There are a few moments in everyone's life that really make you question if everything happens for a reason. Whether you stumbled upon an item that you hadn't seen in years just after you thought about it or you met an old friend in a foreign country despite being thousands of miles away from home, life is full of little events that remind you that serendipity happens every day.
A Constant Reminder
I had inherited a little bar pin that was from WWI. It was for mothers to wear when they had a son in the service during combat. I gave it to my wife to wear so she would be reminded of our Marine son several times daily. The clip was ancient, and the fired-enamel pin fell off her sweater and was lost. I went online and searched for a replacement.
I found a collector who sold me a locket that had the identical red and white bar with the single blue star on it as the pin. The seller mentioned some squiggles on the reverse of the antique piece.
When it arrived, we looked at the squiggles under a magnifying glass. They turned out to be some fancy initials—MMI—the same initials as our son’s. Story credit: Reddit / WhatMeWorry
A Divine Presence
After college, I moved to Chicago. One day I decided to take a surprise trip back home to South Carolina. There were many routes that I could have taken, but I decided on taking the scenic route through the mountains and back roads. I was about an hour from civilization, in the middle of the Appalachians, when my car broke down.
It was December and extremely cold out. I got out of my car, put multiple layers on, and prepared for a very long walk several miles to the next small town. I turned around and shut the door when a car came around the bend and passed me. They didn’t stop at first, but about a mile down the road, they turned around and came back.
I was excited to get picked up and get out of the cold, so I figured it was worth the risk. I opened the door and when I saw who was driving, my jaw dropped straight to the floor. I completely dumbfounded to see that the driver was MY GRANDFATHER. He had decided to take an impromptu road trip, again, using back roads, to upstate Tennessee.
It was the kind of coincidence that makes you question a divine presence. Story credit: Reddit / achsullivan
A Message From Above
I had driven to a different city and got into my car. I flipped on the radio, and there was silence. I shrugged and was about to change the channel, thinking it wasn’t a valid station, when all of a sudden I heard, “Daniel,” which was my name.
So, jokingly, I said, “Yes?” What I heard next made my blood run cold. The voice on the radio said, “I am the Lord your God, Daniel. You must follow My commandments.”
There was a pause, and I freaked out. Then the voice came back and continued, “And this is the part in the Bible….” I realized that the classic hits channel I had it on previously was the religious channel in the city I was in. Story credit: Reddit / Lereas
Our Ghoul Friend
When I was in college, I lived in a sorority house. Over the years, there was an ongoing joke throughout the sorority that the house had a ghost friend. One of our sisters would wake up in the mornings after drinking and tell us stories about how the ghost visited her during the night.
She said she asked the ghost her name, and the ghost responded with what sounded like either Helen or Ellen. Some nights, we would come home and find our sorority sister trashed and in the kitchen with her arm around the air talking to this Helen/Ellen ghost.
Every odd thing that happened around the house was attributed to this ghost. She was a common topic around the place. One day, a curious member of the sorority decided to go to the city’s historical museum and find out what she could about our house. We couldn’t believe what she found.
She came home with a package full of papers, pictures, and information about every previous resident that lived there. Lo and behold, we found out that one of the very first residents, who built the house themselves, was named ELLEN. There were wedding photos of her under an archway, in what was their extended living room, that was now MY bedroom.
We found out that Ellen had gone crazy, got sick, and died on the stairway IN THE HOUSE. Her casket sat in the exact spot they were married, which was THE EXACT SPOT WHERE I SLEPT EACH NIGHT. Story credit: Reddit / britta
We Don't All Know Each Other
When I first meet someone, and they find out I am from Mexico, they almost always say, “I know someone from Mexico! Maybe you know them!” In my head, I think to myself, “Really?” There are over 130 million people in the country, and it’s really big, with all kinds of different cities and states and everything.
As all of these thoughts go through my mind, whenever they tell me the name of the person, it turns out I actually know them. Story credit: Reddit / arrozconfrijol
We Were Old Friends
I had two roommates in college. They had gone to high school together, while I had gone to a different one. We discovered that I had taken an art class with them back in high school at a university that was in a different state and a different city.
Therefore, four years prior to meeting them both, we had been in the same room every Saturday for a few months without even realizing it. Not only that, but only one of us was in college to study art. Story credit: Reddit / isherflaflippeflanye
Life is Full of Them
I had taken a part-time job at a sauerkraut factory in the Netherlands. While I was working there, I met a couple of people who spoke Papiamento, which is the language spoken in the Dutch Antilles islands—but it got even weirder.
