To think everyone has at least one weird coincidence story

[hazelnutpraline]

These are mine:

I was showing DP some old photos from before I met him and came across one of my best friend dancing at a (big, thousands of people) festival. We both noticed at the same time that the only other person in the picture, dancing behind her, was HIS best friend. We hadn't met at that point, it was several years before we did, and none of us lived in the same part of the country.

Years ago when I smoked, my friend and I were sitting on the steps of a nightclub wanting a cigarette but neither of us had a lighter. We asked a man walking towards us for a light but he just gave us a dirty look and ignored us. As he walked past where we were sitting, a lighter fell out of his back pocket without him noticing, right in front of our feet.

Please tell me yours!

Sat in a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, London on a shared table. Got chatting to two blokes, one from SA, the other NZ, who'd met on an expedition led by a bloke who'd worked for my dad on a farm in the middle of nowhere...

Met someone new at work and became friends. Sometime later I mentioned where I had gone to Uni and she said her husband was from there. Worked out that when I lived there (15years previously) was when they were first together and she lived there for a while. His road ran along the top of my road and his house was right on the junction - you could see his house from ours. We had the same taste in music - she had been to club nights where my (then) boyfriend was the DJ. We had probably seen each other loads of times but never actually met.

We were visiting my boyfriend’s (now husband’s) family in the US and one day we went out for lunch with his aunt and a man at the adjacent table heard our English accents and asked where we were from so we said the Midlands.

He said that his ancestors had a village in the Midlands named after them and there’s also a hotel near to this village which carries the family name. It turned out that it was just two miles away from where we lived and we’d actually pulled onto the hotel car park on the way to the airport to check that we had our travel documents.

On my last day of a job I was describing a book to someone. It was written under a fairly clear pseudonym - no clues around that although I had tried to look for some - and had also been published only in 2 quite limited runs. As I spelt out the pseudonym, a colleague in the background corrected my spelling - the disguised name of the author turned out to be a close family member of theirs.

Name change so as not to link with ky ither posts...

1. family holiday to Majorca in my teens. Swimming in the sea on my back, I bumped into someone. Turned round to apologise and it was a boy from my class at school.

2. We stayed on an island off the coast of Vancouver where we there was no public transport and hitch hiking was commonplace. We walked to the restaurant one day which was a fair trek. My boyfriend (now DH) was admiring an old gold Mustang parked outside. We got chatting to the lady who served us and discovered that she was from the same small Northern English town as my boyfriend.

On the walk back, we heard a car approaching behind us so decided to see if we could hitch a lift. The car stopped.for us and it was the gold Mustang - driven by the lady from the restaurant.

3. DH and I viewed this house and fell in love with it, however it was taken off the market as a family member of the previous owner (an elderly lady who'd gone into care) was buying it. Some time later the estate agent called back to say that the situation had changed and it was back on the market. So we bought the house. Most of it was extremely dated but one room was fairly fresh and modern so it was agreed that they would leave the furniture etc in this room. My sister lodged with us for a few months and had this room.

Around the same time my sister started seeing a new girlfriend, who lived miles away. Her girlfriend realised that our house used to be her best friend's house - and my sister's room used to be her best friend's room! It turned out that her best friend was the family member who had almost bought our house, and she had grown up there with her grandmother - the lady we bought it from.

Oh and another one - years ago went to a U2 concert at Wembley. 25,000 people there. Went to the loo and stood in the queue behind my cousin. I didn’t even know she was at the concert. Bet if we’d have arranged to meet we would never have found each other!
I also bumped into the same cousin at a Chippendales type show when we were both on separate hen nights but my memory of that is somewhat hazy!

On holiday in Sardinia. DH is pushing DD3 on the swing at the hotel playground and she's telling him she prefers the swings at the 'swing park'. I explain to a confused DH that she means the park in X village near our house. There was a man pushing his similar aged dd on the next set of swings and he said he lives in Y village which is in between our house and X village. This man's wife was pregnant, as was I. I was a few weeks further along than her. A few months pass and I give birth, as I was wheeled into the ward the same couple are there with their newborn baby who had been born the same morning.

@PhoneBoothMadness

I've changed user name for this as it's so specific. And insane.

When I was 19 I worked at an inn / restaurant in a very rural area. I lived in the staff accommodation, which was an old farmhouse a few miles down the road from the inn, and I would walk home after my shift.

