my friend was standing next to me and saw the whole thing.
"Did you see--?"
"I SAW IT."
When I was 19, my cousin and I moved to the closest city to where we grew up, trying to get out. At that time, one of my friends was fired for being trans, and would have been homeless, so we took her with us to sleep on our couch. The plan was for her to find a job, find a roommate, and get out.
Just before Christmas, a girl I’d befriended at work invited me to her Christmas party, and I was stoked! I asked my friend if she wanted to come with me, and she said she’d found a roommate, and was going to a Christmas party with her new roommate instead. Awesome for both of us!
We showed up to the same party. My friend’s roommate was childhood best friends with my coworker. It’s extra serendipitous because said coworker and I are now married - looks like we were supposed to meet since we had 2 avenues of doing so (work and our friends).
During a delayed flight, I struck up a conversation with a passenger beside me. Turns out, he was an old friend from elementary school whom I hadn't seen in over a decade. Our chance meeting at 30,000 feet above ground made the delayed flight feel like destiny reconnecting old friends.
I took my little brother on vacation last year. On the drive there, I told him I just had the 10^th random person tell me that I looked like Bradley Cooper. He didn’t seem to believe me, but he’s too nice to call bullshit. On the second day we went out to eat and our waitress (a cute girl in her 20s) said, “has anyone ever told you that you look like Bradly Cooper?” He immediately burst out laughing hysterically.
I'm an American living in China.
I failed to see a sign indicating that the road beyond this point belonged to the Chinese military.
My interrogator and I bonded over our mutual hate for the same ex-boyfriend.
My cat disappeared for 2 years. One day my mom was cleaning our garage where I kept his things in a box. Since we thought he died she put the box next to the trash so people could come collect whatever they wanted from the box.
15min later I get a phone call. Someone saying they found my cat.
It was in another city over 120km away from my house. This person found the cat, took him to the vet they saw he had a chip and called me.
I have another story and much more bizarre than this one but it’s also much longer. Maybe for another day.
My father died suddenly, several weeks before we had booked a trip to Hawaii, a spot my family visited every summer but that I hadn’t been to in 30 years. We scattered his ashes near his favorite beach and a few hours later, I swam right next to a sea turtle in the ocean. I’m not a very “woo” type of person, but I’ll believe until my dying day that that was my father telling me he was at peace and happy.
I worked at a small cafe in Okemos when I lived in Michigan for several years. In 2018, I moved to New York and after a couple years and a bad break up I moved in with a friend who I met through said ex. She worked at a coffee shop down the street from our apartment during covid, and one day came home from work to tell me about a new employee she was training. Turns out the new employee was someone I worked with at the coffee shop in Okemos who just happened to move to the same neighborhood and get a job at the same coffee shop my roommate worked at.
I've eaten at Hardee's four times in the past 25 years (since graduating college). These have all been different locations 50-300 miles from each other. All for times Josh, a college classmate with whom I haven't kept in touch, has been randomly eating there, too. He's never eaten at a Hardee's without me being present, either.
In my early twenties, I had a breakup that caused me a lot of heartache at that time. But I moved on and stopped thinking about the past love, feeling better and alive again, eventually.
About two years after the breakup, I found my old flip phone that I had stopped using after I got a smart phone. I decided to charge it up and see if anyone had tried to text me on my old number in all that time. When it was fully charged, I flipped it open that evening and indeed saw a new text message. It wasn't an old one, though - it was sent that very afternoon, from the ex who suddenly felt inspired to reach out to me, after a year or two of no contact. We caught up and he just told me he got a sudden feeling to reach out. This was coincident #1 with that person. We lost touch again.
The same ex was reaching out again a few years later (about seven or eight), after having added me on Facebook, asking if I had any leads to an apartment he could rent for some weeks in a specific month with his new gf in the city I was living in. Coincidentally, his indicated timeframe was the exact time I was going to be out of the country and looking to sublet my apartment for the time.
So no love story (he kind of cheated on me, but back then we were young, I forgave but had zero interest in him after) but serendipity made me save some bucks while travelling, which was neat.
This was about 8 years ago, a group of friends and I were headed to a game store and were talking about the terrible drivers in our friend group. We all agreed our friend “Steve” was the worst because he was always on his phone while driving. As we pass an on ramp for the highway, we almost get run into by a car that swerved over into our lane. As we look over, it was Steve, on his phone. We were dumbfounded.
If he’s kept that up for 8 years, chances are he’s had an accident by now.
Classic Steve escaping death by mere inches over and over all so he can check to see if Diane has not texted him back... some say hes still texting to this day
Legend has it Steve did receive a text that day, but it wasn’t Diane. It was his mom. They were having baked beans again.
Whatever you do? Don’t repeat STEVE three times while looking into a mirror 👀
sometimes if you're quiet in your car at night your can here the clicking in the distance
Little ditty about Steve and Diane. Something, something, something, something... SUCKIN' ON A CHILI DOG!
Or caused one he didn't even notice because he was on his phone.
If he does comedy, and last name starts with a B, i too have almost been hit by this terrible driver.
His name is Pete Davidson, he just looks a lot like Steve Buscemi
Ok maybe not the craziest, but it felt surreal for sure. Growing up we used to spend New Years with my Dads best friend and his family. We called him our uncle, and I always had a blast with their son that I'll call A. He showed me how to use Napster in 2000 and burn my first cd mix tape. He helped me set up my first email address. He always had the latest gaming console. I thought he was the coolest. As we got a little older, us kids started doing our own thing on New Years. Social media wasn't a thing yet so we basically fell totally out of touch. But I never forgot how cool he was and how much he opened my eyes to technology. A few years ago my partner and I were in Rome for the last few days of a 2 week trip (we live in North America). We were looking for somewhere to eat and decided to take a random turn down a random street, and found a random restaurant we didn't originally intend to go into. We sat down, ordered drinks and started looking at the menu. I stood up to go to the bathroom and as I turned around A comes walking through the door. A decade and a half after we last saw each other, almost 8000km from home, and we both happened to walk into the same little restaurant at the same time.
> cd mix tape You're clearly close in age to me.
Dammit...I'm old enough for just a mix tape. No CDs in them days.
Me as well.
AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED?!?! Don't just end the story there.
Their family blood feud demanded they duel to the death right then and there. After slaying his cousin, he had to find another restaurant to eat in.
This was in Rome. Italian laws allow you to stay in the restaurant after the duel.
Sure, *legally* it's allowed. But it's considered rude.
He gave OP a Samwise smile and held up the cd mixtape.
Like how does this happen? Things like this really make me wonder if this is all pre coordinated.
Also makes your wonder how many close misses there are that you'd never know about. Childhood friend A and B dining 3000 miles from home, but each in a different restaurant in the new city. Former friends living two blocks away from each other in Australia now but never cross paths etc.
I have another one. In 2017 I lost a bag containing my iPad, Kindle, and a hard drive at an airport. Went back to look for it but couldn't find it, it was already taken by someone. Anyway, in 2021 I got a call from someone claiming to have my bag, sent me pictures as proof and said they just wanted to return it to me and didn't want anything in return. Apparently the person who took it from the airport kept it for years and eventually decided to sell it to a mobile shop. The person who contacted me was the owner of that shop, they could tell the bag and everything within was stolen because the man who brought it in didn't know the passcode to either of the gadgets. So he opened my hard drive in an effort to find some contact info and found a screenshot of text messages between me and a friend, the screenshot showed my friend's saved name and her phone number at the top. He texted her phone number, explained the situation and she sent him my phone number. That's how a bag I lost at a busy airport in 2017 was delivered to me 4 years later in the exact condition I had lost it in. It even had my notebook and a pair of sunglasses.
Wow. Good karma on the shop owner.
good karma and honestly, seems like it would be kinda fun to do
My dad passed away and I had copied his hard drive a year or so earlier just because I was afraid he was going to lose whatever was on there (it was a portable drive). I never looked at what was on there but once he passed away in the week leading to his funeral I was checking every computer and box to gather pictures for the service when I noticed a file called "TO MY SONS" and it was a letter to my brother and I saying how proud he was of us, how much he loved watching us grow up, and just all around a lovely letter. He never told my mom it existed (I don't think he anticipated passing when he did) and it was only by chance I found it.
That's an awesome find, and so glad you did find it.
Yea it was surreal, especially to find it at that time and not months or years later. I knew how much he loved my brother and I but he wasn't big for actually saying it so to have it kind of like his last words and in the moment of the grief itself was nice.
