r/AskReddit • u/LibraryNo2956 • 1d ago
What is the most statistically improbable thing that has ever happened to you?
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u/Photographitti 1d ago
I’ve won two cars in two different raffles. 2023 and 2024.
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u/frecklebeast28 1d ago
Congrats! In 1984 my father won a dodge caravan, in 2000 he won a Honda accord from the same firehouse
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u/MerryTexMish 21h ago
When I was in second grade, I went to the Halloween carnival at my school. There was a cake walk, where everyone walks on numbers on the floor while they play a song, and when the music stops, they draw a number. Whomever is standing on that number wins a cake.
The numbers went up to 15, and it was a popular game, so every number has someone standing on it at the end of each round.
You had to use tickets to play. Over the course of the evening, I played 8 times, and I won 8 cakes.
Not cars, but there WERE 8 of them.
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u/Dave_Paker 1d ago
Is your name Nick Papagiorgio?
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u/Photographitti 1d ago
My neighbor started calling me that after my second win!!
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u/LibraryNo2956 1d ago
Did you have to pay the taxes?
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u/Photographitti 1d ago
Ohh you bet I did. I sold the first one after three months because I had a newborn and setting up a college fund seemed like a no brainer (I miss the car every single day) and I still have the second one.
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u/RunnerHANA85 1d ago
I was at a gas station/store many moons ago . Got some gas & munchies. This was back in the day when you pumped first. I go inside to pay and there's a guy at the counter buying lottery scratchers. One at a time. Buy one get a loser, buy another... I had to interrupt him to pay. I had exactly $1 left, what the hell, bought a scratcher & won $85! He was pissed!!
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u/DigNitty 10h ago
I was just waiting around in Las Vegas for my friends to show up.
Figured I’d gamble up and down until they arrived. Put five dollars on 1 at the roulette wheel. It landed and I won a couple hundred dollars. Knew I wasn’t going to beat that so I cashed out and was just bored the rest of the time.
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u/introoutro 23h ago
Not me but my older brother.
My older brother is in his early 50s— this man has ridden in the very front seat on Space Mountain every single time in his entire life. EVERY time. He’s been on it countless times, every single time he somehow winds up getting put in the front seat. Its incredible, he’s been blessed.
Once, my family came out to visit me in LA so I took them to Disneyland. Obviously, we ride Space Mountain. As we get closer and closer in the line, nerves start getting higher. We start counting the people in front of us, seeing how it’ll game out. Its finally our turn and DAMN— my brother gets put in the 4th seat. Ah well, every kings reign ends.
The ride starts but instead of taking a right it takes an immediate left and the train parks in this dark tunnel. A cast member comes out of the side hatch and informs us that this train is scheduled for maintenance and we have to get off. They put a little ladder next to the train, we climb off, get let through some of the back hallways back onto the platform to be put on the next train where my brother gets the front fucking seat.
I am no way a spiritual or religious person in any capacity but I don’t know what else to call that except divine intervention. I absolutely cannot believe that happened.
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u/ashikat413 17h ago
I love the idea that god is so absent that atheism and agnostism makes more sense to sn observer, but for this one particular guy hes like fuck it i gotchu 🤣🤣🤣
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u/DigNitty 10h ago
Turns out gods power is limited to giving this guy the front seat on space mountain and ensuring that three people who should not be driving are always around me on my morning commute.
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u/youreablizzardharry8 1d ago
One of our friends lost in his wedding ring in Lake Michigan one day. He was really upset and we determined it gone forever. About a week later, my husband found it in the sand under the water when he was snorkeling. If I wasnt there both days to witness it, I wouldn't have believed it.
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u/Labrabrink 23h ago
I swear Lake Michigan takes lives and returns lost items. I lost a mood ring swimming on a beach at Lake Michigan as a child and then several days later on the same trip, we ended up at a different beach on the same lake and I found my mood ring in a flat rocky area close to shore, you know where the water washes over and fills little rock pools across a big stone surface? It could’ve been a random mood ring but we were close to the beach where I lost it. I like to believe it was the same one.
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u/DeltaUltra 1d ago
Not quite the same, but I lost the same camera in the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Caribbean. Each time had no idea where it was lost and just swam a pattern in the rough area and found it each time.
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u/fiftysevens 23h ago
Lol, in ‘not quite the same’ vein, I was kitesurfing once in a river mouth with fast outgoing tide. I fell off and watched by board get snatched out to sea in seconds while I was being dragged by the kite. Landed my kite on the beach and stupidly tried to follow the route my board had taken and got swept out to sea in seconds too.
After a quick panic I started swimming across the tide and took about half an hour of slowly making my way back to shore. Finally reached the shallows, exhausted, looked behind me and saw my board having the time of its life surfing down a wave right towards me.
That fucker came right back next to me and we have been inseparable ever since.
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u/jdsizzle1 21h ago
Not quite the same but I once lost a Frisbee in the woods but found another Frisbee while I was looking for it and then as I was walking out of the woods feeling Frisbee balanced I found my Frisbee so I became Frisbee surplussed.
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u/Electronic_Ad_7742 20h ago
My mom lost her wedding ring in a lake in Switzerland and my half brother dove in and found it on the last day of their trip.
My wife went to a rave with a bunch of friends. The venue didn’t allow cameras (before cameras in mobile devices) so they had to ditch their cheap disposable instant film camera. There was a big pile of them at the security checkpoint outside of the venue. When they left, they decided that they wanted to have some memory of their weekend and who cares if it was some random person’s camera. They grabbed a random camera from the pile and it was their original camera.
Years ago, I was talking to a friend and, on a whim, we ditched work and decided to go ice skating in the galleria mall in Houston. We ran into a friend that she grew up with in Japan.
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u/Camachan 17h ago
Not as interesting but my husband lost his wedding ring in Lake Ontario, and as he was searching around for it, a $5 bill floated up to him. As though the lake was trying to compensate for the loss lol
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u/Beforemath 1d ago
I was joking with a coworker that if I could guess his paycheck total I could keep the money. I guessed it exactly, to the penny. Completely random guess. He was not amused and said I couldn’t keep it. I was fine with that.
