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Observant People Reveal The Most Statistically Unlikely Things They've Witnessed

Observant People Reveal The Most Statistically Unlikely Things They've Witnessed
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Life is full of unbelievable things that catch us off guard, but somethings just shouldn't be allowed to happen. People share their experiences that shocked them to their core and that were statistically just not feasible.

u/RedditYankee asks: What was the most statistically unlikely event you've witnessed?


The same beach!

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About 15 years ago, I was on a plane in America. I sat down next to a girl about my age. We started chatting, just idle travel chit chat. She was an Australian, and I'm a naturalised Australian, I still speak with a Canadian accent.

I mentioned that I'm actually from Australia too. She was surprised, and I asked her where she was from. She told me it was so and so away from Sydney. I told her to try me. She mentioned a region, and I told her I was pretty familiar with it, as I'd lived in a town from that area. She told me the town name - it's a coastal town, see. I asked her what beach she lived nearest to (it's how people identify in that place). She said the beach name. I told her that's my beach too.

I asked what street it was. She lived three doors down from where I lived. I knew a few of her siblings, but had just never actually met her.

when the earth loves you

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When I was a kid I was on the beach with my family and a family friend. Said friend realised that he'd lost his wedding ring, presumably while swimming in the sea at some point earlier that day. I decided to head out with my snorkel to have a look and after only a few minutes spotted the wedding ring half buried in the sand, in about a meter depth of water. It still blows my mind that I found that ring!

watch your back!

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Was at a shop counter in Wisconsin, and some dude came up behind me and kicked me in the butt(gently), thinking I was his niece or something. Apologized profusely, went on our separate ways. A few weeks later, I'm in an airport in Houston. I hear a man behind me talking about how he accidentally kicked some poor girl in the butt. I turn around, and there's a long moment of staring at each other before I decide to walk away. Dude probably s*** his pants.

The perfect combo

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My dad is a personal injury attorney (aka ambulance chaser). One time when my dad was driving me to school, we got into a car accident where the car behind us caused three cars to be pushed into each other fender bender style. Everyone gets out to exchange information, and realize the guy not only hit my dad, aka the personal injury attorney, but the driver was also responsible for the car being pushed into the two other guys who were an insurance adjuster, and a chiropractor. Everyone made sure to exchange business cards.

What are the chances?

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I live in Ireland, and I found my friends passport on a night out in Scotland where he had been the previous weekend.

No way!

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Went on holiday abroad. Walking round a market. Turn the corner and physically bump into a guy. He looks up and it's the guy I was best friends with all through school.

Traveling neighbors

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Was in the car with my father going to Cape Cod. A car had been driving alongside us/near us since our home town. When we got to the Cape, the car followed us to the house we were staying at, then pulled into the very next driveway. Turns out our neighbors rented the B&B next to us with no planning what so ever.

Impossible aim

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In the 5th grade I threw a paper airplane that sailed across the room and stuck in between a boy I liked 2 front teeth. It was amazing.

He knows

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I was watching America's Funniest Home Videos, back when Bob Saget hosted, while eating pretzels and drinking diet black cherry soda. Saget led into the commercial break by saying, "don't put down those pretzels and diet black cherry soda, we'll be right back!" I almost choked.

Say what!?

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I've posted this before on here, but I once saw a guy try to kick a football, miss and instead kick a pigeon into a nearby girl, spilling her milkshake all down her front.

I mean, I don't know how statistically improbable that is, but any chance I get to tell the story I'll use.

Thank god for movers

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My wife lost her wedding ring. We thought that maybe she left it in a restaurant when washing her hands and it was stolen. After a year and a half of it missing we were moving across the Atlantic and hoped it might show up when we cleaned our house out. No luck, it was gone forever we thought. When we got to our new house one of the movers brought my wife her engagement ring. He found it in the living room rug. A rug that we walked on almost every day since it had been missing. That we vacuumed at least once a week. That got rolled up and shipped across the Atlantic. A few minutes later he found her wedding band in the same rug.

