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What are the odds? You hear people say that a lot, but it’s not usually about anything that improbable.
These folks on AskReddit, however, have had some extremely random things happen to them — some downright weird, lucky, random things.
See for yourself.
1. Gramps?
“When at college we had old style (plug in) phones in each of our rooms. Never used them, didn’t even know the number. One day mine rang, I picked it up and some old guy was asking for a Phillip. I told him that, no, there wasn’t a Phillip here – but this old guys voice sounded really familiar, like really really familiar, like I was 90% sure, so I asked,
“Grandpa? *(Insert grandpa’s full name) Is that you?” (It was)
Turns out he was trying to call an old friend, and had been pressing 2 instead of 5 when dialing the number ie 2782 387 instead of 5785 387. And it happened to be the phone number to my room.”
2. What are the odds?
“I was telling my coworkers about an interesting customer of mine from a month before, who looked like a hobo but bought a very nice product and talked about his international travels, to remind them not to judge customers on appearances only. Right as I finished the story, he walked in to buy another identical one as backup.
Cue a month or so later and I was telling the story again to a different coworker, with the update that he’d appeared as if summoned the last time… AND YET AGAIN he walked in right on the heels of my story about him, to buy again.
…he’s probably standing at the locked door of the closed store now since I told the story again….”
3. Magic wallet
“I lost my wallet one night partying in Redondo Beach. About a month later I was sitting down on some big boulders that make up the breakwater again in Redondo and I looked down by my feet and there was my wallet, sitting there water logged on one of the rocks. Nothing missing out of it. About a year later, the same wallet goes missing again. I’m like wtf is going on? No idea. So a month later, I’m in a random grocery store and the cashier sorta recognizes me and says “hey stay right here” She goes over to an office and comes back with my wallet. Nothing missing. Had all my cash still there.”
4. What just happened?
“Opened a beer while sitting around a bonfire, threw the cap in the fire and it bounced in the air off a log and landed on top of my friends beer. We just froze. I don’t even want to know the chances of making that happen again.”
5. WOW
“I have a good one!
When I was still dating my wife, she was on vacation with her parents in Cancun and her flight was cancelled due to a storm. She had a hugely important job interview coming up and no one in the airport could get her on a flight home in time. She called me, frantic, from her hotel asking me to help.
So, I went on the airport website and found a single first-class ticket to fly to JFK that same night. I bought it, knowing it might not still be available after calling my then-girlfriend to confirm. $1,400 later, I call her hotel in Cancun only to find she and her parents have checked out and are nowhere to be found. This was quite a while ago, so they did not have cell phones with international plans.
Now freaking out more than a little, I call both the hotel and the airport multiple times trying to get in touch with her. No luck. So I Google to see if there are any other numbers listed for the airport, where I assume she must be, and I come across a crappy looking little website listing what it claims to be the phone numbers of a bank of pay phones in the airport.
I called the first number on that list of pay phones. It rings for a while, and someone picks up. It’s my wife’s voice. In the middle of a Mexican airport jam-packed with stuck travelers, she overheard that exact payphone ringing and happened to pick it up.
I passed her all the flight details, spoke again with the airport to confirm she could board. She got on the flight to JFK with 15 minutes to spare. She now tells this story as the day she decided to marry me.
Oh yeah, and she got the job.”
6. That’s…extremely bad luck
“Not me, a friend.
He was very depressed and became a hermit, picking up agoraphobic fears. He was convinced bad things happen when he leaves the house. Usually referring to injuries or mess sups that did happen to him.
Myself and others convinced him to take a college class just to get out of the house 3 hours a week. He already had a college degree, even from an ivy league school.
It was an elective class, only 15 people. The only thing he had to do for the class was a group project with two other people. One member never showed up, so he spent all his time with the other student.
The partner was a transfer from one of those good California schools. My friend bonded with him in class. Things were looking up for my friend’s morale.
3 days before they were set to present, the entire college shut down because of a murder. His partner was the culprit.