One afternoon, I was walking home after finishing work for the day, and a phone booth that was on my route started ringing just as I reached it. This was a year or two before mobiles were ubiquitous, and I thought I'd better answer it in case it was someone in an emergency, or trying to get hold of someone nearby, though there was no-one around.

I picked up and said hello, and was taken aback to hear my friend on the other end immediately start yakking away about the night out we had planned for later. I interrupted her and asked how she knew I was passing the phone booth at that moment (it was the middle of nowhere and she was 15 miles away in the town).

Well, she absolutely lost her shit. She hadn't meant to call the phone booth at all, and she had no idea what my shift time even was, or that I wasn't at home. She had meant to call me, but had unwittingly misdialled, and happened to call the phone booth at the very second I was walking past.

I actually exclaimed out loud at this one!

About five years ago I was hitching home and two holidaymakers offered me a lift, which I accepted. They asked how far I was going and it was a few miles further on than their destination, so I said I'd either hitch again or walk the final distance. The driver wouldn't hear of it as his SIL, who lived nearby, didn't drive and many people would give her lifts, often going out their way for her. So by taking me home he was repaying the favour.

Being a nosy bitch I asked who his SIL was. Turns out not only did I know her her younger daughter came to an after-school club I ran, and my DP was one of the locals who'd go out of his way to take her home. So my DP's favour to her had unknowingly being repaid by her BIL.

Fast forward a few years...

I was on a plane south with my young dd. In between two elderly passengers who both assured me my dd's wails were of no bother, nor was her constant wriggling.

I got chatting to the bloke on my left and it turned out that we'd both been born in the same London borough, but had moved to separate, rural, parts of the UK. On hearing where I know lived he said his son's in-laws lived close to me, and his son had often holidayed there.

After a little more digging I was able to tell him his son had given me a lift a few years earlier, and I was still grateful to him.

A couple, my dad was in Gibraltar in the Air Force in the war,lost touch with all his old mates. Forward 40 years and he accompanies my mum to have an operation in Edinburgh (we live in England) standing on the steps of the hospital having a fag and this man says, “Alright Bill, you got a light?” It was one of his airforce mates.
A few months ago I was on a Twitter page for old photos of my home town. There was a candid one of an old lady who I first thought was my nan nan. It wasn’t but sat behind her was my mum.

My childhood best friend died when we were both away at (not the same) university. Several years later, I was hiking in a remote national park on the other side of the world when I bumped into some other English-speaking people and we got chatting. One of them turned out to be my friend's best friend from uni, who I'd never met before.

I was once travelling through London at rush hour and going down the escalator at a major station. Going up on the escalator opposite was my brother, who was also passing through.

Took my baby to playgroup just a few days ago. Got chatting to another mum and we found out that not only were our babies born on the same day, they nearly had the same name apart from the first letter. Both rare names you would’ve never heard of! Also both of us help out our brothers who own their own businesses.

DSis' (male) BF went on a blind date in a city 100s of miles from where we all live, while he was seconded there for work. He showed DSis the date's OLD profile. It was our cousin.

Moved a few years ago, joined some groups and became friendly with a woman. She shares a birthday with dts and I share a birthday with her dd. Most odd.

I went to the Paralympics in London, as I was walking round the stadium to find the right entrance I ran into a friend - we had no idea we were both going to be there.

Went to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child some years later with DH, glanced along the row and saw that same friend. We both live in London so it's not as unlikely as some of these, but still unusual!

My dad did National Service and when people asked where he was from he tended to tell them the nearest big town, as no-one has ever heard of the remote hamlet he's actually from. One day he claimed he was from that town and a voice piped up saying "no you're not, you're from [remote hamlet]" - it was a lad he'd been to school with.

Not really a coincidence but a good story. I am a retired occuaptional therapist. Its not a well understood professtion now but in the mid 70's it was even less known. My husband had a very good friend who used to stay with him and his Mum before we married. I got to know him well and we all got on well. They were both in the merchant navy and didn't live near so we sort of met at irregular intervals. A few years later he met and married a girl who was also an Occupational Therapist and we were invited to the wedding but didn't get to chat a lot. shortly after this they moved close to where we were living so we went over for dinner. We did the "What a coincidence we are both OT's thing" then she said what she loved about her DH was that when they met and she said what she did, he immediately knew chapter and verse about what she did....first bloke who ever had......then the penny dropped :)
My one and only sucessful matchmake and I didn't even know about it :)

