What Are the Odds of My Movie Marathon Coincidence?

[Huckleberry]

When I was 10 years old I lived in a small town in Pennsylvania and had a friend named Jeremy. When I was about 20 I was in the Navy and made a friend called Jeremiah, who I discovered lived in the same town in Pennsylvania and was also friends with Jeremy.

Then there was the time I won 180 million dollars in the lottery. Oh wait, I don't play the lotto. That must have happened to someone else.

 

[leroyjenkens]

One time my friend's cousin was counting up his points for a game and asked my friend "What's 360 plus 180?" and almost before he even finished saying "180" I answered 540 immediately just as a joke, and it was the right answer. I wasn't even paying attention to the numbers he was saying, I was doing something else and was just going to say some random high number. Once my friend was done figuring out the answer, he realized I was right and they were all shocked by my lightning quick math skills.

I don't know if anyone has experienced this or not. Sometimes I feel that the sequence of actions that I am doing just now have already occurred in the past just in that same sequence. I get out into thinking when that had occurred but I don't remember. I have experienced this a few times and I am pretty sure others might have also experienced it.

That's the feeling I get every once in a while. That's the REAL deja vu. Not the stupid thing that people see something twice and say it was deja vu, like in The Matrix when Neo saw the cat walk by twice in a row.

 

[Loren Booda]

Some friends and I were playing the board game "Clue." I started off, guessing the correct suspect, weapon and room at once. What are the odds of winning Clue on the first try?

When my mother was playing Bridge with some friends (circa 1940s), one of them returned from the bathroom to find their dealt hand was all of one suit. Apparently the dealer hadn't cheated, but probably shuffled badly. (An opportunity to bid seven no-trump?)

 

[Office_Shredder]

Some friends and I were playing the board game "Clue." I started off, guessing the correct suspect, weapon and room at once. What are the odds of winning Clue on the first try?

When my mother was playing Bridge with some friends (circa 1940s), one of them returned from the bathroom to find their dealt hand was all of one suit. Apparently the dealer hadn't cheated, but probably shuffled badly. (An opportunity to bid seven no-trump?)

Wait, if you bid seven no trump the person to your left opens first, and you never win a hand. Good strategy

 

[Borg]

One time my friend's cousin was counting up his points for a game and asked my friend "What's 360 plus 180?" and almost before he even finished saying "180" I answered 540 immediately just as a joke, and it was the right answer. I wasn't even paying attention to the numbers he was saying, I was doing something else and was just going to say some random high number. Once my friend was done figuring out the answer, he realized I was right and they were all shocked by my lightning quick math skills.

This reminds me of the time in a math class when the instructor drew a random angle on the board and asked if anyone could guess the angle. I immeadiately said 133 1/3. Yup, that's what it was.

 

[Borg]

In 2000, I was working for a company (A) that had just been bought by another company (B). I got laid off but quickly found another job (company C). Two months later, I got a letter from my current company saying, "Dear company A employee, welcome to company C. It turns out that B sold my previous division to my current company. I guess that I hadn't been fully removed from the active employee list that they sent to C.

Four years later, we lost our contract and I was put on the company's available talent list. I got picked up by a manager whose boss was my boss's boss when I was at company A. He remembered me even though I had only met him once or twice before that.

 

[leroyjenkens]

This reminds me of the time in a math class when the instructor drew a random angle on the board and asked if anyone could guess the angle. I immeadiately said 133 1/3. Yup, that's what it was.

Don't you love it when stuff like that happens. Like when someone asks someone else what time it is and I said "probably [forgot what time I said]" and it was exactly that time when the other person checked their watch.
It definitely removes some of those idiot points I accumulate throughout the day.

 

[MotoH]

This is really freaky.

Ok so I was walking around town, and I suddenly felt hungry. When I looked up, there was a restaurant right next to me! So weird.

 

[lisab]

Long long time ago, a guy I was dating told me a story of traveling in Sweden in a rental car, far from any cities. He came across a hitchhiker, and stopped for him. Turns out he knew the guy, he was from Seattle and they both played fiddle for some kind of folk dancing. They weren't close friends or anything, but they had crossed paths several times.

Then I realized the guy he picked up, was my undergraduate research advisor.

That was weird.

 

[rootX]

Once, It was raining and I did not have umbrella. I spotted one while walking down the road. It really helped because I had to walk for another 30 minutes.

Other time, I thought my exam is during the night time but it was at 10 AM. Somehow, I decided to wake up at 9:30 and recheck the schedule. I managed to ace that exam even though I needed some more review and I was not fully sure about what I was doing during the exam.

