BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones

Subject: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Allan C.
Date: 03 May 04 - 09:55 AM

As I sat in the dentist's chair I gazed about the room, noting the photographs on the walls. One was a close-up of a pair of freshly caught rainbow trout, lying in a bed of grass. The rest depicted my new dentist at stream side with fly rod in hand and line in the air. Seeing these as a way to strike up a conversation with him, I asked the dentist where the photos were taken. He mentioned a stream in Montana that was familiar to me. I told him I had explored that area when I was stationed there while in the Air Force. He said he had been in the Air Force at the time the pictures were taken. Further exchanges revealed that we had been there at approximately the same time. Furthermore, we were stationed at the same base and attached to the very same unit. However, our paths probably had never crossed because he had been an officer and I was enlisted. Still, we enjoyed trading stories of our time there and citing local landmarks that we both knew very well.

My visit lasted quite a long time. A later conversation began as a discussion of the weather. Heavy rains had pelted the area for six days, causing flooding in some areas. Noting this, my dentist went on to tell me that his basement was flooded. It might not have been such a problem except that he lived in a duplex apartment and the sump pump that had been installed to prevent such flooding was in the basement of the other unit. Unfortunately, the pump wasn't working and the occupant of the other apartment was out of town, as was the landlord. The dentist went on to say that fortunately, his washer and drier, which might have been damaged by the water, were perched atop of wooden pallets. *A small hint of recognition of something familiar whizzed through my brain * He said that the lucky thing was that virtually all of his belongings were also high and dry, thanks to a former occupant who had built lots of shelves above the water level. *PING* I grinned and said, "Guess what. I'm the guy who built those shelves!"

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Amos
Date: 03 May 04 - 10:16 AM

Remarkable!! Threads of lives are so innnerestin', aren't they? My wife and her close friend Nancy have known each other for fifteen years, now, but it was 12 years of frequent conversations before they realized that they had both lived in New Jersey at the same time, one further south, one further north, and they had both learned to play accordion at the same time. Not only that, but they had been students of the same teacher at the same time! It seems so improbable that a connection like that should exist, but there ya go.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Wesley S
Date: 03 May 04 - 01:48 PM

We were on a cruise ship once headed from Galveston to Mexico. Another couple was seated at our table - and the woman had lived in the house we are currently living in when she was a child. She was happy to hear that the pecan tree in the back yard was still thriving.

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 May 04 - 03:30 PM

My sister and her husband had been in Puerto Rico three months and when they came back to the US east coast they took the train to the west coast.

At dinner the first night they were seated with two young men. In the conversation, one man said he was from Oregon. My sister said, So are we.

He said, I'm from the Portland area. She said, So are we. Actually, we're from the McMinnville area. He said, So am I. She said, Specifically, we live in Amity. So do I, he said. She said, We live on Trade Street. He said, So do I.

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: mack/misophist
Date: 03 May 04 - 05:14 PM

Once, when I was in naval transient barracks, they had us line up alphabetically on pay day. The man next to me had the same name as me and his family was from the same part of Poland as mine. I never saw him again.

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Megan L
Date: 03 May 04 - 05:33 PM

I moved from Glasgow to Orkney when we got married, one day on a visit home we were sitting in the food court of the sauchiehall centre when we became acutely aware of being stared at by two women who were sitting together. Eventually they came over one asked me if i was the postmans daughter and the other asked my husband if he was the joiner. the older lady had lived one street away from my home and my father had been her postman, while the younger, her daughter in law had gone to school with my husbands sister.

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 May 04 - 05:33 PM

My wife and I went to dinner with her law school study partner and husband. Randy and I started talking, turns out we were at Ft. Carson, Colorado at the same time -- and when I mentioned being teargassed in the barracks one July night, he had also been!

Recently, I was talking to one of my new neighbors who was out walking his dog, a blind Sheltie. He asked where I was from, turned out he had a neice living in my home town.

My wife as in Paducah, Kentucky, attending the American Quilting Society's annual show. She was having lunch with a couple of others, and she asked one where she was from -- turned out to be from my home town.