As it turned out, the woman was my father’s cousin. It was crazy, but life is full of those coincidental moments. Story credit: Reddit / TheNameIsPippen
Free Samples
When I was 14 years old, I went to Seoul for a Tae Kwon Do tournament. We had some time to walk around the city, and at one point, this guy working at a food stand stuck out a long metal pole at us and started shouting, “ICE CREAM!”
Seeing that we were tourists, he was offering us a free sample, but it freaked us out a bit. Later that year, I bought a book from a second-hand book sale in Luxembourg. That same guy was in it. Story credit: Reddit / MrLuxarina
Parallel Lives
My husband and I moved into a new house. We found out that we had parallel lives to the people that lived in the house before us. I had exactly the same career as the woman, and my husband had the same career as the man. We had one kid, so did they, and we both had fertility problems.
Not only that, but the interior house had almost exactly the same colors as our previous house had, and we both met our spouses in the same way. I also found out that they knew one of my good friends at work. Story credit: Reddit
The Right Answer
I was in 12th grade math class, talking to my friends and not listening. The teacher asked me what the answer was to a decently hard math problem. I just said, “Twelve,” because I thought he was talking about a previous math problem I had done for an assignment. It turned out that it was the right answer, but it took the teacher about five minutes of math to prove it.
He then asked how I could possibly be talking to my friends and solving a math problem without paper at the same time. Story credit: Reddit / ebg13
Meet Cute
One St. Patrick’s Day, a friend of mine and I were walking down the street in Philadelphia at 3 AM. A couple of really happy intoxicated guys were walking down the street high-fiving everyone.
I high-fived one of them. Years later, my boyfriend told me how he was really sloshed on St. Patrick’s Day that same year and was walking down the street high-fiving everyone. Story credit: Reddit
Right Place, Right Time
One year, during the off-season, my girlfriend and I went on vacation to Miami Beach. We were headed back to the condo, but we missed our bus. We got on the next bus.
On the bus, we saw my step-brother and his wife, who lived in Maryland. We had no idea they were even on vacation. We just happened to be in the same city, at the same time, on the same bus. Story credit: Reddit / lordnecro
Double Feature
When I was in college, I took a film studies class that required me to view two films per week. These films were stored in the library, and you couldn’t take them out; you had to watch them there. One week, I decided to watch both assigned films back to back, so I went to the library for about four hours. I watched Heathers followed by Reservoir Dogs.
Neither movie was remotely recent, and Heathers, in particular, was fairly obscure. I watched both and walked back to my apartment. When I got home, I found my roommates finishing up a movie.
I asked what movie they were watching. It turned out that they had actually watched two movies back to back—Heathers and Reservoir Dogs. Story credit: Reddit / grand_bordon
It Didn't End There
One day, I was hanging out with my sister and some of her friends. We were talking about money, and one of my sister’s friends said, “Hey, guess how much money I have on me right now!”
We all guessed. I said, “$73.00.” He counted it, and I was right. Everyone thought it was strange, including me. But it didn’t end there. A few days later, we were all hanging out again.
Her friend was still a little blown away at my guess from the previous day, so he asked again, “Hey, how much money do you think I have right now?” I guessed $14.00. He pulled out his wallet and counted $12.00. It seemed as if I had lost until he remembered he had $2.00 stashed away in another pocket. Story credit: Reddit / scallywank
Mirror Image
When we were in middle school, my twin sister and I got sent to different outdoor schools. On the same night and at roughly around the same time, both of our camps were playing this game where you chew on a Life Savers in the dark to see sparks fly. We both bit down too hard on our candies, and we both ended up losing the exact same tooth. Story credit: Reddit
The Rightful Owner
My friend had just finished cycling across the United States. He found a frisbee on the side of the highway in New Mexico. It had the name “Steve” on it. When he reached California, he met up with a friend and asked if he wanted to toss it around.
His friend said, “Wait a minute.” He called his friend Steve asked if he still lived in New Mexico and if he had lost a frisbee a few weeks earlier. It turned out that it was his. Story credit: Reddit / candafilm
You Look Familiar
When I was on a flight from Florida to California, I sat next to a guy I had never seen before. We talked for most of the flight, mostly about random stuff.
