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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

What is the strangest coincidence you've ever experienced?

565 replies

kickly · 03/02/2017 22:48

As above.

OP posts:
Clnz4fun · 12/02/2017 10:43

Having rtwt but my coincidences are I only seem to click/date men who either have the same birthdays but not year of birth and alway's in the same month if not.

Also most of pdp birthdays are coincided with the birthday of my df and his date of deathHmm

contrary13 · 12/02/2017 11:14

My ex and I both grew up in the south-east. Knew each other from the age of 11. When DS (12) was born, we were some 10 years out of school and had, obviously, both known each other's families for years.

My mother had met his mother, my father had met his father. However. My mother and his father hadn't met until DD (20) was 9 and DS was 1, for various reasons (his father worked abroad, my mother can be somewhat difficult). When they did meet... it turned out that not only had they both grown up in the same Midlands/Welsh border town and known each other, but that they'd also dated/been engaged for a while - and she'd dumped him for my father! Perhaps needless to say, they both now like to pretend that the other doesn't exist, but... well. If they'd stayed together, then neither I or my ex would ever have existed, and our children certainly wouldn't have!

My parents were both born in the same area, too... but met in Germany, where they were both stationed with their separate Army units. My paternal grandfather also knew my maternal grandmother's sister. Intimately, shall we say? Whilst married to my paternal grandmother (she then divorced him and moved to the south-east).

I like to think that these coincidences simply mean that my children were both meant to be and that, for whatever reason, my ex and I were being pulled together to create them.

ThanksForAllTheFish · 12/02/2017 13:04

I've just had another coincidence happen to me recently.

When DH and I first got together we used to go to gigs a lot. One of the bands we really liked we went to see around 10 times over a 3/4 year period. They weren't a huge band, never had a hit single and have a few CDs out all produced through a small indie record label. They could maybe sell around 200 tickets but not enough to play a big venue.

Anyway I happened to play one of there CDs a month or so ago and commented to DH that they hadn't played a gig or made a new CD in ages and I would like to see them again. (DD was a small baby the last time we seen them and she is now 7 - I remember because it was our first night out together after she was born).

4 days after I make this comment to DH they announce a gig in a very small venue 10 minutes from our house - first gig they have played in 7 years and they are not even from the same city we live.

The gig was last night BTW and it was fantastic.

gingerparkin · 14/02/2017 22:24

The week after my mum died, my watch started to gradually gain time until it was running 15 mins fast
When it stopped gaining time. My mum always set her alarm clock 15 mins fast her entire life.
When we were planning her funeral music, we were deliberating between 2 pieces. One of which is quite an obscure folk-y piece. Not mainstream at all. In the end we opted for a different piece. After the funeral we stayed in a hotel
Before heading home. As I walked into the dining room which was empty, waiting for my husband , the piece of music that we didn't
Deliberated over and didn't choose started to play softly in the background. Very sad but lovely.

DuchessOfPodd · 15/02/2017 00:16

In the summer after my A levels I went inter-railing. A boy who I really, really badly fancied while at school had told me he'd be inter-railing at the same time, and we agreed to a harebrained plan to meet up under the Eiffel Tower on a certain date at noon. Sharp.
The day came and I waited and waited under the Eiffel Tower at noon, but he stood me up and I was inconsolable. Bumped into him boarding a train at Gare de lEst in Paris later that week, he had two cute girls in tow...he apologised for the no-show, he hadn't forgotten, but the only sorry excuse he could blurt was that he'd got distracted (as he smirked and nodded in the direction of those girls). I never saw him again. 12 years later I discovered he'd got a job working with a friend of mine. She said he had got married to a colleague, they apparently made the perfect it pair, both popular and good looking. They then emigrated, he had gone bald, they both quickly grew overweight, and she left him shortly afterwards. Rightly or wrongly I felt sorry for him. I exchanged an email or two with him to commiserate/remind him of what he had missed out on. The end.