A last one: my wife went to apply for a job at a law library. During the interview, it developed that the law librarian was, like my wife, a native-born Washingtonian (DC) -- and that the law librarian's older sister had gone to high school with my wife's mother.

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Bill D
Date: 03 May 04 - 05:55 PM

I once helped a fellow move from one part of Iowa to another.....2 or 3 years later, in a drugstore in Juneau, Alaska, I heard my name called...and there he was!

And while visting friends in Seattle, I walked thru a famous park in downtown...a month later, someone who lives 15 minutes from me asked..."you weren't in Seattle by some chance last month, were you?"

Yes...it IS a small world.

Didn't Kurt Vonnegut have a name for "a group of people who are sort of cosmically connected"? I can't remember what he called it.

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Ed.
Date: 03 May 04 - 07:38 PM

"Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre"

Sherlock Holmes

"With a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is likely to happen"

Diaconis and Mosteller

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: SINSULL
Date: 03 May 04 - 07:48 PM

Walked into a hotel lobby in Beijing and ran into a key customer I had just seen the week before in NYC. Neither of us knew that the other was planning a trip to China.

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 03 May 04 - 07:50 PM

I went to the newsagents this morning, I saw my mate Dave, in the same shop, and he was buying the same newspaper!

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Ed.
Date: 03 May 04 - 07:59 PM

Now that is really spooky, John!

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: LadyJean
Date: 04 May 04 - 12:06 AM

The honorable Johathan Caldwell, former mayor of Cincinnatti Ohio was visiting his daughter in Pittsburgh, during a highly contested mayoral election.
The reform candidate was Richard Martin, a popular judge.
Caldwell, who was part of the Cox machine in Ohio, didn't have much use for reform candidates. He told his daughter, "That fellow Martin will never get elected."
He was right. Martin never did become mayor of Pittsburgh.
Johnathan Caldwell was my great grandfather, and Richard Martin was my grandfather.

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Amos
Date: 04 May 04 - 12:38 AM

Sweet revenge, I suppose!! Great story!!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: GUEST,freda
Date: 04 May 04 - 01:50 AM

SERENDIPITY (from the Oxford English Dictionary)

f. Serendip, a former name for Sri Lanka + -ity. A word coined by Horace Walpole, who says (Let. to Mann, 28 Jan. 1754) that he had formed it upon the title of the fairy-tale `The Three Princes of Serendip', the heroes of which `were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of'.

The faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident. Also, the fact or an instance of such a discovery.

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: JennyO
Date: 04 May 04 - 01:55 PM

My daughter had just finished her HSC at school (in Sydney) and we were on a holiday visiting my brother in Paris. One day we were on the train, and sitting across the aisle from us was one of her teachers.

My friend Rhymin' Simon and I were talking about our childhoods a few months ago, and discovered that we had grown up in the same small country town, but we don't remember ever meeting each other then.

Jenny

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: harpgirl
Date: 04 May 04 - 02:37 PM

BillD...the word is "karass"

joh9n from hull...I didn't know your were married to Dave! He's my cousin!

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Amos
Date: 04 May 04 - 02:51 PM

I landed in Paris from Copenhagen couriering three large boxes of documents and mail between corporate offices and discovered my passport had been lifted in the night. I went to the embassy and was told the opnly thing they could accept as proof of who I was would be a birth certificate or a testimony from an American citizen, before they could issue me a temporary passport. I needed to get to Lisbon in a hurry. Not knowing where to turn, I called on the only people I knew in Paris, a couple who had lived in my home town for a spell, and lo and behold who should come walking in but an 80-year old widow from my home town in Connecticut who had been my grade school principle. I hadn't seen her in thirty years, and she had justhappened to decide to take a world tour and stop off at the same address in Paris to see the same people. I didn't know they even knew each other.

