Life is full of shock and surprise.
Apparently, that is part of the fun.
Who hasn't been left stunned by life events?
We always think we're immune to way too many things.
Anything and everything is possible.
It's important to be ready.
Redditor Bob_the_peasant wanted to hear about the things that have left people SHOOK, so they asked:
"What 'That can’t happen to me' thing happened to you?'"
I haven't been left that shocked that often.
I'm always expecting the worst, so I'm prepared.
But you never know.
I'm Dead
Snakes Imacelebau GIF by I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! AustraliaGiphy"A snake fell out of a tree and bit me on the head."
"ETA: I have always been more scared of snakes than anyone I know, so it’s just so ironic that this happened to me of all people."
amanitachill
Crash Into Me
"A car crashed through my kitchen last year."
aster636
"I woke up to a truck parking in my bathtub 2 weeks before Christmas a few years ago. I watched my sink roll past my bedroom door followed by a hubcap. The driver managed to cross a median, 3-lane road, up an embankment, through an iron fence and between trees. He'd been involved in an altercation nearby and was fleeing the scene."
anjie59k
Hot Air
Swinging Hot Air Balloon GIF by Red BullGiphy"My family and I were in a hot air balloon crash."
GymDoll2000
"My friend had one crash into her pool when she was a kid."
Environmental-Car481
This is why hot air balloons and skydiving are just a HELL no for me.
Always have. Always will.
Tragic
Cat No GIF by Looney TunesGiphy"My wife cheated on me with my best friend. They’re moving in together next month. I’m in a new city thousands of miles away. I found out a month ago."
Tssodie
Bad Penguin
"Everyone else’s stories are very sad so here’s something a bit lighter. I’ve mentioned this story before but I got bitten on the neck by a penguin."
"I was at an event where the local zoo had a penguin and owl sitting on tables with handlers so you could take a picture next to them. The penguin went for my glass of wine, I moved the wine, and it bit me on the neck hard enough to bruise. They removed the penguin after that. 😂."
archaeologistbarbie
All Gone
"Our house burned in a wildfire, we lost absolutely everything we owned and only salvaged a single coffee 3 cup."
"On the good side: There was a boy I crushed on all through high school. We went to summer camp together and I adored him. We ended up getting together in our 20s after reconnecting, and have now been together more than 20 years, married almost 17. We’re as madly in love as ever."
toomuchisjustenough
Good Luck
"Homelessness. It came swiftly and out of nowhere. had no savings and the landlord sold the house I was in. couldn’t afford a new place so lived in my car with my dog for a few months. ended up finding community assistance and got into an apartment."
jumbospicyslimjim
"I can’t even imagine being in that situation. Hopefully, this is just the start of things turning around for you. Sending you good energy!"
frappbarqueen
Early Michael Myers
"About 10 years ago, I was stabbed in the arm with a flathead screwdriver. It was a coworker whom I had previously gotten along well with. He had stopped taking benzos and smoking weed a few days before and was on a hair trigger. I said something sarcastic, and he just snapped."
Mr_Spaghetti_Hands
Bad Landing
Bad Day Seagull GIF by Sound FXGiphy"I was lying on the beach and a seagull flying very high took a poop and it went straight in my mouth."
Competitive_Show6205
This is why I say... "Never trust a seagull!"
They are minions of the devil.
I swear I've relived moments of my life. I'm convinced of it. Like... "I swear I already paid that bill." Does anybody else have that issue?
Hello?
Disappointed Talk To Me GIF by Dark IglooGiphy"My twin sister died suddenly at the age of 50. Two weeks after her death I get a text from her apologising for our last argument, which I didn't get at the time nor responded to. She died with us still estranged."
sorry for scaring you...
"Had a dream where someone interrupted my dream to tell me I only had 6 months left, 6 months after I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. It was the harmless type, and this was 15 years ago, but it still freaks me out to this day."
"There's actually another case like this. A lady who heard a voice told her to go to the hospital and get her brain scanned. Sure enough, there was a tumor. She got surgery to have it removed. In recovery, the voice said "sorry for scaring you. This will be the last you hear from us."
