People Break Down The Most Statistically Improbable Things That Have Ever Happened To Them
Reddit user yankeevandal asked: 'What statistically improbable thing happened to you?'
We've all heard something that sounded so outrageous or unlikely that we struggled to believe it.
But in some cases, we might be the ones trying to find the words to tell an unbelievably true story.
Redditor yankeevandal asked:
"What statistically improbable thing happened to you?"
Hello Again, Stranger
"When I was a teenager, I picked up a hitchhiker, and then a few years later, the same guy picked me up when I was walking after I ran out of gas."
"I never saw him before or after those two occasions."
- Perrin_Aybara_PL
Countdown Diagnosis
"I first got cancer in 1993."
"In 2003, they told me to get my affairs in order, and that I had six months."
"In 2021, they told me it's spread to my bones and lungs. They gave me five years."
"In 2023, two years down, and I'm feeling about 90%"
- fabyooluss
"Godd**n, you're my hero today. It seemed like a bad thing, you getting cancer. But think about how cancer feels, getting someone tough like you! Keep truckin' you tough fighter!"
- KevinTheSeaPickle
A Bird Magnet
"I got attacked by a robin in the morning and then attacked by a hawk three hours later."
"That was a weird day."
- BlackberryNeon
Beating Foster Care Statistics
"I got a degree after aging out of foster care."
- joylm
"I’m proud of you!"
- emrey220
"Oh, this is amazing! Way to beat the odds, so happy for you!"
- Lizard_CEO
Truly a Series of Unfortunate Events
"Many years ago, I had a terrible day when my then-girlfriend broke up with me, then I did terribly in a final exam for a college class, and then I lost my wallet."
"And finally, as I was doing the Charlie Brown sad walk back home, some random branch broke off a tree as I was walking on the sidewalk underneath it, and the d**n thing fell on top of me, hit me square across the shoulder, and knocked me to the ground."
"I just burst out laughing because it was so ridiculous."
- Tough_Stretch
"This triggered an old memory from my uni days: I woke up one morning and a series of small things went wrong (think spills, broken dishes, burned clothes while ironing, corrupted assignment file on my laptop, that sort of thing, one after the other, all morning)."
"As I was leaving my hall of residence to head to my first class, I tripped and fell on the stairs. That was the last straw."
"I turned around, went back to my room, got back into bed, and stayed there for the rest of that bad luck day."
- mystyz
One with the Squirrels
"I have been hit in the head by live squirrels three times in my life, each on separate occasions."
- AdjunctAngel
A Surgery Gone Wrong
"I underwent a surgical procedure called a Stapedectomy to improve the significant hearing loss in my GOOD ear."
"Instead, I ended up completely deaf. My surgical ENT said this has only happened to five patients IN THE ENTIRE US. (He was doing research to try to help me after.) I don't know how true it is, but hey, lucky me."
- Glittering-Star2662
When Anything Can Be a Bookmark
"My husband and I visited our old hometown and went to a used book store we used to frequent."
"I picked up a familiar title in nostalgia and flipped it open to find a school student’s ID card."
"The name and photo on the ID?"
"My husband."
"As it turns out, his mom had donated books to that store many years before we all moved away from that area. He must have been using it as a bookmark and forgotten."
"It’s not so surprising considering we used to live in that area, but the ID was nearly 10 years old by the time we found it."
"That book was sitting on the shelf for nearly a decade untouched, waiting for me to come along and pick it up. Bizarre."
- misshepburn15
A Book Finally Returned Home
"A friend of mine, A, had a signed copy of a book from his favorite author."
"While he was at university, his mother asked him if she could donate his books and he said okay. He had forgotten that the book was in his room. He thought he had it with him at school."
"When he realized his mistake, the book was long gone."
"More than twenty years later, another friend, B, was in Japan. He was in a cafe that had a book exchange. He picked up a book that had an inscription. It was dedicated to someone with the same first name as our friend who had lost his inscribed book."
"B decided to buy it for A not knowing that A had lost an inscribed book from the now-dead author."
"B sent the book to A in the US. A was quite surprised to get a package from B who he hadn’t heard from in years. He was even more surprised when it was the exact same book his mother had donated. It was still in pretty good condition and even had notes in his handwriting in the margins that he didn’t remember making."
- whittlingcanbefatal
Meant to Have It
"After losing an AirPod while skiing, I was able to find it on the next run."
- BrickOutside1740
When One Door Closes
"Not an exciting life or death incident, but something rather sweet:"
"I took care of my late father for the final two years of his life. He had Alzheimer’s and pulmonary fibrosis, among other issues, so we had a lot more bad days than good. In the summer of 2019, I took my dad out for a 'date' one day to a historic old drugstore that has phenomenal milkshakes (one of his favorite foods in the world)."