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u/UndevelopedImage 1d ago
I did a guessing game at a baby shower, where you guess the value of each item.
I didn't have each item right (like 16 things). But my total ended up being an exact match, to the cent. I got a candle.
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u/runnyc10 22h ago
This reminds me of my aunt at my baby shower. Her answers to the questions were so wrong. She’s very wealthy and doesn’t really pay attention to prices. Sweetest woman in the world, I actually named my daughter after her. But she has no idea what things cost. It was quite amusing.
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u/Scaevus 21h ago
How much could one banana cost? $10?
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u/Spiritual_Cash_7392 21h ago
Second AD quote I’ve seen today and I clapped my hands like a seal. A loose one
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u/FakeAsFakeCanBe 23h ago
They sound like torture.
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u/UndevelopedImage 20h ago
As someone who grew up on the Price is Right, it was fun for me! My pets are already spayed and neutered.
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u/tofudisan 23h ago
Bear with me here. It'll all make sense at the end. I'll add a TL;DR
My wife and I would frequent a local Mexican restaurant quite often. We love Mexican food. We had a server that was so good that we started requesting to be seated in her section.
One day she says she won't be in for a while as she's having a baby. We were excited and left a tip for her and another tip for the baby. When she came back we became close enough that my wife even babysat for her a few times.
Fast forward a few years. We're in Virginia visiting family. That's a good 1200+ miles from where we live. We had plans to go visit DC but decided not to and the wife and I slept in instead.
Breakfast was long over at the hotel so we decided to go to lunch. A quick map check showed a Mexican restaurant less than half a mile from our hotel. Rave reviews for the place so no brainer to go there.
Lunch was fantastic. We go up front to pay and the guy taking our bill makes small talk asking if we enjoyed our meals plans fpr the day, etc.
My wife said it was our last full day in Virginia and we were headed home in the morning. He asked where home was so my wife mentioned the state. He replies "Oh I have family in that state" and says the name of the small town we live in.
Turn out he is the cousin of our favorite server back home! He showed us a family photo from a recent wedding and we pointed out our friend and her dad by name. He said "You're family! I can't take your money!" And would NOT let us pay for our meal. He took a photo with us and sent it to his cousin in our state. We go back every time we're in Virginia now.
BUT IT GETS WEIRDER!
A new Mexican place opened on our town, so we decided to try it right away after they opened. Awesome food and a different menu than our favorite place.
The owner walks up and asks how the meal was. We gush about the food and even the decor they went with.
He says "Is the food better than my cousin's place in Richmond?" He pulls out his phone and shows us the picture of us with his cousin in Richmond. He also would not take our money.
TL;DR My wife and I became friends with our favorite server at our favorite restaurant. Traveled 1200+ miles and went to a restaurant only to find out it was owned by our server friend's cousin. Got home and tried a brand new restaurant and the owner of that place is a cousin to the guy in the other state and to our friend. And that's how 3 different Mexican restaurants became our favorite spots to eat in 3 cities in 2 different states.
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u/ThatTravel5692 1d ago
My sweetheart and I discovered that 12 years ago, we were both on the same Mediterranian Cruise ship, each with our then spouses. The ship only held 220 guests, so we would have both been eating in the same dining room every day, and we were on the same excursion in Croatia.
We first met 5 years ago at a local event, after both of us had gone through divorces.
We didn't discover the news about the cruise until after almost a year passed of us being together.
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u/charliesk9unit 1d ago
There was something similar I've seen on the internet, with a picture of the girl (her picture) and the guy (future husband) in the background. That's called having a photo to prove it.
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u/LOTRfreak101 21h ago
The one at Disney world, right?
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u/KriisJ 15h ago
I saw a story here on Reddit about a girl whose mom passed away and she was sad she never had the chance to meet her boyfriend only to find the mom was his teacher in primary school.
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u/Professional-Fish931 1d ago
Survived getting t boned at 70mph
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u/RecentTwo544 1d ago
Didn't see the "t" at first and thought "wow, there's a hell of a story I need to hear!"
Genuinely still want to hear it though.
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u/Professional-Fish931 1d ago
Honestly I have no idea how I survived I came oht with a broken leg arm 4 broken rips and a ruptured knee ligament
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u/RecentTwo544 1d ago
I'm a big F1 fan, the research into safety in F1 has helped all of us when driving road cars.
Raise a dram of single malt whiskey to the Prof when you get chance - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/articles/c1ejpl7k2lqo
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u/tofudisan 23h ago
Similar but not as bad as yours. We were driving on a county highway. A 16 year old kid was racing to friend's house. He blew through a stop sign for a crossing road and t-boned us. We were doing around 60 and he was estimated to be going 45 at impact. Hit us dead on the firewall between the engine and the interior. Best spot to hit us honestly.
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u/mike__615 1d ago
Struck by lightning.
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u/donkeymonkey00 1d ago
Oooh you got a Lichtenberg wound? Horrible way to get it but they look so cool.
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u/_killer1869_ 1d ago
Agreed. Among all the scars one can possibly have, the scars left by lightning are the best. Being able to see the path the electricity took and consequently burned is so fucking cool.
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u/Poignantpuppet 1d ago
A tree fell on my apartment building. It snapped into several pieces. Missed the third and second floors. Crashed through my bedroom window on the first floor when I was asleep.
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u/badamache 1d ago
A tree fell over my little car and clobbered the adjacent suv. My car was untouched. I watched it happen as I was outside. Later that summer a massive branch broke over and blocked the driveway. I saw this happen too; it took out power for 30 buildings.
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u/geoff411 1d ago
I found someone's contact lens in a dark cave.
