OKay, I'm coming back from Atlanta earlier today, and stop for gas. Bear in my Atlanta is about 140 miles or so. The pay at the pump debit is out, so I go inside to pay for it, and take a piss while I'm at it. I'm washing my hands and who comes out of a stall? One of my Army customers from work! WTF? There are probably 100 places to get gas at all the I-20 freeway exits between Augusta and Atlanta. He was heading to Atlanta, I was coming from Atlanta. We were both laughing our asses off over this weirdness!
I hate to throw water on the fire, but accidentally running into someone you know, 140 miles from home, is not even close to the "wildest coindicence EVER."
Yep. I had one that was much wilder, but still only made think "Well, how about that?" I was travelling in Germany and went to Berchtesgaden to tour the salt mine. I lined up with a whole bunch of tourists and we got on a little train-like vehicle that had us sitting single-file. I heard the guy in front of me speaking American English, so I asked him where he was from. He told me California. I said "Me, too. What city?" He told me. I said "Me, too! Whereabouts?" He told me the street. I said "Me, too!!!" I think he thought I was putting him on so I quickly said something about the neighborhood ONLY a local would know and then he seemed convinced I was on the level. Funny, though, to travel 8,000 miles to a remote corner of Germany and meet someone who lives a half mile away from you.
Friend of mine went to one of them exotic Carribean islands for his honeymoon. At dinner, he was examining the fancy dinnerware the hotel used. On the bottom of the plate it said "Hackensack, NJ." He's from Rutherford, two towns over. Visiting my mom in South Carolina, 700 miles from home. When the airport van came to pick us up to go home, they made other stops to pick up more people going to the airport. One of them was from the town nextdoor to mine. In pilot training in Virginia, my father once did a simulated (smoke only) gas attack on an unsuspecting Army unit. As a gag, the pilots mixed in some real vomit-inducing chemical with the smoke. Dad found out later that his own uncle was one of his victims. Luckily, Uncle Wally got his gas mask on in time.
Sorry, but none of those qualify as the wildest coincidence ever. I have you all beat. Almost six years ago, I met a man in Sydney, Australia. Not only did he live in the exact same neighbourhood of the same German city as I lived then, but he had moved there from another street in another German city where we had previously lived door to door without ever meeting. Comparing notes, we figured out we were actually distant cousins on top of everything else! But none of that is the strangest thing. What makes this story really weird -- spooky, even -- is that neither he nor I have ever been to Sydney in our entire lives! Think about that. And now I'm really going to switch off the laptop and concentrate on my holidays. I obviously need them.