First time, I had to live with someone's else home (on rent) far away from my place I was very lucky to have great people who picked me from airport and offered food. And also, commuted me to work. I always hear bad stories so I guess this is close to being a coincidence.

It could also be a coincidence that I never met a person whom I trusted and then I regretted.

 

[Loren Booda]

At least three times my friend Paul or I picked up the phone without ringing to find the other calling in.

A late acquaintance Sylvia and I were standing at our school bus stop in the cold when she expressed that she would even wear socks on her hands, not having gloves. I reached into my pocket, and voila!, a pair of socks.

 

[|<ings]

Once, I inadvertently made two unrelated mistakes on a lengthy math problem and got the correct answer. The second mistake (must have) canceled out the first mistake, once and for all proving that two wrongs do make a right. Well... sometimes they do.

 

[Pythagorean]

I can't think of an amazing one, but I just had one today. I am studying depersonalization disorder for a presentation I have to give, and I was mulling over the idea of your self view vs. your world view (depersonalization vs. derealization, both symptoms of DD).

While I was thinking about this, I was at the local Earth Day Festival. Then I came home to do more research and noticed (via Google) that it's also Hubble's 20th Birthday. And I thought of the analogy between self/world that is Earth/Universe. On the same day we celebrate our planet, we celebrate the Birth of an instrument that allows us to see the universe outside of our planet.

Does this seem discombobulated from the outside-in or am I making sense?

 

[Loren Booda]

I can't think of an amazing one, but I just had one today. I am studying depersonalization disorder for a presentation I have to give, and I was mulling over the idea of your self view vs. your world view (depersonalization vs. derealization, both symptoms of DD).

While I was thinking about this, I was at the local Earth Day Festival. Then I came home to do more research and noticed (via Google) that it's also Hubble's 20th Birthday. And I thought of the analogy between self/world that is Earth/Universe. On the same day we celebrate our planet, we celebrate the Birth of an instrument that allows us to see the universe outside of our planet.

Does this seem discombobulated from the outside-in or am I making sense?

Physics inside-out?

 

[theneedtoknow]

Well my stupid weird coincidence...
I grew up in eastern europe but moved to Canada when I was a teen. A few years later, around the time I was 18, I was hanging out with my best friend (in Toronto), and she wanted to go into the Dolce & Gabbana store. We went in, and while she was browsing around, the sales guy started chatting us up cause he was bored (that store is empty 90& of the time). He noticed my accent and asked me where I am from originally, and I said "I'm from Bulgaria" and he said "Cool...I'm originally from Ireland...you know, my family's closest family friends ended up moving to Bulgaria when I was young..." and I right away said "Was the daughter's name Melody" and the guy's jaw dropped...he gave me a "WITCH!" kind of look, dumbfounded as to how in the world I would know that. Well...about a year before me and my family moved to Canada, we got a new girl in my class at school - an Irish girl called Melody. Given that there's probably all of 10 irish people in Bulgaria, I just took a shot in the dark on the odd chance that he was referring to her, and he was!

 

[ThomasEdison]

When I was in the tenth grade in 1987 while I was walking up some stairs alone to get to class. The words "Two-Tall Jones" appeared in my mind like giant neon glowing letters. I began to ponder the significance of those words and what an odd name that was.
When school was over and I arrived home and flipped on the TV, Two Tall Jones appeared on "Different Strokes."

 

[Nick89]

I remember some really spooky coincidence when I was younger. I was walking home from somewhere (can't remember) when I met a group of my friends playing soccer on a small field next to some houses. They were playing 'foot-volley' (no idea if that's what it's called in english, but you basically have to keep the ball in the air and kick it over some obstacle ( a low wall in our case) to the other team. They asked me to join and try the kick off (playing it from your hand to the other side).

When they passed me the ball I noticed that I was about to kick the ball right towards a house, and I was afraid I might kick it too hard and smash a window or something. So I told my friends to anticipate that so they could catch the ball if it went astray. Exactly when I said that, with the ball still in my hands, the window I was trying to avoid hitting smashed into a thousand pieces. My friends were looking at me like I was a psychic or something (I thought I was too for a second there!), but apparently a little girl in the house had thrown something into the window by accident. That was freaky!

 

[leroyjenkens]

When they passed me the ball I noticed that I was about to kick the ball right towards a house, and I was afraid I might kick it too hard and smash a window or something. So I told my friends to anticipate that so they could catch the ball if it went astray. Exactly when I said that, with the ball still in my hands, the window I was trying to avoid hitting smashed into a thousand pieces. My friends were looking at me like I was a psychic or something (I thought I was too for a second there!), but apparently a little girl in the house had thrown something into the window by accident. That was freaky!