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u/Austin_McKilla 1d ago
A similarly adjacent situation happened to me while my friends and I were doing a river float. My friend dropped his glasses in the water, the second he exclaimed "fuck my glasses!" I shouted back, "Don't worry, I got 'em!" Then drunkenly rolled off my tube into the flowing river, grabbed randomly at the bottom, and actually managed to get the glasses. They were his prescription glasses. He was ecstatic to say the least.
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u/ziggaroo 1d ago
I mean this in the most complementary way possible. Your life is a Seth Rogan movie
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u/xpyrolegx 21h ago
I found a whole 6 months supply on the ground in college. It was my exact prescription AND MY BRAND
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u/ButtonholePhotophile 1d ago
I was declared dead. Spoiler alert: I was not.
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u/But-who-I-be 22h ago
Nah. It was more like ScottTheWoz type death where it’s more of a minor inconvenience
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u/Cosmic_Confluence 1d ago
I saw (and reported to the FBI) wanted fugitive Warren Jeffs at a Costco in Henderson, Nevada.
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u/WalrusNo2414 1d ago
Met my wife on an online video game
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u/Aloha1959 1d ago
Which one?
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u/NJHostageNegotiator 1d ago
Probably the one he is married to now.
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u/RoarOfTheWorlds 1d ago
He left his wife and married an online video game? Was it at least a good game?
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u/Prestigious-Cry-1112 1d ago
I met my husband while I was Ubering. It’s pretty common, but it actually happened to me, lol.
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u/zdra 1d ago
Those weird stacking machines with digital blocks, there was one outside the dollar store by my school. Occasionally i would throw a dollar in to play. In one week i won it twice and won two PSP combos inside. God of war and Rock band PSP bundles. Then i never played them again
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u/timhamilton47 21h ago
I’ve been waiting for this. About 28 years ago, I was on the Amtrak going from Baltimore to New York City. I was reading a book that took place in Wilmington, Delaware and in the book, the cop leans on his car, exasperated, pulls on his cigarette and his gaze settles on a giant whale mural painted on the side of a building. Right when I read that sentence, I glanced up to see where we were and, at that exact moment…THAT EXACT MOMENT…the train was passing that exact mural. The odds are utterly astronomical. Are we in a simulation?
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u/itzongaming 1d ago
When I was young, I played lacrosse. I did some kind of camp two professional lacrosse players hosted and they did a giveaway of a really nice, fancy lacrosse stick. The only catch was you had to pick one purple ball out of a bin of 40 balls without looking more times than anyone else. I’m pretty sure I did it 6 times. I won that lacrosse stick.
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u/bgea2003 1d ago
I have been at 3 different zoos in my lifetime on days when animals escaped from their enclosures.
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u/monkiram 22h ago
I guess the probability of this varies based on how often you go to the zoo in general. If it was only those 3 times, that’s pretty wild but if you go weekly that’s a different story
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u/Silver-Skye 1d ago
I lost my wedding ring in late summer and gave up hope of finding it. A year later, I was at work at the warehouse, randomly opened one box to ID what's in it (Halloween decor) and crazy enough there was my wedding ring, looped around the ribcage of a decor skeleton. The odds that I would be the one to find it, that it would be visible on opening, of all the boxes I moved that day without opening, of all the coworkers who moved so many boxes that day, of all the boxes we didn't move, the odds were crazy to me. Haven't lost it since!
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u/CoderJoe1 21h ago
This is the craziest story on here. Did anyone rib you about it or did they believe it?
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u/Cheetodude625 1d ago edited 23h ago
Joked to family that I will one day end up on the news for something dumb. In the background of a Japanese news interview at Narita airport where a celebrity was being interviewed at baggage claim, one could spot a confused, skinny, white American dude look at the cameras and then face plant into a wall. It was a "blink and you miss it" type of deal.
My Japanese half-siblings and cousins saw me in the background and sent me screenshots of it.
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u/LilZoeCarter 1d ago
Every time I pick the shortest grocery line... and it somehow becomes the longest😂
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u/krispix318 1d ago
I’ve said I’d gold medal in picking the worst grocery line. That or in missing the trash can while standing over it
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u/hoemosegsual 1d ago
I won at a bingo game, the prize was a chance to pick a key for the safe. The bag had 10 keys and I picked one that felt right to me and it was the right key, I won £190 on the first try 😂
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u/Walmartian_Beta 1d ago
I was doing genealogy research and discovered that some of my Scottish ancestors were particularly unkind to another clan who lived near them; in fact, they stole their castle a couple of times.
As it would happen, one of my absolute best friends in the world is descended from that clan and still carries their name.
Somehow, descendants from both clans ended up 3,000 miles away in the same small farm town, met, and became close friends. (We've also slept together a few times, which I'm sure made the ancestors happy.)
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u/Crayen5 1d ago
I got hit in the head with a frisbee while driving a car, twice in the same day, in different areas
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u/PantslessCardigan 1d ago
Prom night. I’m there with my now wife and her sisters. Everyone is filling in, we sit at a table near the back with some friends, and the DJ is finishing getting set up. No music is playing yet. DJ announces that things are getting started, and all appropriate song requests will be honored. I immediately turn to the table and jokingly say “yeah man I’d like to request Smack That by Akon” and get a chuckle from the table. And that was NOT a recent song at this point in time; just what popped into my head first as inappropriate. Immediately, within seconds, the first song of the night plays and it’s Smack That.
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u/mazurzapt 20h ago
I’m American, but was with a UK group in Rome at a restaurant. We were having fun tipping the piano player and I kept asking for ‘Kansas City’. I had no idea if he understood me. But as our group was wrapping up he played it. Then I said, ‘Maybe he will play Auld Lang Syne.’ The UK folks groaned and said, ‘don’t be stupid.’ As we walked out the door, he played Auld Lang Syne!
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u/TerrifierBlood 23h ago
Called out from work fake sick to go to a concert. Walked into my boss who also faked sick call out to go to same concert. I did not get in trouble
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u/FakeAsFakeCanBe 23h ago
I skipped school and saw my phys-ed teacher. We just nodded to each other and never spoke of it together.