Six months later, I took another flight, and I somehow ended up sitting next to him again. I was on a different airline, different departure city, and different arrival city. It was really odd. Story credit: Reddit / Doctor_Willis
Her Mistake Changed My Life
Years ago, I was on AIM. I had just turned on the option that allowed anyone to contact me, not just buddies. One day, I received an instant message from a random woman. She had gone to a bar where a guy had told her his screen name, but instead of writing it down, she just tried to remember it. When she tried to contact him, she had typed my screen name instead.
I told her she had the wrong guy. She apologized and went on her way. Well, her mistake changed my entire life. She had kept me on her buddy list and saw my design website in my profile. A few days later, I received an IM from her again saying that she thought I was talented. We started chatting daily and got to know each other really well.
We met for the first time in person nine months after meeting online. We eventually got engaged. Had I left my contact options restricted, and had I not been online at that moment, we would never have talked. Story credit: Reddit
An Old Favorite
Back in the days of cassettes, I went to a music store looking for some music by Sam & Dave. There was nothing on the shelves, but they had a HUGE vat of dollar tapes at the back of the store. There were about 1,000 tapes literally dumped into a giant bin. I saw nothing of interest on the surface, but just for laughs, I plunged my hand into the tapes.
I wormed my way down as far as I could and closed my fingers around a random box. I pulled it up. It was a tape from a set of American music released in Italy. There was Martha Reeves, The Association, and, wouldn’t you know it, Sam & Dave. Story credit: Reddit / inkslave
They Had the Same Idea
While my cousin and I were at the same college in Portugal, we went on a trip to Amsterdam. On our third day there, we were tired of walking around the city and stopped at a random café on a random street. We went in planning to enjoy the fine delicacies the city had to offer.
Inside were two guys from our university who, not only were visiting the same country and the same city at the same time as us, but they had the same idea. Story credit: Reddit / makemisteaks
Move On With Your Life
My aunt lived in Nevada. Her son died suddenly at the age of 16. She was devastated. She had left his room exactly as he had last left it, locked it, and forbade opening it to anyone. A few years later, a tornado set down in Nevada, which isn’t a state known to have such weather. It plowed through my aunt’s home and promptly dissipated afterward.
My female cousins were in the house. While shaken and frightened out of their wits, no one in the house was injured. The tornado sucked out the contents of my departed cousin’s room, destroyed the roof over his room, and then went away. There was never a medical reason for my cousin’s death, and no doctor ever found out exactly why he slumped over and died.
It was something that had always spooked me. A tornado touching down in Las Vegas, of all places, precisely targeting my cousin’s room, destroying only his room, leaving both sisters unharmed, then vanishing was bizarre. Oddly enough, my aunt was much better after the storm and was finally able to move on with her life. Story credit: Reddit / oldsouth
We Hadn't Seen Each Other in Years
I was backpacking through Europe with a friend of mine. We were on a train platform in Germany waiting for our sleeper train to Prague. I heard my name being called from about 30 feet behind us. I turned around and saw two high school classmates of mine from back in the United States that I had not seen in about five years.
We talked until the train pulled up and decided to meet up at our destination. We walked in opposite directions, getting on the train at different ends of the same car. But we were in for another surprise.
As we looked for our room that was pre-booked, we saw them coming towards us. It turned out they had been booked in the same cabin and were in the bunks next to us. We had a really great time. Story credit: Reddit / dazzford
At the Same Second
I was in Florida with my two best friends. We all had boyfriends at the time. Our boyfriends were not together and were not by any means best friends. We were relaxing in our hotel room after having a busy day at one of the Disney parks.
All of our cell phones were sitting on the coffee table in front of us. Suddenly, at the exact same second, all three of them rang with our respective boyfriends calling us. I was amazed. Story credit: Reddit / Megling1285
Studying Abroad
For spring break, my roommate and I traveled from Chicago to Scotland. On our first day in Glasgow, we decided to hit up some tiny museum that would probably take 30 minutes to tour.
The museum was about to close, but since it was cheap and we were bored, we headed in anyway. We climbed all the way to the top of some skinny, lopsided staircase. In the room was one of my college classmates from Iowa who happened to be studying abroad. Story credit: Reddit / Boston_Pinay
Chance Encounters
One morning, I was getting on a bus from DC to NYC, and I bumped into my ex. We hung out for a bit, then realized that I missed the bus. I waited for the next one and found my old roommates sitting there waiting for it as well.