My friend was called in for questioning, but that’s it. The other student was found guilty and is now sitting out a life sentence.
If that wasn’t enough, we convinced my friend to take another class at a different college the following semester.
He became friendly with the kid that sat next to him. A month in, the other student went missing, then found dead. Authorities say it was a suicide.
We’re not making him take anymore classes. He hasn’t left the house since.”
7. See you in the sky
“My father and I are both airline pilots. Early one morning I am working a flight from Louisville to Detroit and he is going from Columbus to Chicago. It’s quiet on the radios at that early hour when ATC calls out some traffic for us to look for, and us to another aircraft. When I hear my dad answer the radio. Shortly after that, he says hi to me, and I reply with “Hi Dad.” Then we passed directly over his aircraft by 1000 feet. One of the coolest moments of my flying career to date.
Follow up: Thanks for all the support. It means a lot to know people find it as cool as I did. It was a pretty significant moment for me because I was a little a**hole when I was young and flying and our shared love for aviation was what really made my Dad and my relationship take off (pun intended).”
8. Oh, hi there
“I went to a small university in the midwest, less than 6,000 students.
I bumped into an old classmate one day. On a train in southern Japan.”
9. Pain in the ass
“Someone with multiple felonies has my same birthday to the year and first, middle and last name as well as the same eye color and height in my state. It makes all background checks a big pain the ass as well as renewing any official documents like my drivers license.”
10. Freeze!
“I had a police helicopter light me up in my car with the spotlight and red and blue lights. Pulled over and waited for what I assumed was a swat team coming to get me. Waited 10 mins and then the lights went off and it flew away.
The statistically improbable part is that I was selling weed and had just made a drop. So I thought I was done for. Nope…. Never found out why they lit me up.”
11. Same name
“First day of fourth grade a guy and I were confused because we both have the same name and last name, no middle name. Had to deal with that through elementary and middle school. He goes to the same college as me and back in the day we were pretty good friends.
An annoying thing is that we’d get each other’s papers, grades, Test scores handed to each other. Just from habit I know his old school ID number to this day, as well as his birthday lmao. Even a couple years back a guy sent me a message on FB saying that I’ll be his roommate but I live at home. I immediately knew he was talking about the other guy and gave the other guy’s account.”
12. Seriously, what are the chances?
“I bought a family reunion T-shirt (not my family) at a thrift store outside Houston. Two years later at Northwestern University outside Chicago I was wearing the shirt, and I ran into a guy in the dining hall wearing the same shirt. He was also not in the family.”
13. Weird
“When I was in middle school I friend requested around 30 people with the same name as me. only like 4 accepted but around 6 or 7 years after that I was scrolling through Facebook and saw my name was tagged in something. The picture was at a basketball tournament I went to the previous weekend but when I looked at the picture while I was on the other teams beach the person that was tagged was playing against us.
The crazy part was we both travelled 500+ miles from different sides of the country to play in the same tournament on different teams in the same game and picture. And the only reason I saw the picture was I friended other people with the same name as me when I was 11.”
14. Old friends
“I run into the same Ukrainian guy every time I go to the Vegas airport. He was my roommate briefly in college and since then it’s happened three times.”
15. Stolen ID
“In 2012 I was mugged at gunpoint while walking home late at night. Lost my wallet and phone but fortunately was fine. Reported to police and never got my stuff back, no surprise.
4 years later I had moved 4500 km away and got a phone call from my sister. She was at a music festival and lost her ID. A guy camping next to her found it, noticed the address on her drivers license. He recognized it because it was the same as the address of the fake ID he had been using. He had my ID from my wallet that had been stolen 4 years earlier.
My sister handed him the phone and I was more amazed than anything, but I asked where he had got it from, and it sounded like it had been passed around a few people at the school he went to. I told him I didn’t want it back, but asked him to promise to not give it to anyone else, and not to steal my identity.
So far my identity hasn’t been stolen.”