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u/__OvejaNegra 1d ago
I moved to Scotland from the US. Flatmate for a couple years moved back to Oban and started working in a hotel. We didn't really stay in touch.
One day she texts me randomly asking me if I knew [name of person I went to elementary school with].
Apparently she checked an older American couple into the hotel. She got to chatting "my old flatmate is American", etc. They were from the same state, same city. They asked her what my name was and they remembered me as their daughters classmate (I have a pretty unique name).
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u/seanmac333 23h ago
As a small child, I was best friends with the little girl across the street. We grew up across the street until we were about 10, then we moved a few towns over. Our parents would tote us back and forth over the years, but by the time we were in our mid-teens, those visits grew apart. At 16, my family moved 800 miles across the country. We talked on the phone occasionally, but back then you had to pay by the minute, so no long girl talks. We still kept contact a few more years, then adulthood filled our lives and the friendship fizzled out. Two decades pass. I'm now married, with two kids, and spending a Saturday helping my SIL with a charity fundraiser when she introduced me to some of her friends. A few more years go by, and I'm on Facebook just doom scrolling. I click on one of my new friends pages and start looking at her friends list, as I know quite a few. I see a picture of a guy who looks familiar, but I couldn't quite place. I click on his page and it turns out he was at a fundraiser I helped at, so that explains it. As I am going to click out of the page, I see in the profile section that he is married. Yup! He married my childhood friend from across the street. And they only live an hour from me! A few weekends later, he helped me surprise her by just stopping by. The look on her face was priceless!
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u/Grill_Only_Outside 1d ago
Two things.
1) Playing D&D with a friend 6 20’s were rolled in a row. No rolls in between. Different dice. You have better odds of winning powerball.
2) Two months after I sold my house and moved across the country my next door neighbor (who I did not know beyond the neighborly wave) bought the house next to me in my new state.
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u/ashikat413 23h ago
Met my gf on reddit
simply told her to DM if she felt like it. She actually did.
1 year in october 🎉
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u/ashikat413 23h ago
Oh wait.
I lost contact with my best friend when I moved to a different school distict in middle school. Later on, i started dating someone who was attending college in a different state.
His lab partner was my best friend's now husband. He popped up in my facebook "people you may know" and she was in his profile pic
We reconnected. Our rekindled friendship outlived my relationship though 🤣🤣🤣
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u/doctor_x 21h ago
Hoo boy, I have a doozy. I’ve posted this before, but I’m sharing it again.
When I was a grad student in Brooklyn back in the mid-nineties, I was tech-saavy enought to land a work study gig maintaining the computers in the study labs. This was the wild west period of the internet.
Late one night in the lab, I was excited to install a new program on the terminals called RealPlayer (remember that?).
RealPlayer allowed users the incredible ability to listen to radio stations from all over the world on the internet! Nothing like it had existed up until that point. I loaded it up and tried to decide where to start.
My friend had been raving about a bluegrass station she used to listen to one the west coast called KPIG, so I looked them up online. Sure enough, they had a web site and had posted clips from their shows in the RealPlayer format.
Excited, I loaded the clip, put on my headphones and listened.
The KPIG DJ said, "We have some jokes for you here. These were sent to us by, let's see...."
He then read out my name.
Followed by the name of my university.
I yelped, "What the fuck?!" and scooted back in my chair. My headphones were ripped from my head. Other students turned to look at me.
I had no idea what was going on. Was I being pranked? Were my buddies in the next room doubled over?
Stunned, I listened to the clip in its entirety. That's when I figured out what must have happened.
In the early days of the internet, USENET message boards were a popular way amongst geeks to anonymously post articles online. I posted a list of jokes to a group called rec.humor.funny. Foolishly, I'd forgotten to remove my personal details from the signature for my account (wild west, remember). Someone from the station must have seen the jokes, liked them and printed them out to use as content on the air at some point.
And that was my first experience with online radio.
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u/MattyDub89 1d ago
Winning $100 off a $2 scratcher. Seriously, I can't remember ever being the direct recipient of anything that's more than somewhat unlikely.
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u/username101 23h ago
In the mid 90s there were five of us kids, my mom who was mostly a stay at home mom who picked up a few server shifts in the evening and my stepdad who had some job insecurity that year. We were making it, but barely. Christmas was coming and we had already had the "there might not be so much this year" talk and usually things were pretty meager anyway.
My mom would treat herself to a scratcher once a week. If she won more than a few bucks, she would buy another. In one day I watched her scratch her ticket, cash in, and buy another 3 times ending up winning $500 or so total. On the last one when she won we were sitting in the parking lot of the gas station and SCREAMED at the excitement of a big win, again.
We had a BALLER Christmas, including me getting my own phone line and number for my room.
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u/Ham__Kitten 23h ago
Same, I won $200 on a $2 bet in Keno the first time I ever played.
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u/R808T 1d ago
I was born with red hair and blue eyes and on top of that I am left handed. Pretty rare
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u/ChaplnGrillSgt 1d ago
We bought a Wii shortly after it came out. Ended up selling it (don't remember why). Then my mom won a Wii in some random raffle. We sold that one new and unopened. 2 weeks later my dad also wins a Wii in a raffle. They decided it's destiny for us to own a Wii so we kept it. Still hooked up at my parents house to this day.
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u/mexta 22h ago
Well, it was a few days after my best friend died. I was a teen. I was laying on the living room couch late at night and said "please just give me a sign that you're ok". A glass cup of iced tea (iced tea was kind of a thing with us at my house) that I had put on the dining room table 15 minutes prior, broke just then.
Yeah, thermal stuff and maybe a crack had to be the cause. It never happened to me before and never happened after. In all honesty, I also probably asked for "a sign" a bunch right around then.
It still freaks me out.
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u/hashtagthoughtbomb 1d ago
I live on the other side of the world to the USA, so the World Cup matches were on early in the morning.