Happy birthday y'all!

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At a party a few years ago, about 30 people or so. I overheard a vague acquaintance talking to a woman I didn't know about that 'if more than 23 people are in a room chances are 2 will share a birthday' factoid. She asked him his birthday (which I didn't know), he said March 18. She freaked and said 'mine too!'. But this is where it gets weird. My birthday is March 18, too. So I told them and we all lost it slightly. Another woman came to ask us what the fuss was all about, we explained and she practically fell over. Yep. She was March. I'm not up to the maths but I'd love to know how unlikely that was.

The friend you see all over the world

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I met a woman in a remote mountain village in the Philippines that I had hiked to for a local celebration. Her, my brother and I were the only foreigners there. We made small talk yadda yadda, we were Australian backpackers and she was an American journalist doing work, and that was that.

About 2 months later I was walking into Chiang Mai zoo in Thailand and as I was walking in, she was walking out. We made that "wait, what!" face at each other and stopped for a chat. It was absolutely bizarre.

Magic

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Back in about 2006 I went to get school supplies for college. I also bought a phone. I picked one that had some speed dials and looked. Ok, some guy came over and tried to pitch me a warranty plan that I passed on. I paid for stuff and left. I got home and a few hours later I opened my roommate assignment and used my new phone to call him. We chatted for a minute and I said I just bought the phone I was calling him on. Silence. Is it an AT&T 2130? Uh, yeah. Did you buy it at staples in West Lebanon? Yeah. Dude, I just sold you your phone. This gets better. A few months later we are at school and we were talking about boy scouts. He asked if I was in the order of the arrow. I said yes. Do you have your membership card? Uh, yeah. Right here in my wallet. Look at the signature of the treasurer. It was him. I had been carrying the signature of my future roommate in my wallet for like 6 years.

Good guess!

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I scored a 10/10 in a true-or-false test where I didn't know the answer to even a single question. The chances of that happening is 1 in 1024.

Dodged a death

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A lightning strike right behind my car. It sounded and felt like the back of my car exploded.

Crazy physics

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A tea cup fell down from my hand, landed perfectly standing, tea surface made a very unusual vertical splash that reached the ceiling (4m high). There is a mark on the ceiling to this day

Impossible stats

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I was at a poker table where one guy got pocket kings four hands in a row. Someone looked up the stat and it was astronomical.

Something doesn't line up here

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Can someone tell me what the odds are that a tree would fall on my car on a sunny, wind free day, while I was driving it? Like, I was in motion, this big tree saw me, went "f*** this bitch in particular" and totaled my poor car (I was somehow fine.)

This is of cosmic proportion

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A meteorite that was big enough to light up the area like daylight.

The Worst Cases Of 'Rich Kid Syndrome' People Have Ever Seen

A Redditor asked: 'What’s the worst case of “rich kid syndrome” that you’ve ever seen?'

We are now aware that the distribution of wealth is severely skewed to the top one percent of the population, and rich people have a completely different perception of how the world works and what's "hard" than middle- and lower-class people do.

But what's so disheartening is how their beliefs and limited understanding of hardship trickle down to their children, and how those children are interacting in society is honestly shocking.

Redditor WaterWire asked:

"What's the worst case of 'rich kid syndrome' that you've ever seen?"

The Jet Doesn't Count

"I used to work with someone who proclaimed to be an environmentalist. She was very preachy."

"Once I had a can of Coke on my desk. She said, 'You're going to recycle that, right?'"

"She used her father's personal jet all the time. Once, just to fly from NYC to Boston to see a baseball game."

- LiterallyOutToLunch

Disposable Cars

"A girl I went to school with crashed and totaled six cars in three years and her parents continued buying her better newer cars because every accident 'wasn’t her fault' and if she had stuff like a backup camera and sensors they 'wouldn’t have happened.'"