- Morvack
Call me Coco
"We were in a town outside Puerta Vallarta on holiday. In the middle of the outdoor market was a small church that we decided to check out. For some reason I felt really connected to it. I felt compelled to pray and light a candle. As we were leaving the church courtyard a little girl across the small brick road was pointing at me, pulling her mother towards us, and she was calling me"Coco Coco". The mother was pulling against her saying, "¿Quien? no la conocemos. quien es Coco?" (Who? We don't know her. Who is Coco?)"
"I froze. I locked eyes with the little girl. She was so excited and happy to see me. I didn't know her either but I smiled to be polite. And in that moment it dawned on me. My little sister used to call me Coco when she was very little. I hadn't heard anyone say that name to me in over 30+ years and had not thought about that nickname or told anyone about that nickname ever."
"It was alarming yet comfortably familiar. The little girl's mother pulled her along up the street and we went on our way. Years later my sister is getting really into genealogy and tracing our roots. She says 4 generations back, our dad's family is from that small town outside of Puerta Vallarta."
Just Stop
"I was taking my kid to a doctor's appointment and as we were walking from the car everything around us just stopped. It was only for just a brief moment and then everything went back to normal. What was weird was everything went silent too which never happens there since it was right by one of the busiest intersections in town. I could also blow it off as just my imagination but as soon as it happened my kid asked me if time just stopped."
- rhett342
I hear it...
Spike Lee Radio GIF by MauditGiphy"The other day I heard the radio station without turning on the receiver. I turned it on and it was exactly what was playing in my head."
- Schmevil
That radio thing happens to me five times a day. Or... I'll be thinking of a random movie that is YEARS old and then... BAM, it's on tv. Like, I made it happen.
In Nashville
GIF by OpryGiphy"In the mid nineties (I was about 14) my family took a weekend trip to Nashville to go to Opryland. The night before we go, I had a terrible nightmare that the shoulder harness on a rollercoaster we were riding was faulty, and I fell out. So the next day at the park, my mom, sis, and I get on the exact same rollercoaster. I sat in the car in front of them by myself and the shoulder harness would not lock in place!!"
"I freak out! The ride is about to start. I start screaming! A ride operator comes over and manually locks the harness in place so the ride can begin. When we get off the ride, they shut off that car so no one else can ride it. I will never again ride an upside down rollercoaster."
People Break Down The Strangest Rules Their Parents Enforced Growing Up | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
The rules we follow growing up are often rooted in culture and circumstance, but that doesn't mean they always make sense for the world we live in. Or at lea...The Power of Christ
"My parents got the house exorcized by a priest (my mom claimed that seeing demons and being manic were unrelated, we just didn't argue). As the priest walked around the house, suddenly a flood of roaches spewed out from behind the priest, emerging from cracks in the pavement and fanning away from him like a wake, instantly disappearing as soon as they'd materialized. I've never seen insects act like one perfectly coordinated hive."
"Roaches scatter erratically, and come in different sizes. These roaches were all exactly the same size and color, and moved in perfect unison. It happened in seconds. My sister, also an atheist, saw it too, but everyone else had been walking alongside the priest. We later went back to investigate. We never saw a single roach in or around that basement before or since. Obvious explanation would be weird roach coincidence, but... I just don't know. It was weird."
Then the phone rang
"One summer when I was a teenager, my cousin came to visit with her then infant son, and my mom took the two of them to the zoo. My mom told me to call on my cousin's phone if I was going anywhere, since my mom wasn't bringing her phone with her. About an hour later I decided to bike to my friend's house. I instinctively called my mom on her phone to let her know, forgetting that she didn't have her phone with her."
"Once I remembered, I hung up and started to dial my cousin's number. Then the phone rang. It was my mom's number. Somehow, her phone called me back on its own, even though it was in her car, which was locked and in front of the house (I ran outside to confirm this). To this day, I have no idea how her phone was able to call me back. And no, I didn't answer the call."
In a Haze
"I was driving to a running workout at 4:30am and and passed the high school stadium near my house. There was a football game being played with a stadium full of fans. It made no sense at all, I kinda wonder if I was hallucinating. To this day I don't know why that was happening then."
Numb
Difficult People Comedy GIF by HULUGiphy"I once forgot how to read, speak and comprehend stuff for like an hour and half my body went numb. I called the ambulance cause I got freaked out, but they found nothing wrong."
Still haunts me...
"11 years old. Driving 1.5 hrs away on a school trip. I see my (very uncommon) name, first and last, spray painted, in reverse (like to be read in a mirror) on a train overpass. I have pictures of this to this day. I wonder if it means something, but not sure what. I'm 42 now. Still haunts me."