I hadn’t seen them in months. I got on the bus, arrived in NYC, and later in the day, I randomly walked past my old boss in Times Square. I spent the entire day bumping into people I knew. It was very weird. Story credit: Reddit / spark3d
The Manufacturer's Photo
Years ago, my wife and I were out shopping. She wanted to pick up an 8×10 frame so she could put our wedding photo in it and put it on her desk at her new job. We went into a chain store and found the frames.
Then, we were shocked to discover the work had been done for us. The manufacturer’s photo in the frame was our own wedding photo! Story credit: Reddit / CreativityTheorist
Uncanny Resemblance
I had a good friend years ago that I hadn’t seen in a while. While on a trip, I was eating supper in an out-of-the-way restaurant. I looked across the room, and there he was. I got up and walked over, and reached out my hand. He just stared at me without any recognition whatsoever. This guy looked exactly like my friend, even talked like him, but he wasn’t him.
I was shocked at how similar they were. I apologized and told him the background. I’m still bowled over at how complete the resemblance was. Story credit: Reddit / windynights
Move-In Day
It was move-in day at the dorms during my freshman year at college. Some frat boy knocked on my door and invited my roommate and me to a party, hoping that we would rush. I shooed him off. Five years later, I was moving to New York with my wife.
We were at the airport and struck up a conversation with a couple that went to the same college as we did. As they also happened to live in New York, we developed a friendship and became best friends.
After several months, we found out that we lived in the same dorm our first two years at college, although he was a year ahead of me. It turned out we lived in the same dorm room our respective freshman years, and he was the frat boy on my move-in day! Story credit: Reddit / youngearthevolution
Wanna See a Card Trick?
I was at a party. There was a guy trying to impress women doing some magic tricks. They were actually pretty good, but I was tipsy, so I was jealous and wanted some of the female attention.
I told him I had a trick that was pretty great, even though I didn’t. Everyone gathered around. I did a “pick a card, any card!” He showed it to me—it was the six of hearts. We put it back in the deck.
I did a million moves, cutting the deck, handing it to someone else, and so on. I was just trying to waste time. At that point, I had a crowd, so I decided I was just going to draw the top card after all the nonsense I was doing. It was the SIX OF HEARTS! The guy stood there, looking at me dumbfounded. He couldn’t figure it out. He was sure that I had a trick to it.
I could barely contain myself. The crowd was amazed, and so was I. The guy started questioning me and wanted to know my secret. I told him a good magician never tells his secrets, but I would give him a hint.
I confidently said, “Jack of clubs,” as I flipped over another card. It was the JACK OF CLUBS. I couldn’t even explain how amazing it was. Story credit: Reddit / yomanohman
He Was Not Disappointed
I went into Home Depot to buy light switches. While I was staring at a bunch of dimmers, an employee asked if I needed any help. He started to help me and I noticed he had a thick Italian accent.
Since both my parents were Italian, we started chatting. He asked me what part of Italy my parents were from and I told him, “Molise.” He said he was from there as well and asked what city.
When I told, him, he was shocked, as he was from there as well. But it didn’t end there. He asked me what my father’s name was. It turned out his father grew up with my father.
Every time he spoke to his dad, his father kept asking him if he had found my father. He tried to explain to his dad that Canada was huge, and he didn’t know what part of Canada my dad moved to 45 years ago.
I called my dad and let him talk to his long-lost friend’s son. He was not disappointed. Story credit: Reddit / flavtron
Closer Than You'd Think
I lived with my bandmate for about three years. When I moved out, it took him a while to get a new roommate. He found this girl whose dad owned a high-end hotel. She worked there as a waitress. At the same time, I started talking to this girl I met online who was a pastry chef. In passing, she mentioned she worked at a hotel. I didn’t really think much of it.
After she would get out of work, she would tell me about this girl she worked with. They hated each other. She was telling me that she was spoiled, and her dad let her get away with anything because he owned the hotel. That is when I found out the girl I was dating hated the girl that was now living in my old bedroom. Story credit: Reddit
A Perfect Match
A while back, I had met a guy at a party. He was really intoxicated and wouldn’t leave me alone all night. The next morning, a bunch of us walked to the bus stop together, and I remember looking at him and thinking, “Wow, I really hope I never date that guy.”
