I recently had an experience that I think goes in here. Last week I went to Disneyland for the first time ever (I don’t live in Cali), and spent a lovely day doing Disney things. I go to leave at 11, when the park closes, and I discover that the key to my rental car – a black, unmarked Toyota key fob – has fallen out of my pocket. Believing I was entirely screwed, I went to the Lost and Found.
They told me they didn’t have the key and directed me to another Lost and Found, at which point I was told that SOMEONE HAD JUST FOUND THE KEY AND RETURNED IT. Like, 3 minutes previously. I did an extremely happy dance, and I went home. These AskReddit stories are kind of like that:
1. Thank your lucky…wallet
I went to a random party 8 years ago, had a one night stand with a girl there and ended up having my wallet fall out of my pants and I didn’t notice until the next day. That made me have to go back and pick it up and then I actually had a conversation with the girl I slept with and we really hit it off. It’s 8 years later, we’ve been married for 2 years and have a 10 month old little boy. My wallet falling out of my pocket is the luckiest/best thing to ever happen to me!
2. Gramps does it again!
My car broke down on a two lane highway in the middle of the Appalachians, 20 miles from the closest city and with no cell reception. The first vehicle around the bend was my grandfather who lived three hours away. He had randomly decided to go on a weekend trip to the mountains. From break down to being picked up was less than five minutes.
3. Fancy shmancy
I was flying economy to London last summer, and I had the flight attendants tell me to head up to the front of the plane. Lo and behold, the pilot of my flight was my cousin who I hadn’t seen, or spoken to in many years! He told me to grab my carry on, and that he would bump me up to first class for free. And wow! was it fancy up there.
4. It’s you!
I was at a large outdoor concert and some dude walked up to me and said, “No way it’s you, man.” He then hands me my driver’s license that I didn’t know I had somehow lost.
5. It’s hard to peak at 10
In 5th grade this kid Lee was trying to land a basketball in the net from over his shoulder. I have no talent for basketball, or sports, or being mobile, but I told him he was doing it wrong and took the ball from him. One attempt: SWOOSH. Then I walked right off the gym floor like I do that sort of thing in my sleep.
It’s been downhill ever since then.
6. Damn, that is lucky
I got hit by a semi truck while driving 75mph down the highway. Rolled 6 or so times and landed right side up in the ditch with not so much as a scratch on me, my fiancee’s, or my friend in the back seat’s body. Car was wrecked though.
I was driving a 2014 Chevy Sonic. I’m amazed such a tiny car kept me safe through that.
I also won a $1500~ jackpot on a slot machine once.
7. “A lifetime’s worth of luck”
Not getting crushed or drowned in a farm accident. I was 16 and working in the packing house on a blueberry farm. I went out to the fields with a guy to pick up the berries. The truck didn’t have a cab just a windshield. I was sitting on a fuel tank where the passenger seat would normally be. There was a large ditch full of water on the right side of the road. The driver went off the road into the ditch. I went into the water and the truck rolled over and came down on top of me. Somehow, I wasn’t pinned or crushed and was able to find my way out.
I used up a lifetimes worth of luck in that one incident.
8. Free Climbing Fail
As a young, dumb teenager I was free climbing a small mountain without a safety harness. I was about twenty meters off the ground when I reached what I thought was the top. Turned out the top was still going upwards, and the surface was smooth as a baby’s bottom, with nothing to grab on to. I tried to descend, but got myself stuck. After a few minutes I couldn’t hold on any longer, I lost my grip, and I fell. I dropped 5 meteres, and by chance, two tiny trees, growing out from a crack in the mountain, caught me. And they did so perfectly, one under my arm, and the other right under one of my knees. From there I found my way down again, safe and sound. If it hadn’t been for those trees, I could have been seriously injured, or dead as the ground underneath was littered with pointy rocks. I didn’t use my luck to win the lottery, but it saved me from a real bad situation.
9. Cash monaaay
Once I found $2 on the ground when I was at the airport as a kid. Maybe a few years after that, at the same airport I found a $20 note and only last year in November I found a $50 note at a petrol station. I waited for a long time to see if anybody would’ve come to claim it but nobody did. I’ve got my fingers crossed that a plane carrying millions in gold bullion loses it’s cargo and it lands in my backyard.
10. Hard work + Luck = Winning
Worked at a retail store for luggage were it was base pay, plus commission. The other two sales people were lazy. They made almost no sales, didn’t interact with the customers, and basically leaned against the counter sipping coffee and being fake friends with the manager lady. My first week there, I made more commission than they did in an average month.