"Edit: for those wanting to see the picture. - https://twitter.com/michaelvannette/status/1445821275163615239?t=jayMB2iZPG0q-fdL63SjPA&s=19"
- vdthemyk
Dad sees it too!
"When I was a little kid, my dad and I would often sit on the front steps just before my bedtime. He'd just let me rattle on about whatever was on my mind. I always looked forward to it. So one night we're sitting there and a a big ball of light, sort of a pale yellowish color, flies over the house. It was moving fast and made no sound we could hear. It was headed straight north and quickly vanished over the trees across the street."
"I was predictably excited, jumping up and pointing at it. Dad calmly took me by the hand and herded me into the house. He had a brief, hushed conversation with Mom and I got put to bed. Next morning when I brought it up they said I must have dreamed it. Years later Dad admitted that yeah, he saw it too. But he still wouldn't talk about it."
- NoRumors
In a Dream state...
"Little late but… When I was younger I always saw the same person in my dream. It wasn't the generic man picture all over the internet. The person was hunched over, much more than normal and had massive teeth and eyes. These dreams slowly turned to nightmares and I was very scared."
"One morning I woke up after having a normal, not scary dream and there it was, for a split second. After I had that experience I never had a dream of it again… so that's good I guess? TL;DR - I saw my nightmare when I woke up and then I never saw it in my dreams again."
Funnely Enough
Infinite Loop Looping GIF by CmdrKittenGiphy"Was in a kitchen with a few kitchen implements on the wall. A funnel fell off it's hook, unlikely but not impossible, and flew 6 feet into the open oven. It was really weird."
"I love/like milk too"
"I remember it was during a drought in California around a decade ago, I woke up one morning and our entire backyard was overgrown with grass and weeds, when the previous day it was barren completely. We had no milk in the fridge, but had gained a jug of fruit punch, an entire untouched gallon."
"My dad drove me to the store to go get more milk, and we were talking about how much we loved the stuff and how it's one of the only things we ALWAYS keep in the house and never let go empty. We pull into the parking lot of our nearby Savemart and look at the license plate of the car in front of us as we're finding a spot."
"Something along the lines of "I love/like milk too" (cant remember the exact sequence of digits, I was a kid). We both were stunned speechless and brought it up in shock for years to come."
The "Person"
"Woke up in the middle of the night one day. My eyes were still foggy from sleep but I could see the shape of a person standing in front of me. It looked like they were half crouched, with their hands on their knees and their head kind of tilted, as if they were trying to get a good look at my face."
"I remember being confused because I thought it was my mom, and I was wondering why she was just looking at me like that. My eyes then adjusted and I realized this "person" didn't have any features. It was like a shadow person, but was grey and static-y looking."
"I got scared and closed my eyes hoping it would go away. I guess I must have fallen asleep after a while because next thing I know it was morning. Definitely really weird. I have a ton of other weird experiences too that seemingly have no explanation. That was one of the creepiest."
Quivers...
don't care ugh GIF by Adult SwimGiphy"Saw my late grandfather's lip moving. Seems normal but this happened to me during his funeral, after he had been pronounced dead for 5-6 days."
Sun Ting...
"I wear a sun symbol necklace, it was handmade out of a single bit of metal and has a loop at the top to thread a cord or chain through. I was walking along with my daughter on my shoulders, when I hear a "ting" on the floor in front of me. I look down and my necklace sun symbol is on the floor. I check the cord around my neck. It is still tied and in one piece, so I check the symbol, the metal loop is still solid. WTF...? how did the symbol detach from the cord, without breaking the cord or the loop? To this day I have no clue."
What's so Funny?
Golden Girls Lol GIF by HULUGiphy"Was driving home at night and heard 2 little girls laugh in the back of my car. Pulled over and checked the whole car. I just blamed it on my mental health but I never had a auditory hallucination before and haven't had any since that night."
The human body is beyond explanation. That's why they say doctors don't know everything. But so is life, beyond explanation.
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Ok, who is watching the clock? Those seconds aren't going to count themselves. The only way to understand time is to be its witness. Although that can get depressing. Let's focus on the light and cool.
History...
Calculate Figure It Out GIF by OriginalsGiphy"If you are an 80-year-old American, you have lived through approximately 1/3 of our nation's entire history."