That reminds me of a time I was playing baseball in my friend's front yard. There was some new kid I'd never seen before pitching. He pitched a few times and there was something about his pitches that I didn't like.
On one of the pitches, I hit a foul ball that hit right next to the huge window on my friend's house. After that, I realized how stupid it is to play baseball right next to some windows. I knew someone would eventually break it. Next pitch I broke it.

 

[xunxine]

There was a test in school when I had to complete the diagram of refraction of light rays through the glass block with given angle of incidence and refractive index. Silly me, didn't bring the protractor that day, so I just drew the lines. When I got the test paper back, I was surprised that I got the marks for the question. I took out my protractor and was amazed that I actually got the angles correct! Lucky me!

 

[Nick89]

There was a test in school when I had to complete the diagram of refraction of light rays through the glass block with given angle of incidence and refractive index. Silly me, didn't bring the protractor that day, so I just drew the lines. When I got the test paper back, I was surprised that I got the marks for the question. I took out my protractor and was amazed that I actually got the angles correct! Lucky me!

I had something similar just recently. An exam asked us to draw the Feynman diagram of gluon-exchange between two quarks. I missed the one and only class where the teacher briefly mentioned Feynman diagrams (we didn't need to know much about them, only really basic), and I don't think I have ever seen the diagram for gluon-exchange before.

Long story short: I guessed something completely arbitrary, and it was correct except that I forgot to name the gluon. I still got full marks though.
Also, a completely unrelated story. I was watching my friend play a first-person-shooter game on my PC. He doesn't usually play those games, so he wasn't very good at it, but he was doing the best he could.
He was using a sniper rifle and just scanning through some windows at a very large distance, when he suddenly looked at me (sitting next to him), completely unable to see the screen, and said "watch this". He clicked the mouse button, and while he did that I watched an unsuspecting enemy walk by the window my friend happened to be aiming at. He got a headshot, without even looking at the screen, nor knowing that the enemy was even there.
He didn't even know he had hit something, and he had to check his score before believing that he had actually killed someone...

 

[leroyjenkens]

Also, a completely unrelated story. I was watching my friend play a first-person-shooter game on my PC. He doesn't usually play those games, so he wasn't very good at it, but he was doing the best he could.
He was using a sniper rifle and just scanning through some windows at a very large distance, when he suddenly looked at me (sitting next to him), completely unable to see the screen, and said "watch this". He clicked the mouse button, and while he did that I watched an unsuspecting enemy walk by the window my friend happened to be aiming at. He got a headshot, without even looking at the screen, nor knowing that the enemy was even there.
He didn't even know he had hit something, and he had to check his score before believing that he had actually killed someone...

Why did he say "watch this"?

Long story short: I guessed something completely arbitrary, and it was correct except that I forgot to name the gluon. I still got full marks though.

You labeled it and everything? Or you just drew the shape?

There was a test in school when I had to complete the diagram of refraction of light rays through the glass block with given angle of incidence and refractive index. Silly me, didn't bring the protractor that day, so I just drew the lines. When I got the test paper back, I was surprised that I got the marks for the question. I took out my protractor and was amazed that I actually got the angles correct! Lucky me!

That's like my dad telling me that my tire needs air and guessing exactly how much pressure was in it.

 

[Nick89]

Why did he say "watch this"?

Not sure how to translate this into text, lol. You know when you are about to do something that you never think will succeed, but you do it anyway? Like throwing a basketball backwards blindly and hoping it goes in? Then people often say something like "watch this" before they do it, just in case they actually succeed, to prevent people from missing the greatest achievement of their life. This was in the same league. Needless to say, he was amazed too.

You labeled it and everything? Or you just drew the shape?

I knew gluons are exchanged by two quarks which changes their color, but that's it. So I drew two parallel lines, labeled R and B (at the left) and B and R (at the right). I did not know whether labeling the quarks by their colors was correct. I did not know the symbol for a gluon (only for a photon), and I just drew the first thing that came to mind (like a stretched spring). I did not label the gluon (that would have to be |R anti-B> or something), but apparently he didn't deduct any points for that.

 

[hotvette]

Bumping into a high school classmate on a San Francisco street 20 years after HS and 2,000 miles from my home town.