Manager lady wasn’t friendly. Kept cutting my hours. Said I was making her look bad by making so many sales. Gave me all the terrible jobs like taking out the trash every day (because I was the only male and was stronger, she said), cleaning the bathrooms twice a day, cutting into my sales, reassigning my sales to other people, “So it looks more even,” she said, etc. I lasted 3 months before the fake friends talked enough crap about “He is stealing our sales,” that the manager fired me.
3 months later, I’m working with a company that is flipping houses. We get a call from a landlord about a house they wanted to sell because the tenants weren’t paying and being a landlord was more if a pain in the butt than he thought. When we get there, guess who was the tenant? Yeah, the manager that fired me. I straight bought her house for cash and evicted her.
11. From zero to VIP
This was a wild string of events that I still can’t believe happened.
I got a job in the video game testing industry. I got placed on a specific project that happened to have a point of contact that knew my favorite band personally. When the client came to visit, this point of contact mentioned my favorite band and my boss mentioned that I loved them. I was then invited to fly out and hang out with my favorite band. I got a tour of their headquarters and got to spend a bunch of time with them for the weekend. The only thing I had to pay was my flight. It was easily the best weekend of my entire life and I’m now on a first-name basis and VIP list with that band.
12. Winning Streak
I used to occasionally go to late night casinos with a mate what was pretty big on gambling and strippers. I don’t like strip clubs.
I always play low bet value roulette, with a hard limit I set before I go in. Usually £20-40.
Nothing went my way and I was cleaned out before 5 minutes passed barring one last 50p chip.
I put it square on one number, which came in.
Then I won again, and again…
I don’t remember much more, but I do remember walking into the kitchen the next day to find nearly £4000 on my counterpoint- most of it still in the foil envelopes the casino gets it supplied in.
13. Those Otter Boxes are legit…
I lost my phone while we were laying pipe at work. Filled in the trench and then realized I had lost it somewhere in the 6 ft of trench we dug. Left it there overnight seeing as it was already dark and I couldn’t hear it when I called it. Returned the next day with listening equipment. Took an extremely lucky guess on where it was and located it within 30min. Dug 2 1/2ft down to find that the only damage was a small crack on my screen protector and a scuff on my Otter Box. Everyone including me had written it off as never to be recovered. 2hrs of my time when I figured it would take me a week to find it.
14. Prizes
I was around eight, and was at a community centre to see a play. After the play, they were hosting a raffle, so I got my grandparents to buy me a few tickets. Now the weird part. I won every prize. Every single one of them. I had only a handful of tickets and there were 100+ people in the room participating. I ended up giving some of them back the the raffle people because it wouldn’t be fair for me to get all of them, and can you imagine a young girl and her grandparents having to carry all these prizes out? It’s unrealistic.
(Prizes were a giant stuffed bear, wine, bath stuff, more wine, more bath stuff, some chocolates, etc.)
15. Sometimes, things just work out
Came out of university and I didn’t have a job, I was applying and applying for jobs in video editing and media. However, I hardly got any interviews. About 4 months of having no job I went to my final interview and said to myself that if I don’t nail this one then I’m signing onto a minimum wage job agency. Unfortunately, I didn’t get it so the next day I went down and signed onto the job agency. They told me that they have a job in a factory that designed and printed boxes and that I could start tomorrow. It wasn’t what I wanted but it was money in my bank. I was there for a few months and a job came up in their graphics department, I went for it and got it! I’ve been there for nearly 3 years now and I’ve already had a promotion, I’ve had all in house training and I honestly couldn’t be happier. I truly believe someone was looking out for me to give me this opportunity.
16. NO EFFING WAY
Used to intern for a science journalism program in NYC while home on break. My boss randomly had an extra ticket to an event about women in science, and Neil Degrasse Tyson was there. My fearless boss proceeds to walk right up to him and mention how sad it is that I am too young to go to his show, which back then was a brand new radio show called StarTalk (filmed in a Brooklyn bar; I was 19 at the time). He was like “That’s a shame, we should [cut] do something about that”…and that’s how I ended up being snuck into a bar by Neil Degrasse Tyson a couple weeks later.
17. “Like that”
When I was about 13 I was playing this game with my 7 year old cousin where you throw a ring and try to get it to land on this stick. We played for so long and not once did anyone of us land the ring on the stick.