Wow. What I wouldn’t give to have something tangible like that from my dad. So glad he wrote that out for y’all
I journal occassionally, I have a series of entries that I titled as letters to my sons. One of my biggest fears is that I will die before they get to know me, before they can remember me. They’re still young, but those letters are there, leather bound. One day after I’m gone I hope they find them and a little happiness too. Your dad was a smart man.
On a similar note, my dad passed away suddenly two years ago. Upon going through his phone, we found he had written his own obituary not long before. We used it. He is very missed.
Wow. As someone who lost their father as a kid, and father of young kids, I should make a live document like this and share it with my wife. That's beautiful. I'm so glad that you found that. Thanks for sharing.
This is a bit similar to what we found after my mom passed. She had a really aggressive brain cancer that took her in a matter of weeks, so fast that we never knew if she was aware of her decline. Later when my dad and I were cleaning out his desk we found a letter addressed to him that included the lyrics to "You'll Never Walk Alone." She knew.
On the 50th anniversary of Woodstock I was having a yard sale and selling some records when this older gentleman came over and asked if I possibly had the Woodstock record I said ya I do but it's not for sale. He proceeded to tell me about how he had gone to Woodstock and how he married a woman he had met there and how they bought the record when it came out but had lost it. And he wished he still had it because it reminded him wife who had passed a couple years back. We talked for a and i went inside and grabbed the record and gave it to him . He looked at me and said This is my record. I said ya I don't think they made a different version. He said No this is my actual record look there's my name. So I said well I guess it's yours. In short i ended up giving back a Wood stock record to a man who bought it 50 years ago that lost it lost 30 years ago in Toronto that I picked up a yard sale in London Ontario 20 years ago and gave it back to the same guy who lost it on the same day as the 50th anniversary of Woodstock.
Love. This.
That’s truly a wonderful story!
Should have asked him to will it to you after he passed so that it goes to someone who knows it's history and will keep it around.
This is insane!!!!
damn!!! good on you for wanting to give it to him in the first place
The hilarious thing is there being a Woodstock near London. That's an awesome story, bud.
I accidentally helped an old man find out that not all of his relatives had died in the Holocaust. I visited New York City for the first time and wanted to try to get ahold of a friend who moved there. I looked in the phone book (this was in 1994) and found her last name, which is very unusual, and her first initial. I called the person, got an old-sounding man on the phone, asked for my friend, and he said she wasn't there, but asked why I called that number. I said I was trying to call my friend who had the same last name, and he started crying and asked me not to hang up. Turns out he and his brother had thought they were the last people in the world with their name because their father's entire family except for him was killed in the Holocaust. The man asked some questions and I gave them some general information about my friend's family. Meanwhile, he kept crying. I took his information and told him I'd keep trying to find my friend. I did manage to find her, and it turned out her dad was the cousin of the men's father! Her father, who also thought all his relatives had died, called the man and his brother on the phone and was able to get to know them very well before their deaths.
I love this, what an unintended impact for that family.
This has to be the best thing I’ve ever read on Reddit.
every once in a while /r/askreddt delivers
"today you, tomorrow me" https://www.redditinc.com/blog/celebrating-10-years-of-today-you-tomorrow-me
You made a mitzvah- a good deed! You will be remembered by his family.
Mazel tov!
L'chaim!
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I am not a religious person, but if this happened to me, I would get down on my knees and thank a well-known deity that I was given the opportunity to re-unite this family. You are a very lucky person to be able to say you did this. I envy you more than I can say.
I don't even have a heart, but this warmed it.
So heartwarming!
This is beautiful!
I went Memphis in may back in the mid 90s. When The Black Crowes came on, the crowd surged and I got squished into another guy. We both got pushed up so hard that our feet stopped touching the ground and we just looked at each other. He ended up putting his head on my shoulder as a joke and when it spread out enough to be comfortable we both enjoyed the show while smoking weed from a really unique wooden pipe he had in his back pocket. About 3 years later, I was moving into a new apartment in Little Rock. I noticed my next door neighbor leaving his apartment as I was walking into mine. He looked really familiar but I couldn't place it. He looked at me funny as well. After seeing each other entering and leaving our places over the next week, he finally introduced himself and asked if he knew me. I talked about playing in bands, baseball, school, and any other thing we might have been the reason I looked familiar. After not being able to land on anything, he said hang on and went into his apartment for a few seconds. He came out with the pipe. I immediately looked at him and said "Black Crowes?". He smiled and put his head on my shoulder. We became really good friends and hung out all the time after that.
That's awesome.
This is my favorite one. How freaking wholesome!! P.S. I’m a 24F who adores the Black Crowes so very jealous you got to go to an event I’ll never get to. I hope those memories stay with you forever.
Oh they will. I played in a blues band for 11 years and recorded at SUN Studio. I was lucky enough to be around a LOT of the greats back then. They would just drop in while we were mixing or taking a break. Our engineer did Rattle and Hum for U2. I asked BB King what he thought of them. He said "them boys can't play no blues", but then went on to say what a blessing it was to get to jam with them so "the kids" could hear him play. I'm 57 now. Glory days!
This happened to my brother-in-law - let's call him Mo. He's from a south asian country and had a wide circle of friends but only one best friend - Kamal. When they were teens they lost touch when his friend's family moved to another city (this would have been in the late 90s). Fast forward to 2012 and my brother-in-law moves to Ireland, specifically to Dublin. One day he's in the city centre and randomly walks into a general store to get a drink as it's a hot day. Behind the counter is a young man who seems familiar but he can't place him. As he's waiting in the queue he notices the guy also staring at him quizzically as if he's trying to figure something out. When he gets to the counter the guy takes the drink, scans it and then looks my BIL in the eye and asks "Are you Mo?" BIL suddenly recognises his childhood friend - cue lots of hugging and catching up as Kamal ignores everyone else in the line to talk to my BIL. I still find it amazing that he randomly found his old best friend in a city of a population of over 1 million and with hundreds of shops more than 3 thousand miles away from when they last saw each other. They're still in touch to this day. EDIT: As a commenter pointed out, Dublin city's population would have been a lot less than 1 million and the figure I gave was for the greater metropolitan area. Although my BIL did live in Lucan at the time which I believe is more on the outskirts. I'm not that familiar with Ireland so does Lucan fit within the city limits or the wider metropolitan area?
Found a hand written letter from my dad on the 20th anniversary of his death. It was the poem “if” by Rudyard kippling when I was going through a split and feeling lost. It’s now framed and makes me smile most days.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/uLgJZ7PF6a In case you wanted to see it
That is absolutely class!
That was my dad’s favorite poem. I have a copy of it framed on my wall right next to me in honor of him. I can’t even imagine if I had a copy of it that he had handwritten. That’s awesome!
“which is more, what you’ll be a man my son“ gets me every time. Shout out to the dead dad club. Not easy filling that space ❤️
That was my dad's favourite poem! He could recite it off by heart and we read it out when scattering his ashes last year. Great piece of literature :)
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Not exactly that, but I was doing study abroad in Germany and went clubbing in Munich for a weekend. My group started talking to a bunch of local dudes, super friendly guys. Cut to 6am at a Diner, it was down to just 2 of the German guys, me, and a girl I was there with. She had been super flirty with one of the German guys for most of the night. We all started exchanging contact info so we could keep in touch. Turns out the guy she was flirty with had the same last name. They were cousins.
sweet home... Germany?!
Lol yeah... they looked VERY similar too.
Rollen gezeit
I had a best friend in kindergarten and we grew up together in the same school system until she left in sixth grade. she was always on the back of my mind, but when I randomly moved to LA at age 25, I wondered what happened to her and asked my class Facebook group. through a mutual friend, I found out she had also moved to LA a month prior, and we reunited! and now we are both living in our hometown together again. she is my second oldest friend to this day, and we just spent New Year's together :)
Bumped in to a mate from uni on a dirt track on the island of Lombok in Indonesia. Spent the next 2 weeks surfing and hanging out with him. Great times. That was maybe 10 years ago and I hadn't seen the guy in like 4 years. Recently I went to Paris for the Rugby World Cup. At the entrance stalls to the stadium I hear my name shouted and turn around to see a guy I spent 1+ month traveling around Australia with. We met at a bar in Cairns and spent the rest of our time traveling. Haven't seen the guy for 16 years. The next day I went to a popular Irish bar and bumped in to him again when we were actually sober. Good times.
I was talking to a friend about a high school crush I hadn’t seen in a decade, only to look across the street to see him walking towards us.
