Your craziest coincidence(s)

[A Vestigial Mote]

I figured these might make for some pretty interesting stories - whatever anyone's ideas of the whys and wherefores behind the incidents.

My personal experience hails back to my college days. There was a class I took on programming theory and throughout the course of the semester we'd one day touched on some personal pet-language of the professor - something he like for it's simplicity and logical structure (the name eludes me now). Note that I emphasized "one day" - because, literally, that's what it was - he mentioned it, we took a look at some examples, there may have been a homework assignment, and then that was it - no more on it, wasn't in/from the text book, etc.

Well, exam day comes, and I am in my car studying, poring over notes and text-book sections, etc. - getting ready for the test. I stumble on the page of notes and practice exercises we did with that programming language in class and for some strange reason, I start poring over it. I'm sitting there, stuck reading and analyzing this page - giving it WAY more attention than I feel it deserves. In fact, I'm seriously getting nervous and start thinking to myself "You're wasting time! You should be studying the actual course material!", but for whatever reason, I KEEP GOING. To this day I have no idea what got me stuck on that single page of notes.

At any rate - done with the test and I turn it over and surprise, surprise... the extra credit for the test is to write a program using that language to accomplish a simple but specific task. I aced the extra credit - and even got a hand-written note from the professor praising the work I had done on the program and he called out in class when we reconvened saying that he was surprised that there were some students who remembered that one day's worth of lecture so well.

It was weird, and awesome at the same time.

 

[Brickjectivity]

I was working as a temp in a UPS office. My job was to close. I collected data, processed time cards, helped occasionally with tracking, answering the phone. Mostly I counted cash and generated reports. The drivers totally sucked and treated me like garbage, but otherwise it was a decent job. One day as I was leaving to go to work I got *that* feeling -- the feeling that I sometimes get about future needs when I looked at a flashlight. I picked it up and took it with me to work. That night the building lost power due to 3 lightning strikes, and the flashlight was useful.

 

[Brickjectivity]

I had a friend that I occasionally called long distance. Once or twice I sensed that they were going to call or I called them and they were just about to call me. I only called them about 5 or 10 times in my life.

 

[Brickjectivity]

Once there was a girl I had a crush on but wasn't good friends with or anything, and she had a boyfriend. Anyway, unknown to me there was some place she started frequenting -- a large office building. I went there one time to apply for a job, and somehow I knew she was there before I entered the building. I still don't know how.

 

[Brickjectivity]

Things don't always make sense either. One time I was praying...actually meditating on goodness and how good it was. I was deeply moved and heard a voice internally. It was like a low rumble. The voice told me some things, one of which I didn't understand, two that I did. I still don't know what the third thing means, precisely; but one of the things was to expect a new job on a particular day. That day came and a stranger approached to offer me a job.

 

[Brickjectivity]

I occasionally get *that* feeling when there is something about the future. Its not reliable, and its not describable except that my attention is drawn to objects or actions suddenly. Its actually annoying as its very rare and makes me want to presume that I'm psychic, but I'm not at all psychic. Most of the time if my attention is drawn to something it means absolutely nothing.

 

[1137]

When I was studying the idea of synchronicity I found a story from Jung where he and a patient are reading about a scarab, they hear a noise on the window, and behold it was a scarab. This supposedly caused the skeptical patient to accept synchronicity. The real point of the story, however, is that the scarab was my most valued symbol long before that, hitting the idea of synchronism right on the head.

 

[metis]

Things don't always make sense either. One time I was praying...actually meditating on goodness and how good it was. I was deeply moved and heard a voice internally. It was like a low rumble. The voice told me some things, one of which I didn't understand, two that I did. I still don't know what the third thing means, precisely; but one of the things was to expect a new job on a particular day. That day came and a stranger approached to offer me a job.

This is pretty close to an experience I had going back a few months ago.

I had never believed in e.s.p. or "spiritual connections", but over the last several years, too much "coincidence" has occurred between my wife and I on pretty much a daily basis whereas we find ourselves thinking of the same exact thing at exactly the same time about things out of the blue.

Anyhow, there's a former love of mine (Cindy) that totally changed my life back some 50 years ago, and we were madly in love with each other, but I was also in love with another women who also loved me, and we (the latter) got carried away one evening and... Well, I think you can guess what happened.

Anyhow, I was with my wife at 11 o'clock mass one Sunday back this last April, and all of a sudden this flashed into my mind: "Cindy's praying at this time at church". Well, I thought maybe it's just one of those weird thoughts that can flash through my mind, so I didn't think much more about it. However, about 20 or so minutes later, this entered my mind: "Cindy's praying at 11 o'clock mass at a church near her home", but this time the feeling was so overwhelming in a way that I simply cannot explain, whereas I instantly got tears in my eyes-- and I just knew it was real. I literally had to turn away from my wife so she wouldn't see the tears, and fortunately she didn't as I have no clue what I could have told her.

Shaken by this, I went home and decided to google her whereabouts, found out where she lived and noticed that there was a Catholic Church almost walking distance from her house. Out of curiosity, I got into the church's website, and on one of the pages there was a listing of the ministers of the eucharist, and Cindy's husband was one of them-- on that exact same day at the 11 o'clock mass.

Coincidence? I think not-- especially since she was such a spiritual person that I never stopped loving. But I have the wonderful memories-- I've never met anyone with as much compassion for others, although my wife runs a very close second. To put up with my craziness, she'd have to be a saint.

 

[Valjean]

I was driving with a friend along a forest road at night. I don't remember what we were talking about but I used the expression "playing possum" in some context.
She was unfamiliar with the expression so I explained how opossums would often faint -- "play dead" -- when threatened. She was skeptical, so I said "OK, let me demonstrate," and stopped the car in the road.

An opossum, right at that very moment, had ambled onto the road directly in front of us.
I got out and began poking it with my foot (running away is not in the species' repertoire), but it was an unusually brave 'possum and chose to make a fool of me. It growled fiercely, bit my shoe, and walked off into the woods.

I've only physically encountered an opossum twice in my life -- the first one passed right out like a proper 'possum.
This was the most "synchronous" event I can recall.

 

[Brickjectivity]

I was driving with a friend along a forest road at night. I don't remember what we were talking about but I used the expression "playing possum" in some context.
She was unfamiliar with the expression so I explained how opossums would often faint -- "play dead" -- when threatened. She was skeptical, so I said "OK, let me demonstrate," and stopped the car in the road.

An opossum, right at that very moment, had ambled onto the road directly in front of us.
I got out and began poking it with my foot (running away is not in the species' repertoire), but it was an unusually brave 'possum and chose to make a fool of me. It growled fiercely, bit my shoe, and walked off into the woods.

I've only physically encountered an opossum twice in my life -- the first one passed right out like a proper 'possum.
This was the most "synchronous" event I can recall.

Awesome! Don't ever do that again though. A possum can and will attack, and its claws can kill or maim you very efficiently. Don't mess with any wild animal larger than your thumb. Any of them can cut you to pieces and sometimes can give you un-treatable diseases.

 

[Wirey]

I found an old book one time in our electrical shop about wound rotor motors. I read a few pages on troubleshooting just to see how archaic it was. That night my Dad, a maintenance superintendent, told me about a balky wound rotor motor they had in a crane that no one could puzzle out. I told him how to fix it based on what I had seen earlier in the day and it worked.

 

[Revoltingest]

My craziest coincidences happen in December, which is when we get Festivus Miracles.