Then his mom called his name so he left to see what she wanted. When he was gone I took the ring and put it on the stick. When he came back I said “Look, I landed it!” He didn’t believe me and asked me to show him how I did it and do it again, calling my bluff. I wouldn’t back down so I took the ring and threw it and it landed right on the stick. I was having a meltdown in my mind about how I just nailed it but I played it cool and turned around, looked at him at just said “Like that.”
18. Drug Trial
Survived bacterial meningitis when I was 2 years old. Everyone who gets it usually has to have limbs removed. But I ended up being part of a new drug trial and it saved my life and the only thing I’ve lost to this day as a result of it is a little bit of hair at the back of my head. That drug never came into circulation after that so it was my only chance to get it and I did. I would consider that very lucky.
19. That’s some good job interview advice
Applied for a job that was way out of my league and the pay was more than twice what I was making at the time, and included pension, full benefits, all that good stuff. I showed up quite early for the interview, and had some time to kill, so I sat in the lobby reading some industry magazines. One article was about the top 10 threats to this industry, which I made a point of reading and soaking in as much as I could. Eventually I get called into the interview, and everything is going OK for the most part. This industry and role are both new to me, and I think it may have shown during the interview as a weak spot….but then I get asked “what do you see as potential issues within our industry/business.” I was so excited I almost jumped out of seat, and went off in great detail about everything I had just learned. The interviewers were very impressed, and little did they know that had I been asked that exact same question just 30 minutes earlier, I would have had nearly nothing to say.
…I got the job.
20. Winninnnggg
At a fancy charity ball, I bought 5 raffle tickets for $100. I put each ticket in a different bucket for different items.
I won the Chanel purse worth $1500.
Then, I also won the David Yurman diamond bracelet and ring worth $2000.
Same year, I got ticketed and towed for parking in my usual spot at work because on Nov. 1st the parking rules change for snow (I didn’t know that). Cost me all afternoon and $400.
That night, my friends and I went to play bingo with the old biddies at the church. I hit the jackpot bingo which was worth exactly $400.
21. “All because I went to a concert alone…and talked to some random older man standing at the bar”
I moved to California from Louisiana to study Computer Science. I got into the nightlife scene in LA and happened to be at a show in WeHo alone because I didn’t know anyone. I started talking to a guy at the bar who could tell I was green to SoCal. He happened to be an entertainment manager and asked if I wanted to work part time for his business. I agreed since I did at that time need a part time job and was going to work at Del Taco. That changed my life. I ended up excelling at the job and he liked me so much he made me a tour manager for a summer and I worked on a large concert tour, the artist liked me so much that I was promoted at the agency and became an agent.
I recently got cherry picked by a Canadian company to head booking for them and their European counterpart and now I am making insane amounts of money for booking artists to play shows, I get to spend my time at concerts and taking celebrities out for dinner all because I went to a concert alone when I was a freshman and talked to some random older man standing at the bar.
22. Pit Tickets
I wanted to go to a Foo Fighters concert two years ago, and I wanted to buy tickets a few months before but I had no one to go with. Many of my friends hated the Foos, or at least didn’t like them because I always listened to them haha. Anyway, it was the Sunday before the concert and I was pissed because I couldn’t go. My uncle called me and told me that my aunt decided she didn’t want to go, so he offered to take me for free. Him, two of his work friends, and I had pit tickets and there were maybe 20 people between us and the stage. One of the best nights of my life!!
23. Three Nights in Vegas
About 15 years ago I had to go to Vegas for a work thing, I had no extra money so I really was not excited about going. Being broke in Vegas is no fun. I was there for 3 nights. First night I decided that I would play in a $50 poker tournament, it would fill up the evening and that way I wouldn’t gamble anywhere else. Bam! Took first place for $1500. Being “responsible” I went and put $1,000 in my bank and kept $500 to play with. The next night, I go to a craps table with $200 and I go on for about a 45 min roll. This was at the Paris where they have the “firebet” which is a $10 bet that if you hit all 6 points its 1000-1. I hit that over the course of the 45 minutes, and, if you know anything about craps, it becomes exponential as you press your wins, so starting with a typical $10 pass line and $20 odds and like $12 on a 6 or 8— by the time I finally 7’ed out I had $500 on each number and was hitting them over and over- Cashed out with $28,000.
The final night, I did it again- just went on a 30 minute run, hit another fire bet but since I was up so much I had started at a $25 min game, another $18,000. I basically parleyed $50 into $46,000 which was more than my annual pay at the time.
That will never happen again.
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