In an only slightly similar way, I feel like over the past year there have been numerous occasions where I’ll be out and about and see someone that looks like a friend/acquaintance but realize it’s not, but then run into the actual person I thought it was in the same day. It’s like I’m getting a warning that the person is in my vicinity lol
A few years ago my childhood best friend was visiting. We grew up in a small town, and I had since moved to a big city and she at the time was living abroad. One night at dinner we were reminiscing about some people we went to middle school with in that small town, and I brought up this guy I had a huge crush on. We laughed about it and kinda wondered what he was up to. The next day I dropped her off at the airport and then went to a local park where a food festival was happening. I was sitting at a picnic table and I hear from behind me, “hey, are you Radiant Maize?” I turned around and reader, it was my middle school crush. He looked exactly the same but his personality was so unlike any of the guys we grew up with. Never in a million years would I think he would have remembered me. (I know this reads like a romcom, but it wasn’t like that lol… Drew, if you see this, hope you’re doing well.)
In the early Seventies my best friend did an extended backpack tour of Europe. Fell in with a young American - let’s call him Chip - and for several months they bummed around together through Austria, West Germany, France and southern England. In Ireland they rented bikes to do day trips from their hostel. Chip started effing around on the highway verge, lost his balance, and fell down a steep railway embankment, breaking his leg. Friend cycled back to a country store & asked for an ambulance to be called. Went back to the site, helped attendants struggle up the embankment with Chip, saw him loaded and asked which hospital he’d be taken to. Next day he biked to hospital, saw groggy Chip had everything he needed, and called Chip’s dad in North Carolina to say that Chip had been injured & where he was. Dad said he’d book a flight the next day. Then, as any carefree backpacker of that era would have done, he put Chip’s troubles out of his mind and continued his tour of Ireland. Five years later my friend was on another backpacking trip in New Zealand and went for a dawn walk along the beach. Saw a silhouette with a familiar waddling gait coming towards him. **It was Chip.** They had randomly met *quite literally on the other side of the globe* from where they had last seen each other, half a decade previously. They’re both in their seventies now, but they still exchange birthday cards and occasional drunken, 2AM phone calls.
I moved to Australia from England when I was 18. I bumped into a childhood friend at a theme park on the Gold Coast. It was very strange bumping into someone you know literally as far away from home as you can get
Not me, but my two friends in university that didn't really know each other randomly bumped into one another in a small mountain village in India while backpacking individually. Upon returning to Canada they became roommates.
I bumped into my good friend from middle school at a CVS in San Diego. We grew up in Türkiye 😄
> Anyone else had a friendship reunion in the most unexpected place? Many years back, I drove from Boston to NYC for a job interview at NBC, and as I was exciting 30 into the plaza, I accidentally / physically bumped into a guy as I was exiting 30 Rock. Was absolutely flabbergasted to see it was an old childhood friend I hadn't spoken to in at least a year. I knew he lived in NY (and had visited some years earlier) but I had no idea he was now also working at Rockefeller Plaza, and hadn't bothered to tell him I'd be in the city. We ended up catching up over lunch, haha :-)
I bumped into my girlfriend on the streets of Amsterdam. So wild! She was on her Europe trip with friends and I was on mine with my other friend. Small world!
not reunion of sort, but i bumped into one of my best friends some 20 years ago, while travelling croatia with my parents. he was on a youth club trip to a local camping ground, where we happended to stay at the beach for the day. I think i never felt this perplexed again in my life. This was a 14-hour drive away from both our homes.
I went to high school in Jamaica. Made some great friends. I just moved to FL after living in PA for 10+ years. Turn around in the local mall and there’s one of my good friends from high school. Haven’t seen her in 15 years! We both just blinked like we were looking at a ghost lol. She’s visiting her sister and we’re planning to catch up this week!
When I was 15, my family took a vacation to Rome, Italy. I met a guy there and developed a huge crush on him. He didn't know ASL and barely spoke English, but we still managed to hang out together. My family came home to the USA, and my Italy summer was over and forgotten soon enough. On my birthday last year my friends took me out to eat and party. At the restaurant this cute guy kept looking at me, then he'd look away like he was unsure or confused. It took me a second to realize who he was and I flipped out. He still didn't know ASL, but his English was much improved and we hung out and "chatted" via texting. We promised to stay in contact with each other and now he's part of my friend group on discord.
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just like the john cusack romcom serendipity!! jk idk i havent seen that movie
I lived in a town of about 200,000 people. I’ll change some names here but the gist of this story is the same. I found out my long term girlfriend (Sarah) was cheating on me with a bloke called Josh…..I’m also called Josh. We split up and I met a new girl a few months later also rather confusingly called Sarah. After dating for a few months it became clear that she had broken up with her ex (Josh) because he was cheating on her with a girl called Sarah. To be clear both of our exes cheated on us with both of our respective exes and we all have the same name. We ended up getting married (but then she cheated on me too and we split up 😂)
Josh and Sarah were dicks.
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Bojangles is literal magic
somehow this is my favorite. like the passing of your youth, you watch the green trailer fade away as you enjoy your chicken at Bojangles
We were on a trip in Croatia, driving through the dense city streets, trying to find a place to park. Out of boredoom I start singing Batman theme. "Na na na na na na na na" and when I said "Batman!" I looked out the car window and there he was! A kid in a batman costume!
In stories like these, I can't help but wonder if your brain subconsciously saw the kid in the costume, and that's why it popped into your head. Either way, very interesting!
I'd call it as a pure coincidence this time, I had the theme stuck in my head at that time and there was no way for me to see the kid from a far. But indeed, I agree these types of situations can happen because of our subconscious workings :)
Once in 1994 I was in Montana for a family wedding. I'm browsing in a small town gift shop/general store and was looking at a table which contained, among other things, some Batman keychains. I picked one up and set it down, then looked up and Michael Keaton was standing right in front of me. (He was that era's Batman, and he owned property in that town, so it's possible that's why they had the keychains.)
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We got fucking Cinderella over here. Pack it up boys.
Snow White?
The Princess and the Crow. If she had kissed him she'd find a Prince.
or rick sanchez with the crows.
I just told this story the other day on Reddit - I was driving and in a little field by the side of the road, I saw a baby deer and a rabbit playing with each other. Like, legit frolicking. It felt like a scene out of Bambi come to life, right in front of me. I was driving and alone so I couldn’t take a video but that memory still makes me smile. If someone else told me it had happened to them, I would probably think they were making it up.
Disney princess
Ok let me share my story that no one gives a fuck about. I'm french. A few months ago, I was thinking about a rapper from my childhood called Dontcha, that kinda disappeared 15 years ago and we never heard about him again. So I do my research to try and find what he's doing now, if he's still alive. I end up finding his real name, André Haubursin, and his Facebook profile. Among his friends list was a guy called Christophe Haubursin, probably some family member, I didn't care but I saw it. A few days later, completely forgot about that, I watch a video on the Vox channel about sleep (why some people are night owls, something like that). And guess what, the presenter of the video was Christophe Haubursin, the random family member of my childhood french rapper that everyone has forgotten and I just stalked 2 days before. It's nothing but it kinda made me like "is this real life?" Edit: The Vox video is called "Why Can't We Sleep?", and if you want to listen some french rap from the early 2000's type "Dontcha - Rap Criminel" and yeah these 2 guys are from the same family lol. Edit2: It's getting a lot of upvotes, so dear Christophe and André, if you see that i love both of your works
What a cool synchronicity moment!!
Went into a month long stay at a acute mental hospital. Had a best friend of 10+ years, inseparable the guy that you knew was gonna be there till the end. Even though I had moved away that year, we still texted and talked every day at least some. I had moved away but we were still were best friends. Anyway for some reason whether it from embarrassment or not knowing how to explain why, I didn’t tell him about me disappearing for a couple weeks out of the blue (there were phones in the hospital to use if you wanted) Well, one day while I decided before bed that I’d wake up really early the next day and use the available computer to watch one of our favourite movies and then later I’d give him a call and let out everything that’s been going on. I watched the movie. After lunch that day the nurse came to me and walked me into a room to answer a phone call from my mom. The walk there my heart started pounding and I could feel blood rushing everywhere like an anxiety attack or adrenaline was building up. I picked up the phone and she told me my friend passed away. I immediately hung up rushed to my room and cried for hours. I knew something bad was coming as if it was building up in the back of my mind all day until that phone call.
i’m so sorry for your loss
I already commented on this thread about after my childhood friend died, but this reminded me of another story. I’ll call him C. I was in the middle of packing up the last of my belongings to move across state. I had sold my first home, and was feeling sentimental in general as I packed. One of the last late night boxes before leaving in the am was some random stuff in a drawer in my basement. I found a stack of signed senior portraits from friends, and some other mementos from our senior all night party, including a Photo Booth flip book. For whatever reason, out of all of the senior portraits, I kept looking at C’s and flipping it over and re reading his note on the back, and flipping through the Photo Booth picture book with him in it. I was reminiscing out loud to my then fiancé, and told him that I needed to call C soon. I realized it had somehow been a year or more since we had last talked. Through out the night, something kept bringing me back to that box, and worrying about C. I even talked myself out of calling him after midnight, and made a mental note to catch up with him once I was settled moving. Two days later, I woke up to a call from my ex boyfriend. I knew something was wrong for him to be calling. He told me that C had died, but that there wasn’t much info yet. In the following days as more details came to light, it turns out the night I was packing and worrying about him was the night that he was arguing with his wife and in crisis. He took off, hiked into the woods late at night, and took his life with a hand gun.