"It was one of Dad’s increasingly rare good days, where he chatted merrily with me about all sorts of old memories. I felt like I had my dad’s former self back for just a little while. We had such a wonderful time that I intended to take him there again soon."
"However, this ended up being our last 'date.'"
"For most of the remainder of that year, Dad declined too much (mentally and physically) for me to take him out for anything other than very short grocery trips or to appointments. The following year came the pandemic. It was a very, very rough year with Dad."
"In January of 2021, my father died, alone, in a hospital in another state (our state ran out of hospital beds and he had suffered a traumatic fall that required hospitalization). That day in 2019 ended up being the last truly happy day I had with my Dad and the last fun outing he ever got to experience."
"Three months after my dad died, I met a wonderful man online (nine days after signing up for a one-year membership, because 'surely it’s going to take time to find someone truly compatible with a shy nerd like me!')"
"A few months later, we decided to try a first date. He lived three hours away but wanted me to be comfortable, so he volunteered to drive to my town for the date. He looked online for an appealing restaurant to suggest and excitedly told me about this really neat historic drugstore we could go to..."
"We went on a very crowded day (local festival; oops) and had to wait quite a while for a table. The waitress sat us at the EXACT same table where I sat with my dad nearly two years earlier! I was even in the same seat."
"Three months later, we got engaged at that drugstore."
"So the beginning of the end of one chapter of my life crossed paths with the beginning of the best (so far) chapters. My husband and I have since decided to make a trip back there at least once a year. Dad really would have loved my husband."
- Used-Toe-6374
Funny Seeing You Here
"Not me, but a friend. He was a merchant mariner. He lived here in Virginia Beach. He was always calling and texting, posting pics from around the world."
"One time he'd been out a while. We knew he was heading to Dubai, but didn't know where he'd be after that. Four months went by and nobody had heard from him."
"His neighbor, who I was friends with, got married and went to Thailand for his honeymoon. He texted me one day and said, 'You aren't gonna believe this s**t.'"
"He said he asked a local where a good local spot to eat was that tourists wouldn't be at. The guy took him 30 minutes from the beach to some dive bar/restaurant with no sign, and no clearly marked entrance. He said it looked so shady, he was afraid he was about to be robbed and killed."
"But he went in, and it was a legitimate restaurant. He ate, drank some beers, and went to the bathroom."
"As he went in, out walked my friend, so he took a pic and sent it to me to confirm he was okay."
"Imagine taking a flight several thousands of miles away, getting away from the tourist areas and going into a local dive bar, and running into your f**king next-door neighbor you haven't seen in months. S**t's wild."
- AngryChefNate
Short Waiting Lists
"I received my heart transplant after being on the list for only seven hours."
- dekion101
"I had a friend of a friend in New York who needed an organ transplant. The doctor evidently told her, 'You’ll be waiting for a year here. Go to Florida. They have no helmet laws and year-round sun.'"
"She moved down and had a new liver in a few weeks."
- Rubberbabybuggybum
Monochorionic Twins
"My friend had two sets of monochorionic-monoamniotic twins (the rarest kind of twins) in back-to-back pregnancies."
"They're identical twins that share the same amniotic sac and same placenta."
"'Mono-Mono' or 'MoMo' twins happen in about one percent of identical twin pregnancies, and less than 0.1 percent of all pregnancies."
- fuawont
Some things are so hard to believe, but it's amazing to hear stories like these being told, especially when what happened leaves the person feeling happier than they were beforehand.
People Reveal Which Statistically Improbable Thing Actually Happened To Them
That's Impossible!!
Life is a big gamble of "What ifs? and How could that happens?" And it is consistent in surprise and coincidence. Who hasn't lost count at the myriad of times when you looked at a situation and thought, "is this fate or just chance?"What we can walk away knowing is.... the impossible IS sometimes possible. So just roll with it.
Redditor u/yankeevandal inquired aloud... What statistically improbable thing happened to you?
We all get a car!!
GiphyWon a car when I was 12. Chances were 1/50000. Because I was underage I entered the competition using my mother's name and she got the car. Junonx
There is always a chance...
My family and I drove from the Midwest to Alabama. While we were on the beach, my dad stopped a guy who was taking a walk. As it turns out, that guy and my dad were friends at the same Malaysian camp for south vietnamese refugees over forty years ago, and reunited by chance. cariface
4!!!
GiphyWent into an agency to do paperwork for home medical care for my son. Lady was nice and during course of the benefits interview, she asked me my address. She says, "oh, I live there, too. We just bought #3. What number are you in?"
