Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To ask for your stories of strange coincidences?

350 replies

Pepperwand · 02/07/2019 20:17

Today I stopped at a petrol station and wanted to put £30 of fuel in the car but it blipped over to £30.10. When I went to pay I also bought two lottery tickets for £5 so paid £35.10. As I was putting the tickets in my purse I found two old lottery tickets so got them checked. First one won £30 and the second £5.10!

So, can I ask for your stories of coincidences?

OP posts:
RelaisBlu · 02/07/2019 20:34

My very mathematical daughter tells me the correct term is synchronicity!

I once heard a fascinating interview with the Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University. He said most people experience something as remarkable coincidence when there is misunderstanding of its mathematical probability. The example he gave was of people who have 3 children all with the same birthday but born in different years. He said that mathematically there are likely to be 7 such families at any given time in the UK but he gets letters from people saying, "Isn't it incredible? I have 3 children all born on May 8th in 3 different years!" but the Professor is thinking to himself, "Where are the other 4 families? Why aren't they writing to me?" because he understands the mathematics and knows there are probably 7 such families out there

SummerintoAutumn · 02/07/2019 20:37

I have 2:

My PIN number arrived and it was the same as our burglar alarm code.

And

I worked with a woman and her husband's passport number was the next after hers.... both issued before they had ever met.

StealthPolarBear · 02/07/2019 20:38

Lottery tickets are £2.50 now?!

sallyscallop · 02/07/2019 20:40

That's interesting @RelaisBlu

I was driving down the road and saw someone I hadn't seen for thirty years or so, I'd forgotten he had even existed, as I drove past I looked in my mirror and realised it wasn't him. I spent the next 10 minutes reminiscing to myself about him. As I pulled up in Tesco the 'real' slim shady Bob pulled up in the car in next to me!

bobstersmum · 02/07/2019 20:40

I love these threads but I've nothing to add!

iklboo · 02/07/2019 20:43

Lottery tickets are £2.50 now?!

Euromillions are.

Throughthenever · 02/07/2019 20:50

I left the company my now husband works for 2 months before he moved down to the office I was in.

When i met him it turned out he was working with the guy who took over my job and was also sat in the bank of desks next to where I used to sit.... if i hadnt left I may not have needed to wait 9 years to meet him....

I love the 7 degrees of separation and seeing if I can find links with new people I meet.

norrismcwhirtersfridgemagnet · 02/07/2019 20:52

When I was a child we went on holiday to a remote village in another part of the UK. The morning after we arrived, we saw a family coming out of the cottage next door. It was our next door neighbours from back home.

AnybodysDude · 02/07/2019 21:15

My adopted son's birth name - one first name, two middle names and a surname. His first middle name can also be a surname.

His first two names were the first name and surname of my paternal grandad. His second two names were the first name and surname of my maternal grandad.

So for example if his name was George Marshall Alexander Jackson - one of my grandad's is George Marshall and the other is Alexander Jackson.

StealthPolarBear · 02/07/2019 21:18

The word 'adopted' is really crucial there, I spent ages reading that thinking 'so?' :o

florentina1 · 02/07/2019 21:21

My DH lived next door to boy with the same first name and last name as his. When we married, we found that they lived in the house with a garden that backed on to ours. 5 years later when we had both moved, I met them at the school gate. The lived in the next street to us and their eldest had the same name as our son.

pearpickingporky84 · 02/07/2019 21:23

I once got diesel and picked up a few other bits in the petrol station, when I went to pay the total was the same as my PIN number, had to stop myself commenting on it out loud...!

Youngandfree · 02/07/2019 21:27

Years ago my uncle (in the US)wanted to make contact with an old friend of his whose father had died. Let’s call her “Mary”. Well he didn’t know her number but remembered that she worked in a certain shop so he rang the shop. The owner of answered but informed him that she hadn’t worked there for about 5 years, just as they were about to hang up the owner of the shop said “hang on Mary has literally just walked past the shop window!” So he ran out to her, told her that my uncle was on the phone and she went in and they swapped numbers!! I love that story!!

JSSB · 02/07/2019 21:29

On the ferry in Sydney, Australia I bumped into an old schoolmate I hadn't seen since school. We were both so shocked.