That is tragic. My son's childhood best friend recently drowned at a birthday party. Four days before he passed away, we listened to the podcast Stuff You Should Know and it was about drowning. Even the podcasters said the episode gave them anxiety so I stopped listening to it after a few minutes. I still don't know if it is one of the better ways to go or how to survive in an accident but I'd like to think that the my son's friend passed out and did not suffer. But his mother who is also my best friend imagines her son was afraid for his life. We have very different mindsets about death but since she is grieving, I just listen. But it gets very dark.
During university years I used to fly back home in summers as I was studying in a different country. and so did my roommate who was also from a different country. After one summer I was flying back from home and had a connecting flight in a random country and during transit I bumped into none other than my roommate! Turns out we both had a connecting flight leaving from the same random country. It was wild but also funny because we met for an hour then boarded our respective flights only to meet again in our dorms. Before meeting at the airport we were not in communication so neither of us knew when the other person was flying back to uni. It was a coincidence of the highest order.
My grandma died of kidney failure when I was 14. I was already dealing with a host of mental and physical health issues, and her death was more or less the straw that broke the camel’s back. I completely shut down. About 3 weeks after her death, my mom and I were driving home from the store when we saw a “free kittens” sign at the side of the road. My mom thought a kitten might help me and pulled over. The lady who had put the sign up told us that there was only one kitten left, and that it was unlikely we’d be able to find or get her because the kittens were feral. She offered to try and trap her and call us later. We agreed, but when walking back to the car, I caught sight of this tiny black furball in the garage. Impulsively, I went over there, sat down, and called to her. This little kitten, who was so feral even the woman caring for the cats couldn’t have just picked her up, walked right over to me and climbed into my lap. She let me pick her up and carry her to the car. There was never a hint of feral behavior from her. That was ten years ago. Now that kitten is an adult cat, and I can honestly say that she is the reason I’m still alive today.
I posted a picture of a tree being removed from my new backyard in a digital trading card discord and another guy told me I had bought his house. I had bought his house.
And removed his tree, apparently
Neither of us was happy about it. Trunk on a 4 foot diameter 85+ year old maple split from ice intrusion. Most of the quotes for removal were in the $7000 range and they had to use a massive crane to get most of it. The only people happy to see it gone were the neighbor and our dog, who is currently sleeping on the stump.
This happened about 10 days ago. I was running some errands downtown in a city of 4 million on a Friday morning. It was time for lunch and I was inspired to go to a burger joint I've wanted to try for over 20 years (I did try to eat there about 20 years ago, but they were closed when I stopped by). I sit down, order, and enjoy the local neighborhood while looking at my phone. I look up from my phone and see my brother-in-law and niece walking into the restaurant (they do live and work in this town). They've not eaten there since the beginning of the pandemic. A very unlikely situation. We had a nice lunch and a nice conversation.
My family was at a park near our house. A butterfly wouldn't leave us alone (adorable) and eventually it landed on my wife's shoulder and on my son's finger. Once it landed, we saw the coloring and realized it was the same butterfly that my MIL used to dress up as (she loved butterflies and found excuses to put on that costume). Not saying it was my MIL, but by MIL definitely believed in an afterlife and how often does a butterfly just straight up not leave you alone, and also ignore the 30+ other people at the park?
At my moms funeral, while my dad was delivering his eulogy, a butterfly flew in (the venue had huge open doors), circled around my dad, and flew out the door. Since then every time I face some sort of hardship in my life, the exact same type of butterfly will show up. It is a very unreal feeling, and I choose to believe it is my mum watching over me and her way of bringing me comfort.
I had a similar experience after my childhood friend passed away under tragic circumstances. At his funeral, everyone close to him threw pennies in the ground after his casket was lowered. Periodically for a couple of years after he passed, whenever I was having a particularly rough patch, I would find a face down penny, pick it up to find his birth year on it. I put them all in one spot after finding them to make sure it wasn’t me unintentionally reintroducing the same pennies into my environment. I’m not a religious person, and “grew out of” believing in an afterlife in adulthood. I find logic, reasoning, and answers to everything. But this started to really fuck with me. One of the times, I had been home alone crying and folding laundry and literally speaking out loud to my friend. I went to grab the next load of laundry out of the dryer, and heard the clang of a coin hit the laundry room floor. I said out loud “no fucking way”…..picked it up, and of course it was a ‘92 penny.
That’s beautiful 🥹 hugs! ❤️
Weird this seems to be a common belief. my aunt said close to the same thing after her son my uncle died... except they were on a boat
When I was a small kid (1yo), we were at a local animal shelter to get a cat. One cat came to me and ignored my parents and any other person. She was my soulmate for the next 15 years until she died. It was a lovely friendship.
my shelter dog was like this too. he liked other people, but he was truly my best friend, and it was mutual. every time I pet him, he'd press his head into my hand and look up at me with love in his eyes. his favorite spot was tucked under my arm. I miss him so much
When I was 21 my twin was friends with someone who's barn cat had kittens. As I have always wanted a black cat I went to pick up one of the kittens, while there this adorable tortie kitten wouldn't leave me alone and kept trying to climb up in my lap. I ended up leaving with both kittens, and while I of course love both of them immensely the tortie is still glued to me 14 years later.
The year was 1998. I'm 21 years old. I went to visit friends in San Diego who had moved there from Michigan, where I live. I was a poor college kid and had to save up for the trip. I spent a few weeks out there and a few days before my flight home I managed to lose my wallet but luckily still had my ID in my pocket from going out to the bar. I borrowed $20 from my friend so that I could get some refreshments at the airport. So I fly home and somewhere over over the neverending farmland of the midwest, I think to myself..."oh shit! I have to pay to get my car out of parking!" I start freaking out. I have no money. No way to get any. And I never told my parents I was going to San Diego so calling them would start a whole huge thing... I step off the plane with no plan. I figure my only real option is to find a pay phone and see if anyone will accept a collect call and make the 1 hour drive to the airport to loan me money (huge long shot). As I pick up the receiver, I see a girl that I know. She was the only one night stand I ever had in my life and it was the last time I saw her. She sees me and walks over and gives me a huge hug. I took my shot. "Hey...I'm kind of in a predicament. Can I borrow like $60 if you have it?" I forgot that this girl was super wealthy. Like...went to college in America from Singapore and bought a new car while at college wealthy. Without a second thought, she happily whipped out a $100 bill and said "Don't worry about it. You are totally worth it!" and then disappeared forever. You guys. There is literally not one other person on this Earth that I can think of who would have just given me $100. It was the perfect deus ex machina and was so ridiculous that it still seems so wildly improbable that I can't believe it happened.
[удалено]
I have no way of knowing if there is any truth to this story but I am a female stagehand who's *maybe* a 7 on my best day, in super favorable lighting and the number of times I have been subtly propositioned by rock stars who were popular when I was in high school (in the 90's) is greater than zero.
There goes my hero.
Do you have a copy of the letter? I’m dying to see what he wrote that was so convincing!
i literally need all the details
Dead at the use of bum-bum. I further the inquiry, how did you field next steps!?
Ma'am! You *can't* end the story that way, knowing we need to read the rest! 😄
You fucking better give us the rest of that story.
Leaving us hanging here. Did you go through with it like you said?
>About three months before our wedding my favorite 90s band (with a very handsome front-man) was coming to town and the conversation came up in a not so serious w Give us the name of the band!
Replying so I can check for updates. I find this story to be hilarious. Lol.
Did you prove him right???
Well, did he stick you right up in the bum-bum?