I blinked, then said, "4." This lady and I were going to share a common wall in our condo complex.
We became fast friends, and she was like a grandma to my kids. metamurphius
I am who I am!
I was born with a blood type (type and rh factor) completely different from my parents. They thought I was switched at birth and did a paternity/maternity test on me. Turns out I'm just a freak. ImTotallyNormalish
Is that you?!
I witnessed two women bumping into each other for the first time since their escape from Laos forty years ago. They were only just children at the time. Somehow one recognized the other, tears were shed, but it really got me when the one couldn't stop saying "I thought you were dead!" War really tore apart Southeast Asia... iusuallylurknopost
Hey Neighbor!
GiphyMy family and I were driving for 8 hours in northwestern India. We decided to stop for food at a little restaurant in some tiny village about halfway through, where we ran into our next-door neighbors (from the US) who had rented their house to travel the world. julmoteydaezehe
Was in New Zealand earlier this year, which is literally at the opposite end of the earth from where I live. We were hiking and my travel buddy meets his neighbor on a random bridge. mcaruso
How are you not immune?
Have been bitten 4 separate times by a brown recluse spider. I once read I had a greater chance of getting struck by lightning than being bit my a brown recluse... so now I'm afraid of thunderstorms. minusthelela
Sing out Louise!!
i was taking emergency roadside assistance calls but my shift was pretty dead so i was browsing twitter and saw that a band i liked had tweeted they broke down. For a split sec i thought it would be cool if they called our company and i got the call and went back to scrolling. the next call i got was the the singer of the band!!! palspalspals
I hate the dentist!
GiphyI have a fused tooth.
I move around a lot and have had a lot of dentists.
Dentists all lose their mind when they see it for the first time.
I have to tell them how to log it into their system because most don't know what to do (consider one of the teeth missing for consistent records across dentist offices). YonderIPonder
The Boys have it!
My sister got married and got pregnant. She was hoping that it would be a girl. Ended up being a boy. So she tried a second time. Out came another boy. So she decided to give up at two children and her husband got a vasectomy. Well, she ended up getting pregnant again. With twins. Both boys. After they were born she planned on getting her tubes tied, but wanted to put if off a little bit since she was busy taking care of four boys and couldn't afford to be put out of commission for any period of time. So she went on birth control and her husband started wearing condoms. Well, she got pregnant again. With a boy.
Between her spawn and my two sons we are 7/7 on boys. Apparently we can't make girls. hashtag_punchanazi
I know you...
My parents were both born in the same little town in Ohio. They never met though, when they were both 8 my mom moved to Connecticut and my dad moved to Florida. When they were 14 they both moved back to another town in Ohio and didn't meet for another 3 years, they've been together ever since. Turns out my moms mom and my dads dad had known each other since they were 13. Unicornhornporn554
Not my head!
GiphyI went on a run down the middle of a street and was knocked out by a traffic light that came loose and fell on my head. travcunn
God exists...
I found a better job with $10k increase in salary exactly 1 week after I was fired from my last job. Got 4 weeks of paid vacation due to my severance. pbetts46
Arby's?
My dad moved from Tennessee to Florida this past summer and he was driving a big Penske Truck. He stopped by my town because of my high school graduation. I managed to get behind his truck on the road to the school. After the graduation was over, my mom rented a place to throw me a party. He left before I did to go get something at the grocery store in his truck. I drove to the party and got stuck behind his truck again on the road. Then I left the party just a bit earlier than everyone so I could go say hi to a friend that was working at Arby's at the time. I ordered some food, his mom took pictures of us and we had a pretty good time at the restaurant and then it was finally time for me to go home. I got stuck behind my dads truck, again the entire trip home. None of this was planned. ButteredBrotata
WOW!
GiphyI have two uterus'. Something like 1/2,000,000 women have it. The tech who first saw/found out was not supposed to tell me but freaked out, showed me(on the screen lol), explained how rare it was and then asked permission to show her students. Every time I go to a new doctor "DID YOU KNOW.." WakeNBreak
The Spirits are amongst us...
I dropped a spoon in such a way I'm convinced caused it to clip through the floor. I didn't hear anything like it hitting the ground and I haven't found it since. LordSaltious
KISMET!!
Went on a ski trip and ended up sitting beside a Swedish girl on the bus. Went to Sweden the following year and my room mate was her brother. wildcard987
Learn and Grow....
GiphyAs a gay man of sixty, although I'm no longer sexually active, I used to have absolutely masses of completely unprotected sex. I think it was some sort of death-wish after my partner died of HIV, but despite everything I never caught it myself. THAT is incredibly unlikely, yet true. EddiesOpinion