Those Days...
"The 80s were 40 years ago."
"This is what messes me up because I was born in 82 and graduated high school in 2000 so for some reason my brain is stuck on the 80's being twenty years ago. The 70's thirty years ago etc etc. I have to stop and realize sometimes that my concept of how long ago things happened is way off."
Time goes by...
"We observe that light travels at 186,000 miles a second, but given the vast size of the observable universe, that's a snail's pace. But from the point of view of a particle of light, time doesn't even exist."
"Time slows down as you approach the speed of light, and theoretically stops completely when you reach the speed of light."
Years Gone By...
"MLK Jr. and Anne Frank were born in the same year."
"Betty White was born in 1922. Automatically pre-sliced packaged bread loaves became commercially available in 1928. Betty White is six years older than sliced bread."
Long Live the Queen!
queen elizabeth images GIFGiphy"The queen and Marilyn Monroe would've been the same age."
"And Marilyn Monroe and Andy Griffith were born on the same day!"
- osme1
I swear Liz is going to outlive dirt. Wait, I believe she already has. Well she won't be alone, she'll have Betty White. At least she better have Betty. Time is nothing without Queen Betty.
TV Time
Season 2 Omg GIF by Paramount+Giphy"Happy Days was a TV show made in the 1970s-80s about teenagers in the 1950s. Similarly, That 70s Show was made in the 90s-00s about teenagers in the 70s. If a similar show were to be made today, it would be about teenagers in the 2000s."
- VVillyD
A Croc
"If a T-Rex imagined a creature as ancient as the T-Rex is to us, it would be a Stegosaurus. If that Stegosaurus imagined a creature as ancient as the Stegosaurus is to us, it would be a Crocodile. If that Crocodile imagined a creature as ancient as that Crocodile is to us, it would be a Shark."
On the Clock
"On a twenty four hour clock the amount of time that humans have been on the earth would total around five seconds."
"How about this one: If Homo Habilus first appeared at midnight, 24 hours ago, that means the first Homo Sapiens appeared at 9:25 PM, or about 2 and a half hours ago. The first human civilization, in lower Mesopotamia, appeared at 11:57 PM, or about 3 minutes ago."
"The Western Roman Empire fell at 11:59 PM, or 1 minute ago. Everything that has happened since - the Crusades, the Plague, the discovery of the New World, the world wars, all of it - has happened in the last minute of human existence."
And that's just OUR Sun...
"The span of our lives are so insignificantly small that our Sun will last another 5 billion years. That's 9 zeros people. Our eldest live to around 100 in the best places. That's 50,000,000 (50 million) times longer than any person can reasonably expect to live. And that's just OUR Sun. The universe as a whole has probably existed for magnitudes longer than that already and will continue to exist until the end of time as we know it."
Tell Me a Story
william shakespeare GIF by will herringGiphy"We know what a good storyteller Shakespeare was but there were Greek playwrights who wrote shows nearly 2,000 years earlier that are pretty good, too."
I hate time. Only because I'm petty and irritated of the amount I squandered. That's neither here nor there though. Time marches on and continues to amaze. I'll keep watching.
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I've lost track of the amount of times I lost an item only to discover it in a place I KNOW I scoured earlier. Or who hasn't had a television restart once you've turned it off? How about hearing distant voices in the night? Just me? Let's see...
Vanished
Magic Vanish GIF by VPROGiphyOne time when I was like 8, I was rolling a toy plane (I distinctly remember it was an F117 stealth fighter) across my desk.
It rolled off my desk and just disappeared. I didn't lose it. It just disappeared. There was nowhere for it to go and I never found it again.
The Shadow
I have a very visually distinctive necklace. Well one day. After I took it off just it disappeared . I looked and looked for it finally giving up and wrote my necklace off as lost forever.
A few weeks later I was dusting the ceiling fan when I noticed a shadow in the light globe. So I undone the globe from off the fan. Thinking the shadow was maybe a bug. No bug. The shadow was my necklace.
DOOM
I preordered the special edition of Doom 3 and it came with a little pewter figurine of one of the monsters in the game. I accidentally knocked it off my desk and never heard it hit the ground, never saw it again. My room was carpeted so like, there's a chance I might not have heard the sound it made, but I looked freaking everywhere for it and could never find it. I lived in that room for four years after that, constantly rearranging and moving around, never saw it. And there was nothing under the desk it could've fallen into either. So weird.