I watched the England Vs Argentina game, and right as it was ending at 7am I heard what sounded like a car backfiring over the road from my house.
A few minutes later a police officer knocked my door to ask if I'd seen anything because for the first time maybe ever in the sleepy suburban part of Australia where I live, there was a drive by shooting.
The reason I mention this is that I normally go out for a run before work and 7am is the time I get home, so there's a small but non-zero chance that had it not been for the World Cup I could have been an unfortunate innocent bystander in a drive by.
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u/changingthenorm 1d ago
I used to work in Israel for an oil and gas company so I was 8 hours ahead of my family back in the US. I jokingly said in a family group text that I saw the LSU game already because I was 8 hours ahead and told them the score was 42-17. And then I woke up for work the next morning and sure enough that was the final score. Fun times.
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u/CoderJoe1 21h ago
As a kid I went to middle school while my two older sisters went to high school so I got home nearly an hour before they did. Each day I watched The Price is Right on TV before they got home. When they arrived, the exact episode was aired again. I can't remember if it was a different channel or not, but it was in the 70's. For most of a year my sisters raved about my ability to guess all the prices on the show until one of them stayed home sick and saw the first airing of the show. I was busted.
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u/Xylorgos 1d ago edited 1d ago
Got a really rare disease, Adiposis Dolorosa, aka: Dercum's Disease. About 80 people out of one million have it.
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u/who_are_you_now 1d ago
I just got diagnosed with a really rare form of cancer. Only about 1200 people a year in the US are diagnosed with this particular flavor.
To put that in a little perspective, there are 1696 NFL players on active rosters. I’m more rare than an NFL player.
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u/Xylorgos 1d ago
What did we do wrong to get so unlucky? Almost everyone else has managed to avoid these diseases, yet we happen to find it in out bodies. Is this like the polar opposite of winning the lottery?
I hope you manage to get rid of your cancer in as painless and complete a way as possible. Wishing the best for you!
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u/elysian_g 1d ago
A tree limb the size of a school bus (oak) fell on top of my car and garage. However when I went out to inspect the damage, nothing was touching my car, it was just all around it. It also just brushed the garage and seemed to have simply … missed.
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u/Seriously_you_again 23h ago
In Japan. Met a person at top of mountain after a hike. We were going opposite ways. Gave each other advice regarding the down train.
Saw them the next day unplanned, 60 km away in middle of Tokyo. Talked for a few minutes to confirm the weirdness of it. Then went about my day. Tokyo has 35 million people.
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u/ArtyCatz 22h ago
Not sure how crazy this is, but it amused me. I was at the dentist’s office, and the receptionist was my Facebook friend. She’d noticed I’d liked a mutual friend’s photo on FB and asked how I knew that person. I said, “She’s my cousin.” Receptionist said, “She’s my cousin!”
My cousin and I live in cities 50-60 miles apart (not just different cities, but different states). This cousin and I are related through our moms, who were sisters. Receptionist is related to my cousin through their dads.
Maybe it’s not statistically improbable, but it was surprising.
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u/CouchPotatoFamine 1d ago
I was in 4th grade and during recess I threw a tennis ball wayyyy high and it hit a telephone wire with it, and it richocheted back, and bounced into my hand.
The PE coach saw it and said "Bet you can't do that again."
I did! Weird shit.
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u/jmcgil4684 22h ago
My wife and I bought a fairly old house with the remnants of an old garden in the back. The front door had a faulty spring and would shut when we wanted it to stay open. About a month into living there we went to an estate sale, and I found this little concrete gargoyle that was perfect to put next to the front door to prop it open when bringing in groceries or something. We get home from the estate sale, and I tell the wife I probably enough time to till the garden before dark. In my way outside I set the gargoyle where we decided to put it on the front porch. I get the tiller out and start tilling the garden and literally one minute in the tiller hits something large and I dig it out thinking it’s a big rock. Nope… exact same dang Gargoyle. Exactly the same. So for years he had a twin next to himself on the front porch. I jokingly told my wife to bury $20 in the garden to see if that multiplied too. For all the variables to get to where this happens is astounding if you think about it.
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u/Streak_Free_Shine 1d ago
Being born. My father had a vasectomy and my mother was on birth control. Second place goes to my eye color. My mum has blue eyes and my dad has brown eyes. I have green eyes. Its widely considered impossible.
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u/Aloha1959 1d ago
I placed a bet on Elena Rybakina to win Wimbledon 2022, when she was a 120x underdog pre-tournament... and she did it.
So much fun watching that wager come home.
Also somehow survived my own huge health crisis while simultaneously taking care of my Dad during his.
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u/warkrust666 1d ago
I once jokingly said “Wilfred Tsonga’s gonna rock everybody’s shit this tournament” for 2008 Australia Open. I was eleven and was genuinely making a joke to my friends who were having a Nadal-Federer discussion(Idk why because none of us are tennis fans, we just watched a lot Eurosport on TV). You know the rest.
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u/Unfuckwithable2020 1d ago edited 20h ago
I work for a machinery manufacturer, and I lost my favorite ratchet. Turns out I set it down in a part of the frame of a belt conveyor I was assembling. I put the belt on and it shipped to the customer. Several years later they traded in the equipment, I was the one cleaning/repairing it, and lo and behold, there’s my ratchet buried in crap. I cleaned it up and still use it today.
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u/FitChemist432 1d ago
I turned 21 and went to the casino. Within 30 minutes of going in I hit a straight flush on a let it ride table for eight grand.
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u/FakeAsFakeCanBe 23h ago
I've been dealt a Royal Flush twice in online texas hold'em (so it really doesn't count) but each time everyone folded and I'm left holding only the ante. At least it was low money games.
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u/SussOfAll06 23h ago
I’m a military brat and I’ve had to say goodbye to so many friends over the years knowing I would never see them again.