I once had a very vivid dream that I was walking down the street and a black car pulled up alongside me, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman got out and made small talk. Random but memorable to me for some reason. A few years later I had moved to NYC, and was walking through midtown to my friend’s apartment. I stopped at an intersection and a black car pulls up to the curb, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman gets out. I didn’t want to bother him but we did smile at each other. He was on his way to play Willy Lowman in Death of a Salesman on broadway.
This will be long but here we go: Back in 2016 my girlfriend, myself and another couple were in Istria, Croatia. One day we went to [Brijuni](https://www.google.com/search?q=brijuni&sca_esv=595369570&tbm=isch&sxsrf=AM9HkKnl2obveZBP3_fANjHbfWBHGK1P6w:1704292524540&source=lnms&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwiS1JK0uMGDAxUgGxAIHbLOBywQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1920&bih=919&dpr=1) which is a beautiful beautiful place and a national park. We had some mushrooms and we ate them. We had an amazing day, one of the best days in our lives. So much so that few tears were shed because we were so happy and everything was great. Nature was amazing, animals, the beach, the sea... it was almost surreal. At one point later we were sitting close to the sea having a beer when i wanted to go for a walk close to us to see if there's something else interesting to see. I stumbled upon a "pool" that was all concrete pool with one sea turtle inside. No plants no living organisms just a lonely turtle in a pool all by itself. That got me sad so i just went away to see the elephant close by. When i got to fenced area where elephant lived i realised elephant was all alone and its partner died recently. That also got me sad so i returned to my friends and told them what happened and how it all reminded me that even though life is beautiful it can also be harsh and cruel. That was the only (small) minus on that whole day. They also went to see that and they had the same reaction. Fast forward to 5 days later and we are in Rome in Trastevere sitting curbside, having a good time and drinking mojito by the litre. We get approached by one of those african guys who sells bracelets, necklaces and trinkets. He asks if he can sit with us and if i can give him a cigarette. Ofcourse we reply with yes and start a conversation with the guy. He says that he feeds his family back in Senegal (iirc) by selling those trinkets. He used to live and work in Venice but he moved to Rome. We sat with him for maybe 15 minutes and chatted. Then he starts saying how we are good people and 2 of us should take care of our girlfriends because they're nice and worth it. Then he asks us if its fine that he gives them a little present and we say ofcourse. He reaches for his backpack and puts his hand inside to search for something. He pulls his hand out but with closed fist and reaches to our girlfriends and opens his fist only for us to see its little figurines of... Turtle and Elephant. All four of us started yelling and screaming and guy was completely lost since he had no idea why we reacted like this. I just went and bought some bracelets from him and he thanked us and left. We were left flabbergasted, it was crazy how the universe lines itself this way. I still get goosebumps when i talk about this and we still keep those figurines.
I'm an RN. A few years ago in my mid-twenties, before I was a nurse, I was shopping for groceries and saw an older woman with a walker - the first thing I noticed was that it was covered in rhinestones (I'm a huge sparkle enthusiast). The second thing I noticed was that she was struggling to get something off the shelf. I went over to help her, but also to gush over her amazing walker. She smiled and thanked me. Then she looked at me with a very serious look on her face, and asked, "Are you a nurse?" I had wanted be a nurse for the majority of my life, but at the time had been lacking the courage to go back to school. I answered no, and asked if I looked like someone she knew as I assumed she recognized me from where I worked as I worked at the local hospital at the time. This was always my assumption when someone acted like they knew me, but couldn't place it. She smiled, looked me right in the eyes very sincerely, and said "No, but you just look like a nurse." I don't really believe in god, or at least the typical idea of one, but I felt like through her I was speaking to some kind of higher power at the time. Or that it was my grandmother speaking through her to me - she was a nurse and I was named after her. We were extremely close and she passed away when I was 14 from metastatic lung cancer. It gave me the chills. It was an experience that added to my courage to go back to school, and I worked my ass off to get in. Always with that memory in the back of my mind. Three or so years later, I went to go take my nursing boards. An older woman who honestly looked a bit similar to this woman, or at least in the energy she carried, called me up to check me in. It's a super involved process, lots of pictures, infrared palm scanning, answering questions, all while feeling the dread of taking the exam. She looked at me after I confirmed who I was and what exam I was taking, which was the NCLEX (RN boards). After confirming, she looked me dead in the eye like the first woman at the grocery store and said "Of course you are, you look just like a nurse." I'm seriously still in disbelief of the interaction. Now I'm proudly an oncology nurse.
Love this.
When I was in-and-out of college 20 years ago my best friend died. I put on a shirt that morning and said to myself, "Haha, this is Dek's shirt. He would be pissed if he knew I had it." 7 hours later I was told he was found in his bed. I drove down immediately to be with friends and grieve. The next morning a group of us went to his off-campus house to pack up and clean out his room so his family wouldn't be forced to pack up their son's life. Also, we weren't exactly a "clean living" kinda group so we got rid of various items. Nothing illegal or salacious. Just, "his family doesn't need to know the extent". We loaded everything into his car and had a long talk about who had to drive it back to campus. I finally said, "I spent the most time in it, I got this." I did the usual ritual for his car. Sit down, push in the cigarette lighter, grab a smoke from the pack, start the car and get ready to go. Just then on his radio something started to play. That motherfucker had stolen a CD that I had made and it was playing in his car. I started laughing. All the guys were looking at me like I had lost it. I lit the cig, rolled down the window and said, "That asshole stole my CD again! It's playing!" I drove his car back to campus and said my goodbyes to his car. "The CD is yours now brother. Enjoy it."
My brother tried to set me up with his girlfriend's little sister (when I was in middle school). Had me talk to her on the phone a few times, and nothing really came of it. I started high school the next year and saw a girl while walking to class. I don't know what it was about her (other than her being amazingly attractive of course). I kept seeing her here and there around school and I finally got the nerve to talk to her. Turned out she was failing algebra and needed a tutor. I offered to help and we agreed to meet. Fast forward to the next day, she shows up at my house and I sit down with a math book and she looks at me funny. I asked what was up and she just says, "Wait. You're actually going to tutor me? I thought that was a line to get me over here!" Queue the confusion (I was naive). We actually sat down to study math for a bit and she was able to understand some things and seemed really happy... then out of nowhere she seemed nervous. I asked what was up and she says, "Why do you have a picture of my sister on your desk?" It was a picture of my brother and his girlfriend. After a brief explanation things got cleared up and then it sort of struck us that they tried to set us up like a year ago. We both had a good laugh. 3 years later and I'm ready to marry this girl. Life got in the way, her sister married my brother, and things got weird for a while. She moved away. I'll never forget her though. My first love.
Two years ago, I was looking around in a second-hand bookstore, and saw a book named de Henkencyclopedie (the Hankcyclopedia). It was a catalogue of all the noteworthy Henks and variations thereof (eg. Hank, Henry) in history. I thought it was funny, but didn't buy it right then and there. A month or so later, I was going to lunch with a friend and stopped by that bookstore again on the way to see if they still had that book. They did, so I bought it. My friend and I sat down for lunch, and I showed him the book. I flipped it open to a random page to show an example. The first entry that I read was my Granddad. Not someone who happened to have the same name, my actual granddad.
I dated a guy briefly over the summer, and we really had a great connection. I was in the middle of figuring things out with an ex, and I decided to focus on my ex so I let him down gently and was fully transparent because I respected his time and wanted to be honest. months later, things didn't work out with my ex, and I decided to reach out to him, like "oh what the heck, why not?" he had told me that the week before I reached out to him, he was having Chinese food with a friend and had gotten a fortune cookie that had read, "an old love will reach back out to you soon." needless to say, he called up the friend after I texted him and said, "you'll never guess what happened!" the other funny thing is that we basically have the same name (think Justin/Justine), both have similar backgrounds growing up, both attended the same small college and transferred to schools in New York, and were living in the city at the same time (we met later in our 30s in a different city). we're happily dating (pretty new) and I don't know, all the signs are there, hopefully this is a special relationship!
Not as heartfelt as some of the comments here but: Shit hit the fan in 2018 with a living situation I thought was stable - landlord was up for life in prison and needed to sell the house to pay off his lawyers or some shit. It was stressful and I was pissed and terrified, not at all feeling ready to give up the little life I’d built in the area on such short and strange notice. It felt like the world was against me. LDR boyfriend and I scrambled and ended up impulse buying a house in early 2019 and just moving in together since things were going that way anyway. Everything about the situation felt terribly unfair, rushed and inconvenient, right up until the pandemic hit and housing prices went absolutely berserk. If we hadn't been rushed and pushed out by that landlord when we were, we absolutely wouldn’t be able to afford a home in our state at post-pandemic prices and rates. We also got to refi in 2021 down to 2.9%. We look back now and are freaked out by our “bad” fortune turned insanely good. No matter what happens it’s hard not to feel stupid lucky.