In the early 90s I went on a residential trip with school, I was 10, took my favourite children’s poem book with me to read before bed, I’d had it since I was 6, I then completely forgot to bring it home with me after the trip. I was so upset as it was an unusual book that I wouldn’t have found anywhere else. Six years later my sister went on the same trip when she was 10, family were allowed to visit for the evening half way through the trip, I spent most of it looking through the books in the dormitory hoping it might have been put there all those years ago, but didn’t find it. Two years ago I was telling my 6 year old daughter about said book, how I’d have loved for her to have had it. Decided to have a look on the internet for second hand books and I found a used copy of it to order, only a few pounds. When it was delivered, I opened it up to find my name on the inside cover. Now it sits in my daughter’s bedroom with her books, found again 27 years after losing it ☺️

When I went to uni it seemed I couldn't move anywhere - worldwide, without bumping into someone I'd met there. It included:

The most back of beyond French rural train platform (no station just platform in the middle of fields)
A central square in Columbia university, New York
A cinema in Guildford
The top of Snowdon
A restaurant in Cuzco, Peru
My local Waitrose in rural Hampshire
Charing Cross tube station

Just think how many near misses there must have been for me to have encountered all those!

20 years ago during a night out, a fellow school mum announced she was expecting her 3rd child the following April.
I too was expecting and due in April but hadn't yet told anyone.
A few weeks later, I told her I was pregnant and due 12th April. She was amazed and said her due date was also the 12th.
I actually gave birth to my daughter on 4th, and was taken up to the post natal ward where my same friend was sat up in bed with her hours old son.

Shortly after my mum died I was at a coffee morning once for people who were grieving, it’s a good place to have a chat with others who are going through the same thing.

Anyway, I got chatting to one lady and we decided to swap numbers and meet up again as we got in well. I said I’d ring her mobile so she would have my number straight away and could then add my name.

She said her number and I duly rang her phone but instead of my number appearing on her screen it as it would with a stranger ringing who isn’t in your address book it said Jane, which is actually my mum’s name! No idea how that could happen as I’ve had the same number for well over 10 years..

I was driving to work one day and listening to the Chris Moyles radio show. They were doing a feature where each member of the team could choose one song to play - any song from any era. I thought 'oh it would be great if one of them chose 'love rollercoaster' by RHCP', which had been released over 10 years before and was popular but not a massive hit. I hadn't heard it for ages. I then thought 'it would be weird if they did play it now'' then thought 'it would be even weirder if they played it now after me thinking how weird it would be...'

I'm sure you can guess what the next song chosen was. And whilst I realise this isn't that big a deal compared to some of the crazier coincidences in life, I was still very shocked. 😁

I bought a car a few years ago and when looking at v5 for the mot date the date is my late sisters bday. The reg is her initial my sons and mine.

Before we moved to our current home we looked around the new builds and soon found we were just short on the mortgage. Then they all sold. Roll on a year and hubby gets head hunted, declines it but after roping and froing between companies manages a significant pay rise, only for them to merge with the one who head hunted him. That enabled us to afford the mortgage. The house we wanted had then also fallen through so we were able to buy it.

Not me but my mum. Went to a local agricultural show. They took my dads lorry so had tickets for lunch. Got chatting and turns out it was the family who own the farm where my sister lost her life 8 years ago and it was the anniversary of her passing. My mum leaves flowers on the roadside near their entrance

Remembered another one. I lived in the Solomon Islands in the eighties and my family and other expats did amateur dramatics. The kids were always in the panto. There were two brothers who did it who were about my age and I remember we did Cinderella and Christmas Carol. Were also at the international school with them. When I was at university 15 years later I was invited out for a birthday dinner and sat next to a student I didn't know. Got chatting and turns out he was one of the brothers.

I bumped into my dad on a night out. Literally!
2am, Central London. I was at uni. I assumed he was 100 miles away at home. He stepped onto the pavement from behind a vehicle and I walked straight into him. Turned to apologise and got the shock of my life! Turned out he'd brought a group to London for a night out (he was a coach driver).
I mean, what are the odds? If he'd stepped onto the pavement a second later, we would have missed each other.

Many years ago DH and I were on holiday on a Scottish Island where my mum grew up. It is a small community where everyone knows each other. We were in a taxi and the driver asked who my mum is and her family's name, etc. He knew the family and then told us it was the anniversary of my mum's brother's death in a road accident that day (I had no idea as it happened long before I was born) and we were on the same stretch of road the accident happened at that moment too .

I asked my mum and sure enough, her brother was killed on that road we were on and it was indeed the anniversary.