Edkanare · 23/02/2017 20:34

A very, very strange one...
A number of years ago I went on a family camping holiday 150 miles away in Devon. Whilst there, my husband, 4 children and I drove 20 miles or so to Cornwall to a theme park called Killarney Springs near Bude. We met a young man who was an attendant on one of the rides and got chatting. Later on, we drove back to Devon but wanted to find somewhere to eat before going back to the camp site. The kids were young and we needed to find somewhere family friendly so drove to around 4 or 5 food places before deciding on a restaurant. We ordered our food, I went to the loo and when I came back my husband said "You'll never guess who our waiter is?..." Only to reveal that it was the young man we met at the theme park in Cornwall earlier.
We left Devon the next day and drove back to Birmingham and arrived home in the early afternoon. My son asked to go to a skate park - though he hadn't been for ages - to a place called Kings Norton about 5 miles from home. Whilst there, I popped back to the car to get something and when I got back my children said "Mummy you'll never guess who we've just seen?!!!!...."
Only turned out it was the young man from the theme park in Cornwall who we'd coincidentally bumped into in Devon the previous day; he was in Birmingham just for the day with some friends who like skating.....

Sunnydays365 · 24/02/2017 01:11

when I was 9 yrs old I was a dancer on the pantomime and one of the dancers was called beau. she was lovely and her name and face stuck in my mind. fast forward 14 years later and I worked in a busy paging bureau, I took a call and the lady said "please call beau on 0*" I asked her if she was a dancer and she was quite taken aback but said yes " it was the same person..sheer coincidence

Sunnydays365 · 24/02/2017 01:20

another one.. broke my ankle in faliraki.met some guys from London who looked after us that night. were friends all holiday.holiday finished said goodbyes that was it. 1 year later I'm in Asia napa and this lad comes and sits with us for a drink and chatter..I said to my friend that he looks like someone I know but can't think who..he brings his friends over and we get chatting.. my friend mentions last year's disaster of my broken ankle and the guy who looked familiar says "ah my brother told me about these northerners and a girl called who broke her ankle""..checked names and his brothers friend names ...you guessed it it was me and he was the brother..small world :)

JungleInTheRumble · 24/02/2017 01:41

I'm too suspicious about threads like this...my first thought was daily fail journalist fishing for a basis for their next article...

Admittedly I haven't searched to see whether the OP is a new poster...

JonesMalone · 24/02/2017 20:42

Backstory: I was born and grew up overseas in a small town in quite a rural area.
About 10 years ago I was really in to researching my family tree. I put a lot of posts on message boards regarding a particular brick wall (this part of my family was from another part of my country).
About a year ago a lady emailed me and explained that she wasn't related but gave me a tip on where to search.
Odd enough on a ten year old post but strangely kind considering she knew she wasn't related.
At the end of her email she signed off
Name
Wales, UK
I emailed her and thanked her for the tip and said 'what a coincidence that I lived in the U.K. too, but in England.'
She replied that she had only recently moved to Wales before that she lived most of her adult life in the town that I currently lived in! And her daughters still live there!
I replied with 'oh my god, that's amazing! I live there now' and I gave her a bit of background about where I grew up (wider area, not specifics).
She emailed back and said she had a trip planned to go there in a few months to go to the small town I grew up in and that she was going there to research a particular surname.
Turns out, we were related through an entirely different branch of family.

Weirdly, after contacting me about family she knew she wasn't related to she didn't reply to any other emails once we discovered we were related.

ChanandlerBongsNeighbour · 24/02/2017 23:02

I have one male cousin and two brothers. My DH has the same his first name as my male cousin, same middle name with my eldest brothers first name and (now also mine) same surname as my younger brothers first name. Meant to be?

AgathaMystery · 24/02/2017 23:44

About 10 years ago I was sitting waiting to give blood (in the chair all ready to go). The nurse came over and said my name and DOB & myself & the woman next to me both said 'yes!'

We had exactly the same name (unusual surname in the UK) and exactly the same DOB... and exactly the same blood type.

We have since found out that we have really similar email addresses and even share a loyalty account in a local coffee shop as it was too much amgassle to keep explaining 'no I'm the other Agatha' etc. We have never run into each other again though.

EightiethElement · 25/02/2017 08:03

Agatha wow
That is mad!!
Same name and DOB. Bit scary actually!

RustyBear · 25/02/2017 08:47

My dad had a picture of himself as a toddler with his favourite teddy bear, which always stood on his chest of drawers - he wasn't sure how old he was when it was taken, he looked about 2-3.

He died aged 102 a few years ago, and I brought a lot of old documents and photos up from his house to sort through.

In one envelope of old photos, I found the duplicate of the teddy-bear photo, but this copy had the date on the back.

It was taken exactly 100 years before the day he died...