"She got into a fender bender in the school parking lot and her dad showed up with a wad of cash and paid the other student off."

- nosenseofpermanence

A Simple Grade Change

"When I was in college for my grad degree and I was working as a T.A. (teacher's assistant), during a specific term I was helping my professor with some admin duties for one of his post-grad courses he taught for a different field than mine, and we had this one student who was arguing that she wanted a higher final grade than the one she had gotten."

"We listened to her explanation to see if there was any merit to her request and there was something that needed to be changed, but it basically boiled down to, 'I think my grade is too low and I deserve a higher grade because I say so,' and we simply told her that after reviewing her performance we could confirm that her final grade was correct and there was nothing to be done about it."

"She completely lost it and transformed into a Super Karen and after arguing for a bit, she stormed off and started emailing me and the professor and copying everybody in the email chain: her program director, the department head, the head of our registry office, Will Hunting, the security guard, the librarian, etc., and every email she sent was progressively ruder and more entitled than its predecessor because everybody kept telling her that she was unfortunately in the wrong and there was nothing to be done about it."

"Eventually, she sent a really smug email where she said something to the effect that since everybody was a dumba** and incompetent at our jobs, we had forced her to copy her father who was really close friends with the dean to the email, so we were f**ked and we had to do as she said or daddy would get us all fired. Keep in mind, this was a grad student in her mid-twenties."

"The highest ranking person in the email chain replied, reiterating that we were all very sorry, but she was in the wrong, her grade was correct, and it would not be changed."

"Then her father replied to the email chain and just said, 'There you go, dear. I hope you learn from this.'"

"She didn't reply anymore after her daddy's email, and the matter was closed. To this day, I like to imagine that dear old dad tore her a new one for dragging him into her bulls**t and making him look bad in front of a bunch of professors from a well-known university where his BFF was the dean because she, his grown-a** daughter, chose to behave like a spoiled brat."

- Tough_Stretch

First. World. Problems.

"I'll never forget a former friend stamping her foot and crying because 'Dad sold the jet and I have to take a commercial flight to our raaaaanch.'"

- tnrivergirl

The Cost of Priorities

"An 'Influencer' wondering why other people in their home country don't spend their life traveling like them."

- OrderIntegration

"I love the 'I’d rather have a passport full of stamps than a house full of expensive things!' schtick."

"Most of my furniture is from the free section of Craigslist and I would be thrilled if I ever get to a point where I can afford an international trip every few years."

- TogarSucks

No Help At All

​"Not me, but a friend of mine was an assistant trainer at a Panera store. They hired a teenager who was only working there to meet people, and one day had a group leave a huge mess in the dining room."

"Apparently the teen turned to my friend and said, 'Should we get the help to clean that?'"

"My friend had to explain that they were the help. He quit not long after."

- SailorVenus23

Garage Entitlement

"I was complaining about having to clear off my car from the foot of snow we'd gotten. A guy at work told me there was no way I had to clean off my car. I definitely did and it took a long time."

"Him: Well then, it's your own fault for not parking in the garage."

"Me: I don't have a garage."

"Him: Everyone has a garage."

"I'm like, look out the window next time you are driving?"

- Okay-Cheetah-9125

The Intrusive Thoughts Won

"A senior rich kid in my HS was driving his dad's Jaguar when his buddy asked him what would happen if he threw into reverse at 60 miles per hour. So they tried it and essentially blew the transmission and the motor up."

"A few months later, he got a Porsche for Christmas."

- New_Section_9374

Humbling Experiences

"I had a guy work for me in the military. He thought he didn’t have to do anything because his parents would just 'call their friends.' He ended up getting kicked out for LSD and cocaine use."

- ElfLordSpoon

"I did my mandatory military service when I turned 18, seven years ago. I cleaned s**t more than once, and my father had prepared me for it by saying, 'In the military, it doesn’t matter who you are, you’re still going to clean toilets.'"