She was happy to come down and give evidence on my behalf so I could get a temporary passport. Saved me weeks of waiting! Taslk about serendipity.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Helen
Date: 04 May 04 - 06:27 PM

When I worked in the local Public Library system, I had been there for about 14 years and had known a work colleague through moving around to/from different branches and departments. We had worked briefly together in one department but not really sat down together and talked much.

She came to work at the branch I was managing and was there for a couple of years before we had our serendipitous conversation.

We knew we both came from the same town, 20 miles north but we were in the lunch room together and she started saying that her grandfather had owned and operated a "cordial factory" (which is Oz-lish for a soft drink factory) there. I suddenly sat up in my chair and asked what his name was. It turned out that he was my father's grandfather's brother, so she and my father are cousins. They had both lived in the same town all their lives, and it is not a really big town by Oz standards, and yet they never knew each other.

By coincidence :-) yesterday at work another one of those coincidences occurred. It is in my home town as well.

I have only worked at this place for a couple of months, but yesterday two of the women were looking out the window talking about something else, and one of them commented on the well-laid out garden outside. The other one said that her father would be very upset about its run-down condition because he had done the work to establish it and look after it.

The other one asked what her father's name was and found out that she had lived in the same street as this man and his wife, had had meals at their place, and she said she was really fond of them both. Neither of the women knew each other and have also probably lived in that town all their lives. They have worked together for nearly a year.

Another story: I went on a coach trip to the Oz Outback about 10 years ago and we had only been on the road for a couple of days, with about 40 people on the trip. The faces and names were only just starting to resolve themselves into my brain as a coherent whole and I think it was the same with most of us so not many of us took much notice of this conversation at the time.

We had arrived late in the afternoon at a place called Wilpena Pound, an unusual landform which is an extensive almost-circle made of two cresecent shaped overlapping ridges, forming an interesting valley in the middle. It is roughly in the middle of Oz.

We went for a walk up to the lookout and were all standing around enjoying the scenery and chatting. Then we went back down to set up camp and prepare dinner. When we were all sitting around after dinner one couple told us that they got to the top of the ridge and walked straight over to another couple and said "What are you doing here?" The two couples lived in the same street in another state, over on the east coast and met at Wilpena without knowing that each couple was going to be there.

We were not meant to be there at that time because there was flooding on the road we had planned to go so we turned left and headed in the other direction on our planned route.

The thing that amazed me was how calmly the two couples chatted and accepted the coincidence. No one nearby knew about it.

But, I have to introduce some healthy scepticism here: Oz is really just one big country town spread out over thousands of square miles. Six degrees of separation is only about three degrees here. ;->

Helen

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Bill D
Date: 04 May 04 - 06:37 PM

ahh..thank you, harpy! I tried "kvass" but got only lots of info on booze!

yes, indeed...some of you people may be encountering members of your Karass!

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Amos
Date: 04 May 04 - 06:38 PM

Good line, Helen!!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Allan C.
Date: 04 May 04 - 07:15 PM

While in Virginia, I happened to have a conversation about beer with a guy I had worked with for nearly a year. I mentioned Brahma Chopp, a fine Brazilian beer, brewed in the German tradition. My coworker turned out to be very familiar with the beer. I soon learned that he had lived in Brazil for a number of years. So had I. He had attended the American School of Rio de Janeiro. So had I. He had arrived at that school the year after I left and knew most of my old mates.

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Allan C.
Date: 04 May 04 - 07:24 PM

BTW, I can almost hear the groans of my friends in the UK as they look at the wasted space at the top of that pint. I don't know why it is that on this side of the Atlantic folks seem to like a head on their beer. One of the many mysteries...

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Art Thieme
Date: 04 May 04 - 08:18 PM

Coincidences are just cosmic puns !!!

When I was a kid we lived by the river and it was always wet in the basement. We set mouse traps and caught at least five or six salmon a month.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Coincidences? Sometimes surprising ones
From: Amos
Date: 04 May 04 - 08:42 PM

...and when Mrs Reno came to call to ask aboiut your Un American Activities, you invited her to dinner and sang Salmon Janet Evening?

A