 

[JaWiB]

During my freshman year of college, I was working on Mastering Physics (online physics homework, I'm sure some of you know of it) with another student in his dorm room. His roommate was there as well, but he wasn't taking physics and wasn't paying attention to what we were doing at all. When a tough question came up, we asked the roommate, "Hey, what's the answer to this question?" and without looking at it he blurted out a number, which turned out to be within the margin of error accepted by Mastering Physics. It was crazy considering the answer could have been pretty much anything

 

[renz]

When I was in high-school, I was playing this small forum where members share their drawings. I just came to US for less than I year. On new-year I decided to get together with five or six other students from my country that live in the same State. So we were talking late at night, and then this one guy showed me a photo of his girlfriend. He was talking about her and said her name. I felt like the name sounds familiar. I said that guy's name and his girlfriend together and realized someone in the forum said those two names before. So I called that guy by the name he used in the forum and asked if he knew who that is. He looked surprised and replied "that's me".

There are many other randoms events, but one that surprised me the most is this. I was trying to choose a pen name to use for my drawings. And after a while, I came up with one name randomly and immediately liked it. So I decided to used it. After a while after using that name, I found out that the word I used as my pen name has a meaning in another language that is the same meaning as my real name. And no, I wasn't trying to look up meanings of the word in different languages. I found out while reading a book, and it mentioned that word and it's meaning.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Not the "most amazing" by any means. The odds are 1:365, or 366 on leap year. But it got my attention.

About a week ago, on May 5th, I was looking for something and opened a small box that I hadn't open in years. Inside the box, on the very top, was a note from a man who had been my dearest friend for almost thirty years. He passed away a few years ago. I don't know why it was even in the box. It was a note indicating where he'd be staying when he came up to visit, about fifteen years ago. As I read it, I remembered that it was May 5th - his birthday.

 

[Mk]

Yesterday I was listening to Michael Savage on the radio (he was REALLY making a fool of himself that day).

He was speaking the phrase "lone ranger." I peered through the windshield as a car passed me in the left lane. The license plate read: LONE RANGER

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Yesterday I was listening to Michael Savage on the radio

Why?

 

[EnumaElish]

As my mind was "deciding" on posting this, my fingers were starting to type on the keyboard. Not only that, they spelled out pretty much the identical phrase that I was thinking about posting! "Man," what are the odds? (This has been happening to me at a spooking frequency, almost as far back as I can remember.)

 

[JeffJo]

When I saw this thread, I had to reply with my mind-boggling coincidence. It takes some setup because it is multi-leveled. It involves two friends, both named Mark C.

Although we met elsewhere as adults, Mark #1 grew up in a small town (near where I did) in Indiana, called Gas City. According to Wikipedia, it has a population of about 6,000 and "was first known as Harrisburg and ... became something of a boom town when natural gas was found in the area in 1887. The Gas City Land Company was founded on March 21, 1892 and the town of about 150 people changed its name to Gas City a few days later."

Mark #1 introduced me to model railroading in the NTRAK system. You build one or more 2'x4' modules, and can connect them via defined standards with other modules anywhere in the world, especially Europe. We also participated in another (unnamed for privacy) activity, where he was instrumental in leading me to become involved in a mailing list of experts from around the world. That's where I met Mark #2, who was a student at a college in England. Which is about all I knew about him.

One day I had two search tasks to perform on the internet. The first to find some information about the unnamed activity for Mark #1. While searching, I ran across Mark #2's home address. It was in a place called Huddersfield, which meant nothing to me. The second task was to look up information on the NTRAK system (so it was also related to Mark #1, in a way) to present to my son's Boy Scout troop. That went quicker than I expected, so I had some time left. I clicked on the "layouts" tab, and the very first one was from England. It was a mock up of the train yard, at Huddersfield.

I picked my jaw up of the floor. I now had to find out what a "Huddersfield" was, so I looked it up as well. It's a large town (about 150,000) near the center of England. But it is apparently overshadowed in fame by three much larger cities nearby: Manchester, Sheffield, and Leeds. I would likely have forgotten all this except for what happened when I described all that to Mark #2. He also explained that Huddersfield deserved more fame than it has, but unfortunately was not considered a "city" because historically, it never had a city wall. He knew such conventions didn't apply in the states, because on a trip he had once driven by a collection of 14 houses on the side of the road that had the audacity to call itself Gas City, Indiana.

Thus completing the circle. Mark #1 unknowingly led me to Mark #2's home town, and Mark #2 unknowingly led me to back to Mark #1's.

 

[CDTOE]

An old, but interesting topic. I had a lot of such experiences in my life that I'm still not sure if they can be attributed to coincidence.

The latest experience was a year ago. On an empty weekend, I decided to watch three movies, which are Wolf Creek, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Joy Ride. In the next weekend, I turned on the TV on a free movie channel, one of the few and the most famous one in my area, and surprisingly I found them showing Joy Ride with an announcement that they will show Wolf Creek and Texas Chainsaw Massacre next. I asked myself, how could that be a coincidence?