About three years later, I met this other guy at a bar and ended up going home with him, only to realize the next morning it was the guy from the party three years before. We eventually got married. Story credit: Reddit / strawberrybree
It Really Was Her
I was working at a Starbucks below an NBC studio. I rang up a young lady who looked familiar. She was smirking, and I was wondering why. Then, I noticed My Girl was playing through the ceiling speakers. I thought, “Oh wow, that’s her! From My Girl!”
I made sure to get a good look at her ear anatomy so I could compare who I saw in person with pictures later and verify it was her, which I did—and it was. Story credit: Reddit / gropo
I Never Wanted To See It Again
I got an Ouija board. It was fun to mess around with at parties, but after several weird nights, I decided to get rid of it. I gave it to a friend that I knew I was never going to talk to again because she was going to school in Alabama. A month later, at a random party that I would normally skip, I ran into her, and she happened to bring the Ouija board with her.
Somehow, that night, it found its way into the trunk of my car, and I ended up taking it home. Three months later, I gave it to someone else, this time to someone on the West Coast. Six months later, she was back in town, and the board ended up at my place somehow—again. I didn’t want anything to do with it. Finally, I met some exchange students from Austria.
I convinced them to take it with them as a funny American souvenir. I was in my senior year of college and graduating. They went back to Europe and took the board with them. All was well, and I knew I was never going to see it again—or so I thought. The next year I went to a Halloween party. I dropped in on some friends who were still in school.
I started walking in the back door and saw the two exchange students from Austria. They were back and at this one particular party. I made everyone who was with me leave. I didn’t want to find out if they had the board, as I didn’t want to get it back again. I still worry that someday that thing is going to show up on my doorstep. Story credit: Reddit / alcimedes
A String of Coincidences
A long time ago, I had a mobile phone before they were common. I was meeting up with an online friend for the first time to have a coffee. We were walking around looking for a coffee shop when we heard sirens close by. They were followed by cruisers and ambulances. We simultaneously said, “I’ve never seen a dead person.”
We laughed and kept on walking, not really thinking about the comment. Just as we were crossing the street, we both looked ahead. In the crowd ahead of us, there was an old woman who was standing perfectly still in the middle of the moving crowd. Well, our fun day was about to turn into a nightmare. A second later, she fell like a tree flat down on the street.
My friend and I instantly ran up to the woman, thinking, “Oh my God, did she just die?!” There were two other women approaching, who were obviously concerned as well. They asked the surrounding crowd and us if anyone had a mobile phone. No one replied. I was the only one, so I picked it up and started dialing for an ambulance.
As I was dialing the number, I looked up, and to my surprise, I saw the crowd parting in front of me. A guy on a bike came in full speed through the people and yelled, “Let me through. I am trained for diabetic emergencies, and this woman needs my help!”
He got off his bike and started checking the woman for life signs, put her in the sideways position, confirmed I had called the ambulance, and then took off on his bike, saying, “Stay with her until the ambulance arrives.”
A few minutes later, the woman came to, and we tried to make conversation with her. She didn’t speak, just gestured and silent-mouthed movements. I was worried she might be seriously injured. Then, one of the two women who had stopped to help started gesturing to the injured lady and said, “She is deaf. I know sign language.”
I was relieved, and after a few minutes, it was clear that the old woman was shaken but OK. She just wanted to go home. I called off the ambulance, shook her hand, and said goodbye to the other women. Needless to say, I have never ever experienced a string of coincidences like that before from multiple people involved. Story credit: Reddit / SwedeAids
Like We Were Kids Again
I had a very close friend in middle school. We hung out a lot, made a lot of jokes, teased girls, and played video games. However, our favorite activity was watching episodes of The Simpsons while his mom made us some seriously awesome snacks.
One day near the beginning of the winter/spring semester, I got heartbreaking news. His parents decided that they were going to upend their lives and leave to care for their ailing grandparents, who were still in Venezuela.
We didn’t have much time to hang out, but one of the last things we did together was watch The Simpsons episode where Bart was accused of fraud in Australia. We laughed and had a good time.
“Chazzwozzers,” a fake Aussie neologism that gets coined in the episode, became a favorite pseudo-swear word of ours. We said it incessantly for our last few days together, and it became imprinted on me enough that it became a permanent part of my vocabulary.
My friend and I wrote to each other occasionally after that, but eventually, we grew apart. About two years after he moved, we stopped writing to each other. We both discovered that girls were actually pretty awesome and started dating them, so keeping in touch fell by the wayside. Ten years later, I had graduated college and was working for a startup.