On Loop
Oh My God Omg GIF by BarryGiphyEjected the CD and the music kept going. Four of us in the car were like "we are dead, this is limbo, what is going on".
They... just... disappear...
I have a desk that glitches all the time. Whenever I eat on it and I spill a piece of my food, the piece just freaking disappears. It happened to me 3 times this week already.
I call it the "quantum table".
The spilled pieces are quite large (meat, or vegetables). They don't fall to the ground (I've checked hundreds of times). They're not beneath it either (it's a simple table, it has nothing underneath like drawers). They... just... disappear. That amount of spilled food should pile up somewhere! But they are just gone. Forever.
Damn Cats
When I wear necklaces I have a tendencies to spin the pendant when I'm stressed. I remember one day I was rapidly spinning a necklace on my way to one of my classes and the pendant flew off. I didn't bother to look for it. I had to get to class and luckily it was a relatively cheap piece of jewelry.
A few months later I move about 1.5 hours away to a new town. About a year into being there, I come home and what do I see sitting on my bed? My pendant. My then gf said she found one of the cats playing with it by the stove and figured it had been knocked under there and they dug it out. But... how?
See now I knew I wasn't alone. We all have moments that seem like their part of either a ghostly experience or we're all characters in a real life "Truman Show." And I'm not sure that's how I want to become famous.
Huntsville Tales
We visited the spaceflight center in Huntsville a few years ago and I got an A-12 (looks like the SR-71) coffee cup. I started drinking coffee in it every day and for more than a year, everything was normal. I wake up, go pour coffee, drink it downstairs, wash it, then go back to work in my office upstairs.
Sometimes, I get a second cup of coffee and bring it up to my office and then bring it down when I'm done to wash and reset for the next day.
On May 1 of last year, I forgot to bring it back downstairs from my office. Next morning, I wake up and go downstairs to have a cup of coffee like usual in my A-12 cup I got from the Space & Rocketry Center in Huntsville, AL. When I'm done, I wash it and put it away and go upstairs to start work...
...and there's the cup from the day before with an inch of cold coffee in it.
I bring it downstairs, trying to figure out what's going on and the one I just used is still sitting in the drying rack.
I now have two A-12 coffee cups. In the months since, they've both picked up a little bit of their own character, but at the time I brought the original and its doppelcupper together, they had the same scuff marks and were in every way I could tell identical.
I don't have an explanation for how this happened. I don't know how this cup somehow duplicated or why or how to do it again, but what I DO have... is two A-12 cups even though I only bought one.
The Drop
bunny rubbing GIFGiphyMy brother got a lucky rabbits foot keychain. I was tossing it in the air and catching it. One time it went up, but didn't come down. 30 years later I was working in the ceiling and found it on the heat duct that was covered by a drop ceiling.
Which One are You?
There was a girl at a place I worked that I flirted with for a couple months. It was weird because she sometimes seemed a LOT more interested than others, like aggressively.
One day I finally got the nerve up to ask her out and she said yes.
So that weekend, I show up at her house to picker her up, and when the front door opens, there are two of them - twins!
Turns out they took turns working the job, and the one I asked out - not aggressive - was just as nervous as I was, so her sister was acting like a wing...girl (?) to encourage things to happen.
We all got a good laugh out of it, and I dated her for about a year. At work it was always funny to try and figure out who was actually working after that, although I did get better after we'd been dating for a bit.
Hannah
Season 15 Kiss GIF by The BacheloretteGiphyI woke up in the morning and saw a trailer for a movie named Hannah. I was then scrolling through my Google calendar and saw it was my friend Hannah's birthday.
Later on in the night I had some friends come over and we were about to go to a bar, I ordered doordash and the delivery girl's name was Hannah. I went out that night and got a girl named Hannah's number who I dated for about 6 months. Nothing else came up the relationship but that was an extremely bizarre coincidence and follow-up circumstance. It made me really consider the matrix theory.
All the Coins
I had a quantum carpet in my room as a kid. I remember spilling a jar of change on my carpet a mix of all stuff pennies, dimes, quarters etc.
I found like... A handful of the coins and that's it.
Wasn't a shag carpet that could hide the coins, not like 50+ coins all rolled away out of sight or anything.. But they were just gone.