Deadringer · 02/07/2019 21:31

I was chatting to a woman in a shop and mentioned my son's name, turns out her son has the same first, middle and surname, and he was born on the same day as my son.

Rachbrown16 · 02/07/2019 21:36

My nan was brought up by her grandparents and thought they were her parents, but her actual mum "pretended" to be her sister.
Had my nan been bought up by her actual mum she would have been Miss Brown, I'm married and became Mrs Brown, and my daughter's middle name is my nans name and it wasn't until she realised my daughter's name she mentioned she would have been Brown! I don't know maybe that's not a huge coincidence?

Kokapetl · 02/07/2019 21:39

I have a small DC who loves feeding coins into machines so when I get a library fine it gets paid in small change (if anyone else wants to use the machine we stop and let them, of course). One day I knew I had a fine of between £2 and £3 so I grabbed a completely random handful of change on the way out. My thought was we'd just pay what we could then do the rest another day if nit enough. It turned out to be the correct amount, exact to the last painstakingly fed in penny!

Rainbowknickers · 02/07/2019 21:40

My parents went on holiday aboard once and met another couple with the same first names as them
The other couple had a shortened version of our surname
Their kids had the same names as us kids-in the same order-one girl 3 boys only their younger two aren’t twins-my younger brothers are
the kids shared our middle names too-the daughters middle name was one letter different to mine
my parents live in a street that’s named after a village 70 miles away from them-this family lived in that village and they had the same house number
They are still in touch with them to this day

MakeItRain · 02/07/2019 21:40

Years ago I was chatting to a (teaching) colleague and commented on her jewellery, saying it was a shame the stone had fallen out of one of her rings. She hadn't even realised it had happened and was quite upset. Hours later that same day we were both doing a staff exercise class in the school hall and as I did one of the stretches which involved bending down and looking at the ground for a while, there was the tiny little missing stone on the hall floor right in front of my foot, just where I was looking down. It was such a coincidence I was half worried she'd think I'd tapped her stone out somehow and planted it on the floor Grin

Hoovermanoeuver · 02/07/2019 21:42

Went to a country dance in Wales on Saturday. I'm from Germany, and I met a woman from New Zealand there. It turned out that 20 years ago, we both lived in neighbouring villages in Nottingham.

sirmione16 · 02/07/2019 21:43

My MIL sent her daughter some flowers at work, they went to the wrong desk by accident so the man who received them took them over to her, 3 years later they're engaged. And I'm not a big believer in fate

Tunnocks34 · 02/07/2019 21:48

I got a new bank card last August, and the pin was a combination of my sons birthdays, so if the were born on the 12 and 18 of whatever month, the pin was 1218.

About three weeks later, we moved house and the alarm code to the new house was ‘1218’

About a week later when we got out sky box, our sky pin was also ‘1218’

HerLadySheep · 02/07/2019 21:52

Both sets of my grandparents lived in the same street and my maternal Grandma helped to deliver my Dad.
Both sets of Grandparents then moved house.

20+ years later my parents met and married.

MrsExpo · 02/07/2019 21:57

I’m FB friends with a group of people I worked with around 40 years ago (I’m now 65). Although haven’t actually seen any of them in that time, occasionally one member of the group posts an old photo of the “gang” at a party or social event of some sort. We used to go to quite a few back in the day .......

Recently he posted a picture of a group, which included myself aged around 25/26, at a fancy dress party at the home of one of the group. I had a bit of a laugh about it with DH and added a comment along the lines of “one of the gang’s more memorable events” and lots of smiley faces.

I then went out shopping, and in my local Aldi bumped into the guy whose house the party was held in: he was married to a friend/colleague at the time and I haven’t seen him in over 35 years since I left the employer in question for a new job and lost touch with everyone. Bizarrely he recognised me and remembered my name. We now live around 40 miles from the city we used to live/work in but he now lives about a mile from me. Very strange.

EmperorBallpitine · 02/07/2019 21:57

When my daughter was about six months old I needed to buy her a bigger cot, because she had been in a moses basket. I went to Mothercare, found one I liked and ordered it to be delivered to my house because I had no car. When it arrived and I put it up, I noticed that factory QC date stamped on the bottom was the exact day, month and year of my daughters birth. She and the cot were 'born' on the same day. Odd.

Swipe left for the next trending thread