I drove with my girlfriend and two college buddies to meet my family upstate for a much-needed summer vacation. As we were driving on the highway, I saw a car pulled over to the side of the road with steam and water spraying out of the hood.
Since we’re making good time, I figured it wouldn’t detract much from our route if we stopped to help this guy for a second. I pulled over behind the car and walked up to the driver, who was obviously exasperated and dialing a tow truck. As he surveyed the damage, I heard him mutter, “Chazzwozzers.”
I stopped in my tracks. It was my old friend. We spent hours at the nearest rest stop, exchanging stories. We never made it upstate that day, but I didn’t care. It was like we were kids again and easily the greatest afternoon of my life. Story credit: Reddit / jxf
The Thief and His Victim
I worked for a major credit card company. People would have to wait 15-30 minutes to get through to a rep, and there are about 4,000 of us on shift at the time at various locations. A customer called to report they had been mugged, and their card was gone. I shut their card off and proceeded to take a report, which was a 5-10 minute process.
The next call I got was from a dude who gave me the exact same account number and wanted to know why the merchant wouldn’t accept it. The thief did not wait for me to get our security dept on the line. Story credit: Reddit / invertedspear
It's a Small World
I was at a party in a small town and started talking to a random stranger. When I told her what city I was from, she said she had a good friend who lived there.
I guess she didn’t really grasp the idea of a major city being big because when I asked her where exactly her friend lived, she only gave the street name. It happened to be MY SMALL INSIGNIFICANT SUBURBAN STREET, and I knew the guy. Story credit: Reddit / bloody_hall
It Felt Like a Movie
The only time I was ever in New York City was for New Year’s Eve. My cousin and I went on a whim from Philly and were completely unprepared. We decided to go to Times Square. Someone yelled out my name from the crowd.
It was like a dream come true. It was a girl I had worked with back in San Antonio six years prior. I also had a huge crush on her back in the day.
She was there with three of her girlfriends, and they had coats stocked with drinks and a hotel room a block away. It felt like the scene where Jenny ran across the reflecting pool in Forrest Gump. Story credit: Reddit / dettawalker
Ear Worm
I was sitting in my car listening to some tunes while I waited for a friend. As I started opening a Snapple bottle, the song “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles was playing on the radio. I looked at my lid to see my Snapple fact. It said, “#158. The first MTV video was ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ by the Buggles.” Story credit: Reddit / tyrannosaurus_sax
Family Reunion
I was the only child of a single parent. I had never questioned my fatherless existence until I was in my late teens. Around that time, my mother, who was usually a homebody, went into the city to have some dinner with friends.
She happened to check out one of those free real estate magazines, where there happened to be a real estate agent who was the top seller for that month. When she read his name, she nearly fainted.
It just so happened it was my father. She brought it home explained the whole story for me in great detail, explaining how he up and left. Regardless, we arranged a meeting. We met twice, ate some food, and went our separate ways. I did find out that I had a half-sister and half-brother. But sadly, there was a devastating twist.
Unfortunately, my half-brother had been murdered six months prior, and the case happened to be on America’s Most Wanted. Story credit: Reddit / darkcity2
Our Eyes Locked
A few years ago, a friend and I decided to skip classes and take the train to Amsterdam, which was about an hour from our hometown. While there, we took a walk down to the red light district. I still can’t believe who we spotted. We saw our English teacher, who was admiring some lady behind a window. When he saw us, he froze, and our eyes locked for a second.
He started to nod and walked past us, still nodding and smiling as if nothing had happened. Later, I learned that he had called in sick and didn’t show up at school that day. He should have been teaching our class at the same moment we saw him. Story credit: Reddit
Down to the Day
My wife’s uncle, who was from Texas, rarely got to travel. He was visiting us in the big city for the first time ever and noticed a car parked on the street, directly in front of our apartment building. It was his daughter’s car, still with her Texas license plates on.
She had sold it two months earlier. Somehow this car, which was sold to a stranger, made its way to my neighborhood, to my street, and found street parking ten feet in front of my front door on the DAY he visited. Story credit: Reddit / TiredMold
Identical Apartments
Right after freshman year, I joined a research lab for the summer, as did this other guy who also finished his first year in biology. Sometime later, my dad told me that some woman he worked with had a son who was also in the same research institution I was in.
I rolled my eyes. My university had over 60,000 people. I asked him what lab, and it turned out her son was the guy I met in the lab.