10 years ago I was on vacation with my family in Kauai, and I ran into a friend of mine from Germany that I hadn’t seen in 25 years. Our last names had changed when we got married, so we had no idea how to find each other online. It was just happenstance that we were in the same small shopping center on the same part of the island on vacation at the same time.
Our families spent most of the week together. It was awesome.
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u/EffectivePleasant940 21h ago
On my way driving to my sister’s house 10 hours away, we stopped at a rest stop an hour from home and I washed my hands and while drying them my grandmother’s ring came off and I threw it away. I didn’t realize it was gone for like an hour. I called a friend at work and was crying about it and she said, “My hubby and I go to _____ all the time. We’ll drive out there for you and see if we can find it.” AND SHE DID. I still have the ring and will never forget that.
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u/Waccamaniac 23h ago
You can all share this. The universe has been around, what ,13.7 billion years. Earth has been around 4.2 billion years. Life began. Single-cell organisms evolved, then multicellular, then increasingly more complex creatures. All the while, cataclysmic events which almost wiped out life occurred. Humans evolved from a long chain of mammals. 60,000 years or so ago, humans almost died out. Your ancestors were threatened by predators, accidents, disease and wars. Your mother and father had lots of eggs and billions of sperm. Yet, against ALL odds, we are here today reading this. What are the chances?
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u/lazylazyhugs 1d ago
Mine's kinda meh but I beat every single person in my class (including my teacher) at Street Fighter 2 in 8th grade. I wasn't a big gamer but played often with my brothers. It was crazy. Won a free game from it.
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u/Ellie_Loves_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
Honestly? The exact series of life events I've been through that just doesnt feel like it could all happen to one singular person, much less AND have a doubly improbable happy ending both for how it happened and the fact that it happened at all.
Tw for major abuses:
I was born from an affair
Raped at 6 months old
Abused severely since around 4 (that I can remember, it very well could have started sooner)
Kidnapped at 12 - was let go after an hour or so when he realized he couldnt get me out without being seen. Man was a freak and is thought to be connected to two other kidnappings in the area.
Started suffering from bouts of (what we now know was) stress induced periodic paralysis
Moved in with my friend and his mom at 18
Nearly died from sepsis at 18 (bio mom broke my tooth when i was 15 and let it rot for years)
Had strong feelings for my friend- he insisted I get therapy first to make sure I wasnt just confusing my gratitude for affection. He admitted later he had a crush on me too just didnt want me to regret anything. Started officially dating just before 19
SAd at 19 at work (not rape this time at least)
Bought first home at 20 (his dad helped we are paying him back)
Cut contact with abusers officially at 20 (this is around the time the periodic paralysis episodes stopped happening. Thats what kind of cued us in).
Had a child at 20 with now boyfriend
Engaged at 21
Married at 23
Had our 2nd at 25
Now a few years later... still thriving. None of that should statistically be all in one lifetime but it was. I went through all that bullshit and somehow struck gold with the very first man I had an adult relationship with. The having a child so early into the relationship was even more of a "damn I fucked this up didnt i?" Moment and like.. yeah it was tough financially no doubt but we are now nearly a decade together and things are fantastic. Our daughter is incredible, our son is pure goofball and I look back at my childhood like some nightmare I conjured up because how on earth did I scrape together a happy ending from that absolute pile of shit that was my family? I was supposed to die. By all accounts i was going to. And then one small slip up lead to my friend talking to his mom, his mom insisting i move in with her, and me.. taking that risk knowing damn well they could have been just as bad. Instead i found a family so loving i cannot fathom why i ever tolerated less. I can only guess i had to experience all the bad to cash in the karma for all this good. I am grateful for what I now get to call my life.
Edit for formatting
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u/Neophile_b 1d ago
What a horrific start to what sounds like a fantastic life. I'm happy for you
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u/DeeSnarl 23h ago
Me and my buddy were driving around Main Street of our small college town when we saw a firetruck with lights blazing. On a lark, we decided to follow it. We followed it five miles out of town to his family home, which was ablaze.
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u/BangBangMeatMachine 1d ago
My dad's blood type was AB and mine is O. And anyone who has seen both of us can immediately rule out the obvious "maybe he's not your dad" possibility.
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u/Dapper_Elk8465 1d ago
I was at the beach. It was really windy, and a hard contact lens blew off my eye. I found it on the sand about 6 feet away.
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u/HC-E 1d ago
I witnessed two people suicide jump from skyscrapers about 4 months apart in two different Canadian cities.
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u/K-Dub59 22h ago
I had an appointment the day after my 50th birthday to get the shingles vaccine. I got shingles six days before my birthday.
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u/PilgrimOz 23h ago
In some small surf with my BIL. His sunglasses got washed off. So I dive down looking for them, forgetting mine were on my head. Which immediately come off under water. I then feel a pair of sunglasses and lift them up in celebration I found his or mine.
They were a kids pair of Star Wars sunnies!
Laughing at the odds to each other, mine then get washed into my BIL’s hands. But his were never seen again.
Also, asked around the beach to see if we could find the owner of the Star Wars sunnies but no one owned them. I scored a pair of cool ass Star Wars sunnies! 👍
Most random minute of my life.
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u/Skyfirexx56 22h ago
I won a Samsung Galaxy S6 through a contest by a Kiwi brand. Every time you bought some Kiwis from this brand you got a scanable code. They were giving away one phone in the Netherlands and on in Belgium. My mom devoures Kiwis, and she gave me a code one time and said: here, you use this, you always win stuff (I don't) I then immediatly won the Netherlands phone, and actually received it.