"Only a few of my mates from back then knew who my family was and that was after a lengthy, alcohol involving, conversation/interrogation, lol (laughing out loud). You don’t wanna be standing out."

- RolexWearInGray

Unrealistic Shopping

"A therapist once asked me how much money I spent on clothes each year."

"I told her about 100 to 200 dollars, depending on the year and what was needed."

"Her response was, 'You can’t even get one dress for 100 dollars' and then proceeded to tell me that maybe I didn’t value myself enough."

"All I was thinking was, 'This b***h has never been to TJ Maxx?!'"

- FortunaLady

Very Different Backyards

"When I was in elementary school, this kid lived in the only gated community in the area, and the houses were all mansions. He was telling me a story about his tennis court in his courtyard."

"I said, 'Wait, you have a tennis court at your house?'"

"He looked genuinely shocked, and responded with, '…you don’t?'"

"It blew my mind as a little kid who had to share a room with my single mom, lol (laughing out loud)."

- Spare_Invite_8191

College Tuition

"Some girl in my college classes was genuinely shocked there were students who had to take out loans because their parents couldn’t afford to pay the 65 thousand dollars a year for tuition."

"I have a lot of extended family out in California who I’ve never met, but I sometimes hear stories from my parents who keep in touch with a few relatives out there."

"One of my distant cousins, who was like 17 at the time, intentionally totaled the new BMW his parents bought him because he wanted a Mercedes instead. Can’t remember if they ended up buying him that Mercedes or not, but they probably did. Sadly."

- Scortor

Exam Buyouts

"Rich Dude in my high school chemistry class flat out asked how big of a check his dad could write to get him out of taking a major test. He was serious. Nothing happened to him."

- GrayBox1313

Poor Packing Skills

"I had a friend who worked as a counselor at an American summer camp somewhere in Pennsylvania. He said that these kids would leave so much of their belongings because they couldn’t be bothered packing them up and they would just expect their parents to replace what they had left."

"He came away with Beats headphones, brand new shoes (although a few sizes too small), and gaming equipment."

"He also said that one day they were playing a game of flag football and one of the kids fell and grazed his cheek. This kid was some child model, so his parents had him HELICOPTERED OUT OF THE CAMP so he could get plastic surgery over the injury."

- amerika0210

Messy Kitchen Dilemma

"I had a roommate who would cook huge meals and destroy the kitchen. She would eat her meal and head to her room."

"A couple of hours later, she’d come out and be fully p**sed off that the kitchen was still a mess."

"She’d had servants most of her life and was now on her own."

- msjammies73

Though we know that the rich are often incredibly out-of-touch, these examples were still really surprising. Not only is their perception of money so different, but the disposable nature of big purchases, like vehicles, is just wild to think about.

It's easy to take our lives for granted and to forget how lucky we are in our own scenarios, but perhaps the rich experience this even more so.

Pair of scissors
Markus Winkler/Unsplash

According to the Cleveland Clinic, over 50 million men have had a vasectomy.

Although avoiding sexual intercourse is the only effective way to avoid pregnancy, the male birth control procedure still has a low failure rate.

Those who are apprehensive about having a vasectomy fear the following: pain, impact on sex life, effectiveness, and side effects like cancer. (The National Cancer Institute and the American Urological Association have found that the procedure does not increase the risk of prostate cancer).

To seek some reassurance, Redditor GaleNotTheWind asked:

"Men of Reddit who have gotten a vasectomy, what was your experience?"

Guys discuss what happened after the snipping.

Making Sure

"For the love of God, do the follow-up appointment. The last thing you want is to be accidentally playing with a loaded gun."

– sleepypanda59

Wise To Wait

"The paper work I got for mine which was done less than 2 weeks ago said that you could have sex 2-3 days after but... definitely said to wait another few days."