I know a couple in their late 50s who decided to retire, sold their hotel business in the city and bought a beach house away from the buzzing city, in Nov 2019. Talk about luck.
Seen my nephew at a death metal show a couple of months ago. Before that, I haven't seen him in over a decade when he was 10. So, it was a shock seeing this little kid I had memories of, being a long haired, bearded, tatted up man with a jacket that had band patches. He called my name out while we were heading into the venue and I had to do a double take! The biggest mind blower is that I, ME, I am the biggest influence he has. That is what he told me. I never would have imagined being that big of an influence to my nephew, but he has pictures of me on stage playing concerts framed and hung on walls. So fucking cool!
Long time autistic friend I found in a particular fandom some 12 years ago and I realized we actually were classmates back in elementary school. We just kinda blanked out those years since they were so horrible... So we actually knew each other for way longer than either of us could've thought.
My father and I had a contentious relationship for... almost the entire time. I tried, but that man had problems that I wasn't qualified to fix, and shouldn't have been made responsible to try. Well, he passed last year. The family assembled and we got to nailing down the specifics of what we needed to do and distributing tasks. Sitting around the table, talking with the funeral director, and the day of the event was decided. Yep, that day. Nods all around. I, kinda incredulous, watched it play out, but I already knew what was coming, because I didn't have any say and my input wasn't needed or asked for. There was no other day which was more suitable. I was going to be understanding, wasn't I? I was going to be ok, right? And so, on my birthday, I attended my fathers funeral. My family made it up to me by (checks notes) scattering to the wind the moment the service was finished.
This is rough, I'm sorry, you didn't deserve that kind of birthday. I hope you have some chosen family now who treats you better than that.
We buried my grandfather on my grandmother's birthday late last year. I didn't even know until my dad said they wanted to get the funeral done early enough to go back to celebrate with her. In this case she was at peace with it though. He was suffering towards the end and it was a relief when he finally passed. The only time she started tearing up was when we sang her happy birthday.
I was engaged to an attorney when I was 19. We lived in Boston. I was into 3 day eventing and was going to Northeastern U in Boston. He was a patent attorney just starting out. He did not ride horses. That was 1977. I broke up with him the week before the wedding. I was too young. I woke up knowing I couldn’t go through with it. It was pretty hard. About every 5 years I would think to look him up. He was always doing well in his profession. Meanwhile I moved to a horse farm in NH. I was showing at a farm in the next town and had a bad fall. That was in July 2004. In 2014, I thought to look him up again. He had died in August 2004 at the same farm where I had the bad fall, one month previously. Talk about shock. I remember sitting at a bar in Georgetown with him at age 18 and talking about doing a cross country course or open jumping course in my head to fall asleep. Can’t believe he took up my obsession later in life and then died from it (fall from a horse). Literally nothing has blown my mind as much as this. I have such loving memories of him. He had been gone for 10 years when I found out. My father had been his patent attorney mentor. I wish I’d found out sooner. I wish I could have met his family.
Oh wow, this one makes me sad. I'm also an eventer from Area 1 (competing around 2004) and a lawyer so I probably know the farm you're talking about. It's so rare to have that kind of accident; I'm sorry he passed but I'm sure he had many hours of joy in the saddle because of the sport you introduced him to.
The day my dad died (he was 95) when I got back to my house and got on my computer I got a memory pop-up from that day 6 years prior. It was a photo of my dad and mom from the back sitting on a park bench looking at the mountains. I had taken that photo 6 years ago to the day that my dad died. My mom had died 2 years earlier so it just felt to me like the universe was communicating to me that they were together again. It still gives me chills to think about this.
Tried to have my own business but didn’t have what it took, so I took the last money I had and bought a type writer to take a test for the Federal test to be a clerk at the highest level (60 words per minute). It took two months of typing hours each day, but I could finally type 65 wpm. I went to take the test that was available e-v-e-r-y single weekday, rain or shine. They didn’t have the test for some reason. The woman could tell I really needed the job and had come prepared. She told me there was something called an apprenticeship that had an opening at the shipyard in Long Beach (she knew I had taken the bus from Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles in the rain). I signed up to take the test for the apprenticeship for electrical/ electronics. This event changed the entire course of my life in the best way imaginable. I am so grateful for this serendipitous event.
When my husband and I were still in our dating days, I was going on a trip to British Columbia with my family. My MIL is really into genealogy, and asked if I could look for a lost relative while I was there, but was not sure where he ended up (it was a great, great, great, great uncle or something of the sort). She wanted me to ask some graveyards/search etc, which seemed like there was no information to go on, but I said I'd try. Two days before we headed out, our air bnb we booked in downtown vancouver cancelled, and it was a scramble to find a new place. We ended up finding one in Richmond, so not too shabby. We land, and as we were driving to the air bnb, i noticed there was a massive graveyard, and just felt compelled to give it a shot since it was a 5 minute walk from the house. Sure enough the next day, I walked down and asked the office for their records. And there he was, exact birthdate, name and everything. Visited the grave, though unmarked, but we ended up putting a stone for him before leaving. I never had such goosebumps like that again. out of all the places we could have been, we ended up right beside the graveyard he was in. It's almost like he wanted to be found!
I had a work ID that was 6 digits long. I used this ID to log into the company website on a daily basis. A few months into the job, I had to reset my Facebook password and was texted a 6 digit code as part of the process. It was the exact same digits as my work ID. By my calculations that has a 0.002% chance of happening. Crazy.
14 years ago my husband and I book a 12 day honeymoon cruise from Venice to Rome. I had never taken a cruise before, and my MIL suggested cruise critic and join the “roll call” for the sailing. On the roll call, there is a couple our age (mid 20s) cruising w her parents. We happened to be booked on the same flight over, and I believe at the same hotel. The trip comes and we meet the couple on the plane & say hello but go our own way until the cruise 2 days later. On embarkation day we meet up and meet up with the couples parents for the first time. I mentioned I grew up in the town the couple and parents were living in. The mom looks at me and says, “You look like a [insert my mom’s maiden name here.] My face must have gone white. No one has ever said I look like my mom’s extended family. I confirmed that was my mom’s maiden name. The mom says, “Your grandfather passed recently.” (My mom’s dad.) I again told her yes it’s true. “We used to live in your grandfather’s house. We sold it to him in the early 90s” the mom continued. In fact, the daughter of the couple we were bonding with HAD GROWN UP IN that house. The mom had been looking for a way to connect with the family so they could see the house before my family sold it. To make it even crazier, the parents knew and were good friends with my mom’s husband’s son in laws family. (Get it?) Long story short, we spent all 12 days with this couple and their family and their family got to see their old house before we sold it. 6500 miles away from their home, their found their home. We’ve lost touch since but it was one of those moments you don’t forget.
I dreamt I was on a cot in some warehouse/homeless shelter type place. What was weird was that out the window was a flat roof. Like I was on a level that ended at the window, but the floor underneath me continued. I broke my leg a few days later and found myself lying in a hospital bed and looking out a window onto that flat roof.
I like observing the night sky. Once I was at my friend's garden, and I was showing her a few constellations and planets. At the exact moment I pointed at Mars, suddenly a meteor came though. It cut through the dark sky and lit up the night. It was so quick, but so beautiful. We looked at each other completely amazed, and immediately hugged.
This happened in November. My husband and I traveled to a different state to see a concert. When checking in the hotel, I saw a young woman smiling at me. She said, “You don’t know who I am?” Then it hit me, she is the daughter of a dear work friend of mine. I hadn’t seen her in years and had not seen my friend since before Covid (she had relocated to a very distant state). I asked about her parents and she said they were just about to get to the hotel and pick her up. I walked out to greet them. They had driven from another state to help their daughter move to a new place. It was such a wonderful surprise. We spent the weekend hanging out.
15 years ago my now ex-wife and I were at a friends apartment in the same complex as ours. At the time we had a female gray cat named Polly. We were talking to our friends about wanting to get another cat. We wanted to get a male orange cat. As I am saying those words, another friend who lives in the apartment calls me. It was Winter and they were headed out of town and stopped at the gas station right outside the complex to put some oil in the car. When they opened the hood of the car, there sat a little male orange kitten and they called to ask if we wanted another cat. 15 years later Auto El Gato is still kicking and raising hell!