Tossed
I tossed my first cheapo mp3 player at my desk and it never landed. I figured I overshot somehow and it was in my closet. Nope. Not in any of my shoes, not somehow caught in a fold or pocket. Wasn't under the desk or anywhere else. It simply ceased to exist. Never did find it.
Roku Away
Mobile App Streaming GIF by RokuGiphyMy roku remote. i was asleep, it was like 7:00 am and i wake up, I don't see the remote. i assume it fell off the side of my bed near the wall, I check under, nope. not there. nothing. It was just gone. Had a hard time convincing my mom.
Just Roll
I once found a 20 sided dice (that I had lost a few years prior in America) in the middle of a desert in Israel.
It was the exact same dice as well. I remember because it was the same coloring and had the same scratched off number as well.
I'm going to get my D&D group together to head off to Israel, I guess. We've collectively lost a bunch of dice.
Go Fish
Years ago I lost a can of tuna. I took it out of the pantry to make a sandwich, but then decided to just have cereal, and put it back. Before I got the cereal I changed my mind again and took the can back out of the pantry and set it down. I had been craving tuna on toast with extra tomato and had bought it the evening before specifically to make that.
I get the can opener and the can was gone. I looked all over the kitchen and never found it. I even checked the pantry and sure enough I was missing a can. I had bought a certain number like 4 for a dollar or something. This was in the 90's.
"abracadabra"
I was maybe around 5 years old. Pretending to be a magician. I put a pen in this big activity book and waved my hands over it and said "abracadabra" to make the pen disappear. The pen literally disappeared. The bulge you would see of a pen being in a book was gone. Looked through the entire book. Look around the floor. Couldn't find it. Never found it. We moved out of that house when I was 11 and never found the pen.
Trash Miracle
miracle GIFGiphyI dropped a piece of A4 paper at work and it landed stood up on the short edge. It wasn't bent or folded, literally a fresh sheet of paper just standing all by itself.
Whats more, it happened twice whilst I was at that work place. Never seen it happen again.
Fast Pass
I walked by my colleague who was having a conversation. The convo definitely continued after I passed. I walked another 150 meters, went up a staircase, and walked by a room. My colleague was in that room, talking to another person. I was shook. Later in the day I verified that I had indeed passed her.
I asked how she could have gotten past me and she just said "I'm a fast walker." You ain't THAT fast. She would have had to run up a different staircase, outpace me in the same hall but one floor above. I just didn't see how it happened.
I Awoke...
My bedroom at the time lead into the living room that you could see into the kitchen. We also had a bathroom that was directly off our room, in the corner. You couldn't get to it unless you were in our room.
I woke up one afternoon. I remember sitting up, checking my phone and lighting a cigarette.
I got out of bed, opened the bedroom door, walked into the living room to turn the thermostat up. I saw my ex in the kitchen fiddling around with the coffee pot. Then he started walking towards the back of the house, into the other bedroom. I said "Hey! You're up early." He looked at me, and kept on walking. I went back into our room and sat on the bed.
After a few minutes I called his name, and he opened the bathroom door and said "yeah?"
Apparently he was in the bathroom the whole time. I was very confused and super freaked out because I could have sworn I saw him in the kitchen. There's no way it was him if he was in the bathroom. It shook me up pretty bad.
Dream Repeat
Occasionally I will fall asleep and dream at night and recognize the dream from when I was a very little kid (I'm 31) and basically pick up from where I left off. This has happened with 5 separate dreams now.
As in I'll dream I'm in a particular place doing a particular thing and remember inside the dream that I left off here when I was 6 and this is what happened before I reached this point.
Sometimes the Universe is sending messages we need to hear. And other times it's just playing tricks on us. Start taking notes of strange happenings. the coincidences add up.
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"revival"
I run into people I've seen before all the time, I call it a revival encounter. Now I've always lived in highly populated/transient places, such as New York City and South Florida, so I'm accustomed to the coincidence of seeing a familiar face from anywhere. But that doesn't mean it's still not fascinating to understand how we ended up in another random moment.
Eh Oh Eh
happy hour drinking GIF by Barstool SportsGiphyLive in Canada, I used to travel for work. I went to the UK, landed in London and rented a car to drive to the job. Stopped at a highway rest stop on the M1 and got some McDonalds, went outside and ran in to my next door neighbour from Canada.