– SisterPhister666

Follow Post-Surgical Procedures Or Else

"Had it done twice while living in Japan no less. Why twice? The first one failed."

"... apparently, so did the second (says my now 6 year old daughter)."

– shoelessmarcelshell

These men found that the procedure itself wasn't a big deal.

Assurance

"I was super anxious, but I had a great procedure. I was more freaked out about the shot of numbing agent to the balls, but it was legit nothing to worry about."

– Reddit

Normal In No Time

"Little operation, blue balls and no wanking for a week, then back to normal but without getting anyone pregnant."

– Bright_Composer_3901

"Made the mistake of having a pop after a couple of days. Jesus, the regret."

– Alante

Best Money Ever Spent

"When I woke up after the anesthesia - yes I asked to be put under, best $55 (after insurance) I ever spent - the caffeine headache I had upon waking was the most painful part. The preoperative instructions were nothing but water the evening before, no water for 4 hours before going under. The Safeway brand cola that the angel aftercare nurse brought me was pure refreshment."

– HarrumphingDuck

Cherry On Top

"Local anesthesia stings for a second or two then all you can feel is tugging after all is done the pain I would describe is like blue balls for like 2 days tops. I took a week off work recommend by doctor since I’m a construction worker and the heavy lifting but I felt like after day 3 I was good to go. Cons: minor pain discomfort, no hanky panky until last semen sample came out clear. Pros: , no unplanned pregnancies(it’s still possible very rarely)."

– Secure_Requirement84

Some final thoughts.

Only Pros

"To me, the only bad part was the smell of the cauterization of my vas deferens.. the procedure was fine. Local anesthesia before and during just felt slight tugging no pain. Recovery was easy. No pain. No cons. Only pros. And if absolutely need be it’s reversible. Much easier and less invasive than a woman getting her tubes tied and significantly less harmful than birth control. I’m an advocate. Get it done!"

– PunchARacist

One Unsettling Thing

"For me, it wasn’t the smell but watching the little puffs of smoke during the cauterization. That was truly and deeply unsettling."

"Otherwise, yeah, nothing major to report. Stayed in bed for a day watching old horror movies and assembling a Lego plant. Pretty much business as usual after that."

– GuestCartographer

The One Constant

"Got a vasectomy, it worked. Got it reversed, that worked.... twice Got another vasectomy...17 years later, all good. Just go to a legit great Dr. I mean top of the field Dr. For ANY messsin around down there. Vasectomy is WAY easier now than 25-30 years ago. In/out in an hour... The only thing that hasn't changed? ... The bag of frozen peas ..😂"

– richwat00

Vasectomies are performed via two methods, the incision vasectomy or a no-scalpel vasectomy, and both use local anesthesia to numb the scrotum.

Always consult a healthcare provider before undergoing the procedure and–most importantly–make sure you don't want to have children or that you and your spouse don't want to add additional family members.

Based on the anecdotes above, there's nothing to fear, so feel free to man up and get to snipping.

gray conveyor between glass frames at nighttime
Tomasz Frankowski on Unsplash

I've always enjoyed a good scare on film and my Mother indulged my preferences as she also loved a good horror film.

While we thoroughly enjoyed a good Disney movie together, I was also allowed to watch Jaws, The Exorcist and The Omen before I was 10 years old.

Slashers and sci-fi frights were good, but to me the most effective scares involved nightmarish scenarios that might easily happen in the not so distant future.

For me, growing up Roman Catholic meant demonic possession and the AntiChrist were on the list of plausible fears.

But what films offered possible Hellscapes for others?

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wedding bands on dictionary
Sandy Millar on Unsplash

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Still, 16% of married couples in the United States admitted to being unfaithful at some point in their marriage.

And 57% of divorces were due to cheating.

In marriages where infidelity occurs, but doesn't result in divorce, the loss of trust is still a problem. It can make emotional and physical intimacy challenging.

So why do people cheat instead of ending their relationship before moving on?

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