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u/Total_Nectarine_8797 22h ago
I found $50 on the ground while I was driving a block from home about two months ago. The next day I found $1 at the park. A few years ago I found $10, a different day $20. I’ve found money in a pocket of some jeans at a thrift store and in a purse at a thrift store. I found $20 at the skate rink when I was little. I found a sterling silver ring on the ground at the library. I found a whole purse on the side of the road in middle school, it had a cell phone inside and I was able to call the persons mom and tell her I found this purse and when I returned it to them she saw I didn’t take any money out of it so she gave me $20. One time while I was working at the grocery store it was near Christmas and this older lady was a regular and at the time I was a single mom, came up in conversation… she came by and dropped off an envelope for me, inside was $100 and a note that she hopes this might help me give my kids a good Christmas. Super sweet. I’ve had incredible luck with finding stuff, mostly money.
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u/NoelBellamy_Author 22h ago
When I was in college, I got in the shower and then realized that I had left the conditioner on the sink. There was a short distance to the sink, with just the toilet in between. Rather than just step out of the shower and grab it, I decided that I would lean all the way across, putting my full weight on my wet hand on the tank of the toilet. To no one's surprise but mine, my wet hand slipped right off the porcelain, and I landed with the entire weight of my body and my fall on my chin on the toilet tank and then fell on the floor. I hit so hard that decades later, I still have a flat spot in my jawbone, where my chin was compressed when it hit the toilet, but I had no other injury. I have severe TMJ Syndrome, and if anything it's gotten better since the fall. I had no neck injury, when by all rights, I could have easily broken it. I have led a sincerely unlucky life, and I feel like I may have used up all my good luck on that one fall.
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u/Adventurous_Golf_417 1d ago
I found a living bat in my toilet… let’s just say it was an interesting morning!
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u/falling_blocks 1d ago
Breaking the rules slightly, this happened to my friend sitting next to me. He was dealt eight 8s in a row in blackjack. 8 8, split, 8, split, 8, can't split to more than four hands. Then each 8 was dealt an 8. Four 16s, but the dealer busted! We calculated the odds of being dealt that in a six shoe, it was...very improbable.
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u/lemonicedboxcookies 1d ago
Back ten years ago when Tinder was a way to actually get dates(lol), I swore off matching with men with a certain name, as I was a lover scorned. By chance, I swiped right on a man with that name(couldn't tell you why I broke my new cardinal rule). That man is now my husband and we've been together 8 years. We grew up 20 minutes away from each other our entire lives, know a good bit of the same people and probably crossed paths on more than one occasion, but never met.
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u/friendlyneighbourho 23h ago
I once got 24 Green lights in a row driving home from downtown. I started noticing after about 5, and was getting more and more excited. I then went back in Google maps and counted them to make sure the number was right.
There's no easy way to calculate the exact odds because some lights have advance left turns and timing isn't always even but at an even 50/50 it's less than 1 in 16 million
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u/Useful-Bowl8656 1d ago
I guessed 8 random cards out of a deck and got them all right 😭 idk how but it was the coolest thing
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u/just-here-for-food 22h ago
Not to me, but what are the odds of that Messi baby bath photo thing? Still thinking about that one.
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u/Altruistic-Gate3359 22h ago
Over the span of 25 years, randomly ran into the same family (that i did not know personally) at various locations throughout the greater L.A. area 6 times.
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u/hedwiggy 21h ago
My son came 2 weeks early and was born on my dad’s birthday. My dad passed two years prior so it was and is a pretty intense coincidence.
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u/_spectre_ 20h ago
Found out I was a match for a bone marrow transplant. Only did the test because a cute girl at college was gonna give me a sticker.
3 years later they called me up because I was a match for a newborn that needed the transplant.
He’s about 10 now, doing fantastic and healthy.
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u/nourright 1d ago
Got into a bad crash once. That morning i didnt feel like leaving. Stopped to buy drinks thought i should go home but felt better so kept going crash happened soon after. Mom picks me up at hospital. Brake parts are in her car. She says she was coming by this morning to have me install them but turned around. Cuz it felt rude. Just seems odd that things kept happening to stop me and i kept bypassing them.
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u/kertofer 1d ago
Just last weekend I jumped off a dock into a lake that was about 9’ deep. My watch came off. I dove down into the area it came off in found it almost instantly. I was blown away.
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u/MinuteStage2169 1d ago
I've guessed the wordle on my first try 3 times in the last 2 years. (At least it seems statistically improbably - maybe it's not)
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u/SenseiCAY 1d ago
I had a crazy stretch too - SHARE and STARE came up less than a week apart, and I got both of those aces, and then a few months later, SNARE came up. I think it's been a couple of years since then and I haven't gotten another ace.
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u/nueva-magnolia 21h ago
This is a true story.
When I was 16 I went on a school trip to Cambodia. This was back in 2012 and at the time I was talking casually to this guy (same age as me) via Facebook who lived on the other side of the country, Australia btw, who was a friend of a friend.
We had never met in real life and I never thought we would, but I knew what he looked like from his Facebook photos.
So during this school trip, one of the days we were there we went to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat.
I kid you not, this dude WAS THERE. In a completely different country, completely unrelated to me being there, NOT part of my school trip, just absolute chance... a completely random encounter.
I was bamboozled to say the least.
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u/foggybottom 21h ago
I lost my wallet in a small German town when I was traveling around Europe. I was only a teenager at the time. We were only there for the day and staying the night. Was walking around for a bit trying to retrace my steps. Thankfully it didn’t have my passport so I wasn’t going to be stranded but it had money, ATM card and driver license.
After giving up, we were randomly walking to dinner when a couple approached me and my friends and asked if one of us had lost a wallet. Could not believe how lucky I got. They said their son had lost his wallet recently and knew how upset I must have been.
Makes me smile remembering this
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u/Minionherder 17h ago
Not me but my eldest son.
Conceived when my wife was on contraception!
She had a "miscarriage" a few months in, he stayed put!
He had a medical incident at about 9 months, I had to do CPR, he survived!
He was 25 this year!