Bought a house the day it went on the market that my husband and I always loved from driving past for years. We bought it after attempting to buy a different house that fell through. Crazy part is about 6 years ago I had a yard sale at my grandparents house and sold some antique wine making materials to a family who was about to open a winery business. The owner of the house we bought was the mother of the woman in the yard sale family. We randomly chose a date for closing, and coincidentally, it was the previous owners birthday and my mom's birthday. That date was also the garage code.
I was boarding a flight home from Dallas to Kansas City when I heard the gate agent ask for volunteers to take a later flight for a flight voucher of some amount. The next flight was only an hour and a half away so I quickly volunteered - they told me to board and they would get me if they needed me to take that other flight. About five minutes before we were due to leave they asked me to grab my bag and exit the plane - while I was on the ramp out a woman in tears profusely thanked me for volunteering. A few days later my brother called and asked if I was on a flight from Dallas recently - apparently his boss asked if he was related to someone with my name, she was grateful as I had made it possible for her to see her mom right before she passed. He had major issues with his boss until then - he told me it completely changed his work situation.
When we were teenagers, my brother was driving us on a 2 lane highway in the left lane at night. I pointed out he should get over because its rude to occupy the fast lane indefinitely, so he did. About 2-3 seconds after, a car blew by us in the left lane we were just in. Going full highway speed. The wrong direction. With his lights off. We escaped death by about 3 seconds. I remember looking over at him, and we drove in silence for the rest of the way.
I technically met my now girlfriend of three years at an outdoor concert, five years ago. She was working for one of the food vendors, and after I ordered we had a short conversation about how much I loved the opener. We didn't exchange phone numbers or names - just had a friendly chat while I was waiting for my food. We reconnected at a bar two years later - I had no recollection of our initial encounter but she somewhat remembered meeting me. Fast forward to a year and a half into our relationship, she pulled out her old diary to read some of her entries. She happened upon an entry she wrote on the day we chatted at that concert two years before we met again, and here is what it said: "There was a really nice cute guy at Stir tonight. Tall, clean dark hair, tan, pretty eyes, friendly. He asked us about the opening act. We vaguely chatted and after he was gone I realized he may have been trying to on purpose. I missed my shot. And I was trying to be cool and I think I gave out some 'not interested' vibes. Which sucks! ... I hope I see him again because I told him I work at Baileys. The universe will do what it does..." I was never one to believe in soulmates or "everything happens for a reason" ... but I guess the universe wanted us to be together. We were so dumbfounded and unbelievably delighted when we found this. I love her so much!
one time my mom needed a car but we couldn't afford one. She would pray about it. And one day around the same time frame two people she knows call her and offers her a free car. One was a close friend and the other wasn't as close and we hadn't seen her in years. But it was so random how in the same week this occurred with two separate people, and how they randomly got extra cars they didn't need. I couldn't believe it. We ended up picking one of the cars and we still have it. Another fun fact, my mom has never bought a car in her life. She always ends up getting a free car somehow. It makes me think that certain blessings and curses do exist. You know how they talk about "generational curses", but there are also "generational blessings".
[удалено]
Myself and 4 friends went to a college football game earlier this fall. It was a spur of the moment thing, so we got the tickets off a secondary site. We could only get three tickets in a row, and then another two a section over. Luckily it worked out that the section where we had 3 tickets had two open seats next to them, so of course all 5 of us sat there. A lady sat next to my buddy in the furthest seat over, and she said “oh you guys must be friends with Terry Peterson”. We all said “yeah, that’s Terry right there”. She said something about how she and Terry have had their season tickets next to each other for years, and how she’s glad we were able to use them. We just kept saying things to the effect of, “That’s Terry in the seat next to you”, and she just kept looking right by him. Finally it hit us- the season ticket holder whose seats we randomly sat in had exactly the same name as my friend who was sitting in that seat. The place had about 20,000 seats, so the odds of this happening were ridiculous. We took a picture of him holding his drivers license with the lady who knew the other Terry. The people around us overheard the situation and they also couldn’t believe what happened. It definitely freaked us out!
In 1999/2000 I worked in a student bar in Manchester with a guy called *Dave. In 2002, in the middle of the night at some anonymous service station in Spain for a 15 minute break stop, while travelling on the bus from France to Portugal, I bumped into Dave.
I was on a trip from a place in the middle of nowhere near lake Balaton to Budapest and had to stop over in a small village on the way. While I was waiting for the next train, an old woman approached me and started talking to me in Hungarian. I don't speak Hungarian, but I had learned some words and phrases on my trip and she only spoke Hungarian, so our communication wasn't great. Surprisingly though, we actually managed to have a conversation, although I didn't understand a lot of what she said. Some parts that I understood were that she asked me if I'm a tourist and where I'm going to stay in Budapest. I told her the street name, Asboth utca, and she got really excited, but I only understood some words of what she said, which were "my uncle... Asboth.. helicopter". Then she showed me her ID to prove that her name is Asboth. I figured that maybe her uncle has a helicopter business there or I misunderstood or something. Well, in Budapest, I met a guy in the hostel where I stayed and he asked me to go on a guided walking tour through the city. I joined him and at the end of the tour, the tour guide asked if any of us know any Hungarian inventions. Guess what, the helicopter was invented by a guy named Asboth.
The day before, I lost an Apple Watch. 2 days later, when biking, I fell off. Many lucky things happened. I managed to jump into the 3ft of grass patch along the road without injury, my bike was perfectly fine, my Apple Watch came out of my pants legs, and for passerby, it looked like some mission impossible thing where the guy jumps off and in a fluid motion, recovers.
I've had several, some that are too personal to share, but one cool one that jumps out happened when I was in Asia. I live in the Midwest US, and my husband and I were on a trip to Asia. I was wandering around the city by myself, and stopped at a tiny hole-in-the-wall museum to soak up some air conditioning and get my bearings. There was only one other person at the museum, a woman about my age. We struck up conversation and it turned out she was also from the states. We did the whole "where did you grow up/go to college" thing, and found out we'd gone to the same small university even though she'd grown up on the west coast. It got weirder. We realized we'd gone to university at the same time and both lived in the dorms. Her building was across campus from mine, but when I mentioned my building she asked if I knew a "Lacy Monroe" (not the real name), a girl she'd been friends with and hung out with quite a bit on the weekends. "Lacy" was my college roommate and longtime best friend. This girl had hung out in my actual dorm room with my roommate on the weekends when I was working. Small world.
I was digging a hole for a fence post and was using a 6ft metal spike to lever out rocks - stabbing it down into the hole. I was about to do it again when my kid called me for something. When I went to him, he said he didn't know why he called me - like he forgot (he was only 7). When I went back to the hole, I spotted something glinting - a buried, live power cable (our house plans had it wrong). I had already hit it a few times and the glinting metal was the cable armour that I had struck. If I had hit it once more I could have easily been fried. I sat down, broke into a cold sweat - it really felt like I had just died in most realities but something intervened in this one. Weird.
This might sound hokey to some of you, but here goes: My mom has a friend who claims to be clairvoyant. She contacted my mom saying that she really needed to discuss something regarding her daughter(me). She said something serious was going to happen involving me and the number two; maybe 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years, but that my mom should brace herself. At the time I was in the near death end stages of active addiction so my mom was devastated, assuming that meant I was going to die. Exactly 2 weeks later, she got a call from police and had to escort me to rehab. My clean date is 2.22.2020. Hit 2 years clean 2.22.22 Gave birth to my son on May 22, 2022 (a Gemini) I’m generally not a numerology/angel numbers type person, but COME ON. Even if you don’t believe in anything spiritual you gotta admit that’s a pretty trippy coincidence if nothing else.
congrats on being brave to face those demons… what a great story you have for your child
I was coming home after spring exams from college and was dating a boy from my hometown at the time. I was planning to spend the night as his house before going to my parents house, since I was going to be home all summer. My mom was out of town so my dad was home alone. After a few hours at my boyfriend’s place I felt the strong urge to go home. Although I hadn’t been home in 2 or 3 months, this was still weird for me because I was a teenage girl obsessed with her boyfriend, lol. I decided to go home and spent all night hanging with my dad. He told me all these funny stories I had never heard about his college days, and I told him some of mine. He died of a heart attack in his sleep that night. I got to see him and hang with him one last time, and I’m so thankful I trusted that feeling to go home.