Happy Birthday
Driving through France in the middle of the night, stopped at a service station and the friend I was travelling with noticed we'd pulled up next to a colleague of his.
The odds of meeting a specific person you know in a distant land just randomly are pretty slim, the odds of you meeting anyone you know in a distance land are low but much much higher if still low.
Its a similar scenario to the Birthday Paradox, in that paradox while there is only a 1/365 chance (ignoring leap days) that two individual people share a birthday all you need is 23 people to have a 50% chance of any of them sharing a birthday.
bar time
When I was in the military I had a roommate during our mechanic school training. The training after boot camp. He got stationed in California and I got stationed in Hawaii. Three years later I went to Washington state on leave and decided to pop up to Vancouver for the weekend, I go in to a bar and there's my old roommate. His family is from Canada but from the east coast, they traveled to Vancouver for vacation, and and he took time off to go see them since it was cheaper to fly there and all the way back home.
I See Everybody
Red Carpet Star GIF by RegalGiphyMy dad used to travel 4 days out of the week for nearly 10 years. He has a lot of crazy stories from those times.
Sitting next to famous people, staying at the same hotel as a few presidential candidates, sitting next to the CEO of a company he was trying to sell product to. You do it long enough it just happens.
Gina? Is that you girl?
On my honeymoon I ran into my high school girlfriend at a resort in the Caribbean.
One evening my wife was taking a nap so I thought that I would just go out on the balcony and take in the view. I look over to my left, and there was Gina. I had not seen or spoken to Gina in at least 8 years at that time.
Turns out ha she was there on her honeymoon as well. So it is a pretty small world when your high school girlfriend is in the next room over and you are both pretty far from home on your honeymoon.
"time"
I've spent years waiting tables so I have come across probably... a million faces. And I sometimes end up coming face to face with the most memorable. And often they're not memorable in a good way. But thankfully this thread is more a positive tale about humanity. It's also proof that time is always fleeting.
50 Years Later
My dad was South African. Had his own business. One day a new customer came in, who was also South African, from the same city, roughly of a similar age. So they got talking, " did you go to so and so place, did you know so and so person... etc.
A few hours later, this customer returns & asks for my dad. "Look," he says, "I went home, dug around, and found this. It's an old photo of a birthday party.
"It's a group photo, in black & white ( was probably about 1935) of some boys, maybe 10 years old, all posed nicely for the camera. " That" he says pointing to one of them, " is me. And that," pointing to another," is you!!"
This man had once, and only once, met my father, 50 years earlier, on another continent, and had a photo of the event.
On the Ranch
When I was about 8 I was at a dude ranch with my family. We were waiting in line for horses and the couple behind us is having a conversation. Suddenly my mom turns around and goes "MARYLIN???" It was her best friend from high school. Ranch was in Arizona, we lived in NJ, Marylin lived in North Carolina, mom and Marylin had gone to school in DC. We had a really fun time hanging out the rest of the vacation and they're still in touch!
The Family Guy
kill myself peter griffin GIF by Family GuyGiphyAll the Dutch people that moved to Canada around the war know each other.
I'll meet a complete stranger and as soon as I hear they have Dutch grandparents I can guarantee we'll find a connection. I moved to Amsterdam and a total stranger told me they had family in Canada. Sure enough, I knew the family.
It's been YOU all along...
My wife and I lived in the same county (260,000 population roughly), but did not go to any schools together or anything like that. We connected in our late 20's through a mutual friend.
When I proposed, my mom and her mom ended up meeting obviously. My mom recognized her mom and told me she was pretty sure my fiancé and I had been preschool classmates.
Lo and behold, my mom digs through a bunch of pictures and finds the preschool class photo, locates me in the photograph and guess who is directly next to me in the photo? My now-wife.
We printed out an enlarged copy of the photo and displayed it at our wedding reception.
Cut to Now
don't leave home ghost GIFGiphyDuring my childhood, I moved around a lot. From ages 6-13 i lived in this one house but unfortunately we had to move.
I loved that house despite all the family arguing and other stuff while growing up. Cut to now, I'm 26. My bf and I are talking to his family friends at a small party last week. Turns out they now live in my childhood home and they claim its haunted.
The Puker
My friend and her husband. She and her then boyfriend were serious enough that they introduced their parents to each other. Their moms instantly recognized each other as they had been friendly as parents when their kids were in preschool together.