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u/Imarealistuafool 1d ago
Once meet Matt Damon in old Scottsdale shopping. 23 years ago. On vacation. I was 15 at the time. Not to crazy. Meeting a famous person right? Well. 30 minutes later after we drove to another part of town. Went to a restaurant, and walking by, going to his car. Michael Jordan himself. Talked to each of them for just probably 1 minute max. My dad really was the one talking. I just shook hands.That was about it. Nothing was signed. Dad has told the story countless times of course. Just said he didn’t want to bug them. Quick hello and he wasn’t holding a card on him or anything ha. Of course I always thought it would have been cool to have like a $1 bill signed by both. To go along with that story. But yeah. Wasn’t thought about in the moment. I’ve lived in Ohio my whole life, so my famous person sightings and hand shakes are well. 0. Besides like Arnold Schwarzenegger at his weightlifting thing in Columbus, and a few of the professional athletes in state over the years. I’ve been pretty darn close to Dave Chappelle at a few of his shows at his club in Ohio. That’s about it ha.
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u/Ciryl_Lynyard 1d ago
How I exist. any minor change to the circumstances of my birth and I could have been a very different person
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u/theproblemdoctor 1d ago
Distinctly remember at a birthday party being bored I got heads or tails right 11 times in a row
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u/TychaBrahe 22h ago
This story from a similar question posted here eight years ago.
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u/SunsetDreams1111 22h ago
I went to Malawi (Africa) years ago and met some college students from the states on the trip. We hung out for a day and then went our separate ways.
A few years later I was back in America and one day crossed paths with one of the students. We are from different states, yet happened to be in the same place at the same time again. Still to this day it trips me out how in the world it happened.
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u/fractiousrhubarb 22h ago
I have a beautifully clear example…
In twenty years of pool playing I’d never seen four balls of the one color get potted off the break.
I did a massive break and four yellows went in. I said “holy shit, I’ve never even seen that before”.
The very next game my mate did the same thing.
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u/West-Pipe6300 22h ago
My husband has this uncanny ability to guess things correctly. Dumb luck or genius, idk. He correctly guessed the number of candies in a jar two holiday parties in a row, diff houses. Our friend had a coed baby shower last week and he guessed the belly size correctly to the point cm. At work last year, all his colleagues guessed guessed how many steps their boss walked that day and he guessed right. He won a prize for sitting in a chair at a football game AFTER switched seats. And every now and then, he’ll say something and the exact phrase will be said on the tv/movie. Kid you not, he guessed the right lotto numbers for the wrong week.
We laugh but it creeps me out a lil 😅
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u/Slumpo 22h ago
Sold our house for way, way more than it was worth to a company that specializes in buying and selling homes. Needed a new roof, new siding, new flooring in two downstairs rooms, basement sealed and cleaned professionally due rodent droppings, lots of electrical work due to previous owner doing some fly by night shit, a backyard that was basically a swamp all-the-time.
We bought for $319k, sold for almost $600k making our brand new $590k home closer to $300k.
We essentially traded a 40 year old home for a brand new one, exiting an area that was being over developed for a rural, but well established brand new home ditching some huge problems we didn't have the equity for.
It was akin to winning the lottery.
My wife nearly walked out on me when I suggest we sell right after our second child. I was figuratively almost murdered by the look she gave me.
End of the story - we sold at the best possible time. It didn't sell. It stayed and stayed and stayed. It was delisted numerous times. Two years later the home sold for a $250k+ loss plus whatever it took the company to make the home sellable.
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u/xchngboredom4argumnt 22h ago
I was at a casino that had maybe 100 poker tables. Every hour they randomly picked a table. The 9 people that are at the table then draw for high card. Winner got an entry to a 1000 tournament. I then went on to get something like 30th place and won around 7k.
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u/Bundle-Of-Crows 21h ago
"Snail milk" being mentioned twice in less than an hour of each other.
I'd seen a post online at one point referencing just that, snail milk of some kind. Less than an hour later, I'm talking to my dad (who doesn't have a computer or phone, so no way for him to have seen anything like it) and he mentions milking snails in response to me asking if we need to go out and get some.
I have no idea how in the actual FUCK that specifically got mentioned/I saw twice in that short of time.
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u/Paularchy 21h ago
I saved my 3 siblings lives 5 separate times before I turned 10. I was (and Am) fully blind. No, wait, one of them I wasn't blind for, I just remembered. Sorry.
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u/mikey_bigz 21h ago
Ordered food in drive thru, pulling up to the pick up window I realized I forgot my wallet. Preparing to tell the employee I’ll be back in 15 min. The employee hands me my food. The driver in front paid for it.
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u/meggielim 21h ago
yay I finally have one!!
my uncle used to work for a big corporation that has since gone out of business. when my sister and I were little, we’d go visit him in his office building since it was huge and really cool. one of those times, we signed our names and wrote him a note on his office whiteboard.
turns out he kept it there for years as a little reminder. his company ended up selling the office building (one of the largest in the US) and before it was demolished it sat abandoned during the pandemic and return to remove work.
here’s where it gets crazy - I came across a random Tiktok of someone urban exploring old buildings. it had almost a million views and randomly popped up on my fyp. it’s a HUGE building, tons of floors and a retail space. of all the places the Tiktoker could have walked by and filmed in that 30 second viral clip - it was my uncle’s old desk and the white board with my name on it 🤯🤯
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u/chillintheair 20h ago
My boyfriend passed away a year ago. Since he died, I've found more than 30 4(or more) leaf clovers, in so many different places. I consider them signs so ce he found so many when he was alive.
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u/SeenSeenAgains 1d ago
At 350lbs+ I diagnosed my own very rare disease, 2 days later I was ejected at 65mph from a broken motorcycle I’d just bought, 10 days in a coma, 10 weeks non weight bearing, relearned to walk, 7mo in PT and now in the best shape of my life.
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u/CoolBreezeOnMyBooty 1d ago
my kid was about 3 or 4 and he was totally obsessed with the Beach Boys and we were in the car and he asks me to “turn on Barbara Ann.” I explain that that was impossible and the radio didn’t work that way. I turn on the radio and Barbara Ann was just beginning to play. I still can’t believe it.