Three years later, the same guy and I were dating. We decided to go to a country where my relatives lived and had been living for a long time. His family also had relatives in that same city and were wondering how far my relatives were from his.
It turned out mine and my boyfriend’s uncles lived on the same street, in the same building, one above the other, in identical apartments. They had known each other for 15 years, and were family friends. Story credit: Reddit
The Chances Were Pretty Slim
Before I bought a house, I moved a lot. During one move, I sold a huge plush ottoman on Craigslist. I loved that thing, but it didn’t fit in my new place. About two years later, I moved again, and I wished I had it.
So, on a whim, I looked and found one on Craigslist and went to buy it. It was my old ottoman. It was in a completely different part of the city from where I dropped it off when I sold it, but with the same person.
I didn’t know it was mine until I walked in. I had sold my whole living room to this woman. I noticed she also had my old sofa and rug, none of which I ever expected to see again. It was like walking into my living room from a couple of years prior. I lived in a major city, so the odds of that happening were pretty slim. Story credit: Reddit / ellabluu
We Only Needed One
A friend of mine was getting rid of a bunch of equipment racks because his company needed more space, so I grabbed three. Nobody knew where any of them were from.
One of them had a marvelous set of switches and lights and an aerospace-grade wiring loom on massive multipin connectors. The front panel simply said, “BOMB BAY DOOR TEST APPARATUS ROCKWELL B-1B.”
My best buddy down in LA was making a space movie, and I knew the wiring harness would look great in his film, so I shipped it to him. At the time, he was sharing a loft space in the fashion district. The fine art photographer who lived next door was over. He turned and looked at the table where the wiring harness was sitting and turned white as a sheet.
My friend asked him, “What’s wrong?” He responded, “That’s the wiring harness for a Rockwell B-1B ALCM deployment bay test apparatus. It was assembled for Eldec Corporation in 1981 in Mukilteo, Washington.” My friend was surprised and asked him if he had photographed them, wondering how he knew what it was and where it came from.
His friend replied, “No. Before I decided to be a photographer, I was an aerospace engineer. At Eldec. In Mukilteo, Washington. It was the last project I worked on.
Actually, it’s one of the things that made me go back to school.” When my friend asked if he had built a lot of them, the photographer replied, “No. We only needed one. That one.” Story credit: Reddit / kleinbl00
A Three-Year Payoff
During my freshman year, one of my friends threw an airplane made from tiny gum wrapper foil and got it stuck in the ceiling. Three years later, as a senior, I was sitting at the same table with the same kid that threw it up there when the principal came over to yell at us to keep it down.
That was the moment it happened. Out of nowhere, the plane came down and landed in her hair. She became enraged and wasn’t going to let anyone leave until she found out who did it. We told her what happened, and she gave us all detention for “lying to her.” I wasn’t even mad, it was too funny. Story credit: Reddit / aclem14
The First Page I Read
When I was 16 years old, I moved to South America. One day, I was looking around a bookstore. There was a tiny English language section I was looking through. I found a book about old houses in New York state. I opened it to a random page, and there was a picture of my house—the one I grew up in and that my mom still lives in. Story credit: Reddit / crrrack
Who's On the Line?
I was sitting at a pizza place with a friend of mine in the small town that we lived in. The payphone that was next to our table started ringing, so my friend answered it. On the other line was a friend of his. He asked him how he knew he was at the pizza place. His friend on the phone said, “What do you mean? I called you at home.”
My friend explained that we were at the pizza place and he was calling a payphone. That’s when we made a jaw-dropping realization. When my friend looked at the number listed on the payphone, he noticed that it was one digit off from his home number.
His friend had just misdialed, calling the pizza place, and coincidentally, he still reached him. Story credit: Reddit / aegagrus
Followed Around the World
When I was ten years old, I moved to India with my family. When we moved into our apartment in Mumbai, my parents told me that my room used to belong to a girl my age named Sarah.
A year later, I traveled to Bangkok for a swim meet. There I met a girl named Sarah who used to live in Mumbai. We exchanged details, and it turned out it was the same Sarah who used to have the bedroom that I was still occupying in Mumbai.
Six years later, my parents were living in Turkey, and I began college at a small school in Illinois, with about 1,000 students. Everyone kept telling me about this “other girl who grew up abroad that I should meet.”
Eventually, I went to a party, and we met. It was the same girl—Sarah. Apparently, I followed her around the world. Story credit: Reddit / pinkrobots