Something triggered a memory in my friend, and she turned to her boyfriend and said "wait, you're the one who puked all over the toys that one time!" They hadn't put two and two together because they'd never talked about where they had gone to preschool.
Murmur
My wife was born in the state of California. In a hospital that technically no longer exists (it burned down and got rebuilt). She was born with a heart murmur.
About 24 years later, she's at college getting her masters degree in Vermont. While doing her masters degree, a nurse from California spoke to her class. Telling them about a familiar case of heart mumur in a new born infant.
How one of the hardest pieces of the job is you never know what happened after patients with problems like that leave the hospital.
It was my wife's case she was talking about. She ended up getting to speak to the nurse after her presentation. The nurse who was instrumental in her birth.
Down the Block
I lived in a house from when I was 9 to 18 in the 80s & 90s. Moved a bunch as a kid but definitely spent my formative years in that house. A few months ago, I was talking to a potential client, mentioned I grew up in that neighborhood. He said that was where he lived now. Then I said what block, what house number? Turns out he lives in my old house. He's the second owner after my parents sold it. He said once Covid is over he said I'm welcome to come check it out, which I happily will take him up on.
Numbers don't Lie
I was working in a call center and I needed a caller's Social Security Number. He gave it to me and I said " No, yours...not mine" . Then it dawned on me that his SSN was the same as mine... but with 2 numbers reversed. We were born the same day- In the same hospital.
Lesotho
travel backpacking GIF by The Yeti AdventuresGiphyI was in a backpackers hostel in Lesotho and I ran into a guy I knew from my hometown in The Netherlands.
Rammstein
My fiancee and I were buying tickets for a Rammstein concert. It took forever because they were selling out so fast so we were clicking a ton until we got two.
A few hours later we called a friend to see if they happened to get their tickets and they did.
When we told each other where our seats were....they are sitting directly next to us. The stadium is huge, no clue how the hell that happened.
Damn COVID.... I wanna see my boys!
With thousands of seats it blows my mind how it's possible. Though we are friends the friends coming always do their own thing (why we didn't buy them all together). Pretty awesome, sad the show hasn't happened yet. Hope the Metallica concert was awesome and you all had fun!!
When in Japan...
I studied abroad in Japan for a year and had a really interesting small world moment. When I arrived, I signed up to get a host family, which was randomly assigned. I spent holidays and weekends with them mostly, it was a family of 4. Eventually I met the sister of my host-mom, who spoke near-perfect English, and she started asking about my life in the US, my family, where I was from. It turned out she had, about 15 years prior, lived in the same small town in Minnesota I was from because she was going to medical school in a nearby city.
Not only that, but at the time my dad was a contractor for the school in the nearby city, he did installation of stained glass windows. The sister of my host mom remembered watching my dad install windows when she was studying there, a full 15 years before I showed up in Japan.
Pals
My husband's mum & my mum were really good friends in high school but lost touch over the years... in 2002 I met my now husband at bowling when I was 14 and he was 15 (we went to different schools)... blew my mind when we discovered the connection, I even used to deliver Christmas cards to their house every year with my dad... Almost 18 years later and our mums now share 3 grandkids!
I Know You
twins yes GIFGiphyLeft a job to go to the other side of the country and work somewhere else. Ended up working with the identical twin of the guy I'd worked with at the old job.
Out of Florida
I flew to Florida, 2.5 years ago, to go scuba diving. First time traveling in awhile specifically for a scuba trip, traveling alone. Get on the plane to come home Monday morning early, sit down, start prepping my head phones and music for the flight, when I hear an awfully familiar voice.
It took me like 5 minutes to prairie dog to check it out (socially awkward introvert present!), to find that my uncle is seated 2 rows directly behind me.
He doesn't live in Florida. And he doesn't live in my home state either. He just happened to be on that particular flight going from one to the other for work.
At Uni
bored matthew perry GIF by Nick At NiteGiphyI was at university in another city. Found home, and found out that my soon-to-be-roommate was the classmate sitting next to me in high school, whom I had lost contact with.
"random"
8 billion people and we can still end up on a surprise safari with a neighbor. I have to believe fate plays a part. Can we honestly say life is that random? Maybe we'll never know. Until then... y'all have my picture, see you on a roller coaster in Bali. ;)
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