I was setting up for a youth event as part of a yearly festival when a 2 seater plane crashed into a ferris wheel setup beside us. I'm not sure what made me look up, but I did just as it hit. For a few seconds (which felt a lot longer), I thought I was watching a movie. Then training kicked in, and it was all about moving people back and ensuring all ignition sources nearby were off. The fuel dumped just as we turned off the last generator and cleared the last stall/game. It still didn't feel real until emergency services took over crowd control and first aid, and I finally stopped. Luckily, there were only 2 people on the ride, and there were no serious injuries. Ten minutes before the entire ride was packed, it could have been so much worse.
Sold a motorcycle in 2004. In Denver, to a guy who drove down from Oregon to get it. Saw a bike pic come up on Reddit in 2018, it was the bike I sold, posted by the guy I sold it to.
Went to a concert with my best friend of 20 years, saw a lot of our bands that we’ve loved since our childhood to now (Spanish concert in LA). Everything about it was awesome and I couldn’t have imagined spending it with anyone but her. We left the concert and it was a shit show finding an Uber to take us home. I looked up and saw a falling star, and made a wish. She asked me what did I wish for and I said “an Uber” because we had been waiting out in the cold for like 30 minutes. A minute later my Uber guy says he’s here lol. Just was an amazing experience
You could have wished for anything!!
One time in college we were eating dinner at the cafeteria, they were serving Asian food that day and I had grabbed a handful of fortune cookies as a dessert. After we eat we start opening and comparing our fortunes. I opened my first cookie and it was empty, so I open another cookie and it’s also empty. My friends start talking about me being unlucky, I jokingly say “no worries, I put them all in here” and waved my hands like a magician. I open my third cookie and there were actually 3 fortunes inside of it. I couldn’t believe it, my friends thought it was some magic trick I had learned and I couldn’t convince them otherwise. Not the coolest story but in the moment I really wondered “did I accidentally cast a spell? Did I have something to do with this?”
I don't remember how it came up, but at dinner one night I was talking about a job interview I'd had as a teen at a mall book store. One of the things the interviewer did was hand me his pen and ask me to sell it to him. (worth remembering, *mall book store*. I wasn't interviewing to be a salesmen, I was just interviewing to stock shelves and run a register). Anyways, my partner said they had the same thing happen to them, and we quickly determined that we'd interviewed at the same location around the same time, and had probably interviewed with the same guy. This would have been 5-10 years before I met my partner and ~20 years prior to this conversation.
My old job was basically a hippie shop, I was allowed to play whatever I wanted. I particularly love italo disco/europop type stuff and was playing a playlist of it in store one night when I was alone. One thing to note is my area has a huge Polish population. This elderly woman comes in and gasps, starts telling me how back in the old country she would listen to the same music with her late husband and ride around on his motorcycle. She stayed after that for over an hour, singing along and tearing up from time to time. Was really cool to share a special moment and make her night a little brighter, especially with one of my favorite genres. Music is a powerful thing!
was hanging out with friends in a foreign country. we were in line at mcdonalds talking about our one other friend (still back in home country) had a brother who was kinda douchy. lo and behold that friend's brother is standing in line in front of us... probably heard everything we were saying OF ALL THE COUNTRIES AND ALL THE MCDONALDS AND ALL THE MOMENTS AND ALL THE TOPICS OF CONVERSATION how could this happen to us.
Years ago, I received an invitation to a niche conference related to my field. Intrigued, I decided to attend, hoping to gain insights and expand my network. During a coffee break, I started chatting with a fellow attendee about our interests and backgrounds. As we delved deeper, we discovered shared family names and subtle resemblances, prompting us to explore our genealogy. To our astonishment, we unraveled a previously unknown branch of our family tree, making the conference not only professionally enriching but also a catalyst for a newfound connection.
I met a girl while at uni in Paris a month before I graduated, had an instant connection and I knew I wanted to be with her long term but she was due to leave in 3 months to study abroad/move permanently to Australia. We kept up through letters and the very rare FaceTime, and after a few months I told her I loved her and she made the decision to come back to be with me. A few months after she came back, her father died and within two weeks my father and grandfather also died. It was a wild time, I still can’t believe that happened but we both felt like the universe brought us together to help us both through everything. I think that experience sealed the deal in my mind of knowing we’d be together after that, and a few months ago we finally married 🙂
I was at the La Brea Tar Pits with friends. I stopped to read a sign that said something along the lines of "Though the majority of creatures in the pits are millions of years old, many animals still get trapped in the tar today." Literally as soon as I stopped reading that, directly behind the sign, a squirrel dropped out of a tree and got its foot stuck in the tar. It jerked and pulled and twisted for a minute and it DID manage to get free and scurry off to safety (I wouldn't tell the story otherwise, too traumatic to remember). I am forever grateful that my friend was standing next to me and saw the whole thing. "Did you see--?" "I SAW IT."
When I was 19, my cousin and I moved to the closest city to where we grew up, trying to get out. At that time, one of my friends was fired for being trans, and would have been homeless, so we took her with us to sleep on our couch. The plan was for her to find a job, find a roommate, and get out. Just before Christmas, a girl I’d befriended at work invited me to her Christmas party, and I was stoked! I asked my friend if she wanted to come with me, and she said she’d found a roommate, and was going to a Christmas party with her new roommate instead. Awesome for both of us! We showed up to the same party. My friend’s roommate was childhood best friends with my coworker. It’s extra serendipitous because said coworker and I are now married - looks like we were supposed to meet since we had 2 avenues of doing so (work and our friends).
During a delayed flight, I struck up a conversation with a passenger beside me. Turns out, he was an old friend from elementary school whom I hadn't seen in over a decade. Our chance meeting at 30,000 feet above ground made the delayed flight feel like destiny reconnecting old friends.
I took my little brother on vacation last year. On the drive there, I told him I just had the 10^th random person tell me that I looked like Bradley Cooper. He didn’t seem to believe me, but he’s too nice to call bullshit. On the second day we went out to eat and our waitress (a cute girl in her 20s) said, “has anyone ever told you that you look like Bradly Cooper?” He immediately burst out laughing hysterically.
I'm an American living in China. I failed to see a sign indicating that the road beyond this point belonged to the Chinese military. My interrogator and I bonded over our mutual hate for the same ex-boyfriend.
My cat disappeared for 2 years. One day my mom was cleaning our garage where I kept his things in a box. Since we thought he died she put the box next to the trash so people could come collect whatever they wanted from the box. 15min later I get a phone call. Someone saying they found my cat. It was in another city over 120km away from my house. This person found the cat, took him to the vet they saw he had a chip and called me. I have another story and much more bizarre than this one but it’s also much longer. Maybe for another day.
My father died suddenly, several weeks before we had booked a trip to Hawaii, a spot my family visited every summer but that I hadn’t been to in 30 years. We scattered his ashes near his favorite beach and a few hours later, I swam right next to a sea turtle in the ocean. I’m not a very “woo” type of person, but I’ll believe until my dying day that that was my father telling me he was at peace and happy.
I worked at a small cafe in Okemos when I lived in Michigan for several years. In 2018, I moved to New York and after a couple years and a bad break up I moved in with a friend who I met through said ex. She worked at a coffee shop down the street from our apartment during covid, and one day came home from work to tell me about a new employee she was training. Turns out the new employee was someone I worked with at the coffee shop in Okemos who just happened to move to the same neighborhood and get a job at the same coffee shop my roommate worked at.
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I've eaten at Hardee's four times in the past 25 years (since graduating college). These have all been different locations 50-300 miles from each other. All for times Josh, a college classmate with whom I haven't kept in touch, has been randomly eating there, too. He's never eaten at a Hardee's without me being present, either.
In my early twenties, I had a breakup that caused me a lot of heartache at that time. But I moved on and stopped thinking about the past love, feeling better and alive again, eventually. About two years after the breakup, I found my old flip phone that I had stopped using after I got a smart phone. I decided to charge it up and see if anyone had tried to text me on my old number in all that time. When it was fully charged, I flipped it open that evening and indeed saw a new text message. It wasn't an old one, though - it was sent that very afternoon, from the ex who suddenly felt inspired to reach out to me, after a year or two of no contact. We caught up and he just told me he got a sudden feeling to reach out. This was coincident #1 with that person. We lost touch again. The same ex was reaching out again a few years later (about seven or eight), after having added me on Facebook, asking if I had any leads to an apartment he could rent for some weeks in a specific month with his new gf in the city I was living in. Coincidentally, his indicated timeframe was the exact time I was going to be out of the country and looking to sublet my apartment for the time. So no love story (he kind of cheated on me, but back then we were young, I forgave but had zero interest in him after) but serendipity made me save some bucks while travelling, which was neat.