AgathaMystery · 25/02/2017 09:47

Rusty that's amazing (&I much love about your dad)

FineSally · 25/02/2017 17:01

Another family history one.

My gt grandfather had an older brother who had died in an unfortunate accident aged 6 while their mother was pregnant with my GGF. GGF was born on the same date as his older brother and was given the exact same names (this wasn't that unusual in those times).

He died on the same date as his brother too, 53 years later.

Crumbelina · 25/02/2017 21:02

DH and I were travelling back home from a restaurant one night and were on a platform waiting for a train. We wouldn't normally travel from that station. Whilst waiting we only spoke about 2 things:

Strange coincidences. No idea why we started talking about this, but we both had a couple of stories like the ones on this thread, e.g. a friend once told me he was randomly thinking about an old friend whilst travelling on the tube and at the very next stop the same old friend got on his carriage.

I also told him about a bad experience I had with a friend at college who ended up stalking me. Flowers to my home when I hadn't given him my address and then letters to my university address when we'd left college (no idea how he got that either). We started talking about my stalker because I went to college very near the station we were at, and my stalker would frequently turn up on the platform at the same time as me to get the same train (even though our college hours were different). After I got the letter at university I wrote back to him to tell him to leave me alone. Luckily he did and I hadn't heard from him in years.

The above conversations took place just before midnight. I remember it clearly as it was late and we were waiting for the last train.

The next morning I went to work and to my horror found that my stalker had sent me a message via Facebook. After many, many years. Just before midnight that previous night.

NobodyKnowsTiddlyPom · 25/02/2017 21:27

PIL live in a tiny little village in Wiltshire. DH didn't really spend much time there as they were a military family and DH went to boarding school. To save money, we got married at the church in that village (so we could have a marquee in PIL's large garden) about 10 years ago. Last year I was trying out a 14 day trial on Ancestry.com and managed to trace my mother's family back several hundred years (back to about 1520) and discovered that my 13th Great Grandfather married his wife in the same church in 1589!

Hofty · 29/01/2018 13:54

All five of my grandmother's children were born at 10 past 2, three in the morning, two in the afternoon Shock

Harveypuss · 29/01/2018 17:45

Years ago when we were dating, my hubby and I had a meal in one of those Italian chain restaurants. It's closed down now but I think it was called Bella Pasta. Anyway, the pasta was cold and stodgy when it was served so I sent mine back to the kitchen. Our waiter, a young student, was very apologetic and couldn't do enough for us. Got new meal, all OK in the end.

Two days later hubby & I flew to Hong Kong for the start of a 4 month backpacking tour of South East Asia. We stayed the first night in a backpackers hotel in Kowloon. After checking into the hotel, we got into the lift to go to our room, the lift doors opened and inside was the waiter who has served us at Bella Pasta two days before! We recognised each other and he apologised once again for the poor meal.

undertheradarplease · 29/01/2018 18:10

A girl with the exact same first and second (maiden) name as myself joined my dads company as an employee. Prior to marriage, I had a very unusual surname.

It gets weirder:
She started employment exactly the same month that I’d moved 100 miles away To be with my dh. Turns out she used to live less than a mile from my new house.

My dd found all this out when he and dm introuced themselves at a work’s dinner - apparently she jokingly called him ‘dad’ from then on throws self on floor and screams with jealousy

Figmentofmyimagination · 29/01/2018 18:19

Last Thursday I defrosted a ready made haggis from the freezer for tea that I bought mid November. Later that day I discovered it was actually burns night. Spooky.

Queenoftheblitz · 29/01/2018 18:29

My ex 's family lived next door to my family 100 years ago. Another branch of my family lived next to another branch of his 70 years ago. Both families died together when a german bomb was dropped on their houses in ww2.
His parents lived in my block of flats 40 years ago.
One year ago i discovered he and i are related.

Rewn7 · 29/01/2018 18:33

My parents (from the UK) were once lounging on a European beach. A few yards down from them was my Dads uncle who lived in Australia.

Neither had seen each other for years or knew they’d be on the same beach at the same time.

GerdaLovesLili · 29/01/2018 18:37

I used to sit next to a girl on the bus on the way to work (in London), she was still at school but it turned out we shared the same favourite band. My Japanese pen-pal sent me some pictures she'd taken of the band and I showed them to my bus-buddy. It turned out that my Japanese pen pal had been my bus-buddy's best friend when she'd been very small and lived in Japan.

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