A brilliantly written plot twist can make an entire film. You know the kind, those that trigger an audible gasp in audience members and leave everyone recommending the movie to their friends upon leaving the theatre. But we all know that truth is stranger than fiction, and life is sometimes the most brilliant screenwriter of all.
Redditors have recently been sharing the most surprising plot twists that they’ve experienced in real life, so we’ve gathered some of their best stories below. From coincidences that prove just how small the world is to sharp turns in people’s career trajectories, enjoy reading through these movie-worthy moments!
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When me and a buddy went to see a movie, we stopped for gas on the way. It started to rain fairly heavy, and some goofy hippy girl that worked at the gas station, ran out and started dancing in the rain. It was a hot day and the rain was welcomed, but this goofy broad is laughing and dancing around when she is supposed to be working. Many years later, my girlfriend who I had lived with for 4 to 5 years, told me how she loves the rain so much, that she used to dance in the rain, even at work at a gas station. Yep, I was living with goofy hippy chick for years and never knew. Still together.
We were at a big bonfire, and there was this guy named Kylee who got absolutely hammered. Eventually the night's winding down, people are going home, and some of his friends started asking him if he had a ride home, and he kept slurring " 'll take mfsssfelf home," which obviously his friends were just like "F**k no," asked me if I had extra room in my car to take him home, and I said "sure." Kylee kept protesting that he wanted to take himself home, but we eventually got him in my passenger seat and he fell asleep almost immediately.
We get in the car, his friends give us directions to Kylee's house, and good news, it was literally two streets over from where I was headed anyways! The drive was going to be around 1.5 hours, so not having to go way out of my way to drop him off was fantastic!
The car ride was pretty quite as it was around 2am, we were all tired, sober, and ready to just go the f**k to sleep. I pull up to Kylee's house, wake him up and go "Hey man, we're here!" to which he takes one look out the window and goes ".... this aint my house." One of his friends immediately went "The f**k do you mean, I was literally here last week, this is your house!" and Kylee just responds "Naw... I moved two days ago."
"Where the f**k did you move to!?!?!?!"
"Two houses down from the bonfire. I walked there."
I was in Japan and ran into a guy from Alaska. Told him I worked in Alaska years ago for a while. We became friends and I was showing him some of my Alaska pics and he got the weirdest look. I asked what? He said, "That's me in the background of your picture!" I took a random picture of a memorial while he was walking in the background and we both discovered the fact while in Japan. Still makes me feel weird.
I was first on scene to a bad motorcycle accident. A car missed a stop sign and T-boned the motorcyclist.
I stopped immediately, so did the car behind me, and a car in the opposite lane. This was a rural road in the middle of nowhere.
The woman in the car behind me jumped down into the ditch with me and the victim, took off her head scarf, and tied a tourniquet on his nearly amputated leg.
The other guy came over with a large med kit bag, and while he was putting on gloves, said to the woman:
“Hey, I know you, don’t I?”
“Yep, we’ve met a couple times!”
The woman said to me: “I’m an off duty officer. He’s EMS.”
What are the chances?! A country road, middle of nowhere, and police and EMS both on scene immediately. If it was a TV show, I wouldn’t have believed it.
Biker may not ride again, but he survived.
Friend of mine, let's call her Jordan, met a guy at work. He's got the same first name as her - boy Jordan. Find out they were born in a small rural area 3 months apart and both families moved away when they were young. Girl Jordan tells her mother. Her mother tells her she heard of Boy Jordan when he was born and really liked the name, and that's why she called her Jordan. Jordan and Jordan are now married.
Did they then move to live in Jordan, and name all their kids Jordan? ... Sounds a bit like Marklar!
I used to get coffee from a Dunkin' Donuts every day on my way to the office, and I would always chat to the lady who worked there. Some days, I would get a weird feeling off her, like she looked slightly different or she didn’t mention her kid like usual. One day, I’m chatting to her as usual, when from the back appears… Her. There was two of them. I had been talking to TWINS for TEN MONTHS.
My canadian great-uncle went on a round the world tour with a friend in the early 1950s. While travelling in India, they saw a sign that a local guy was giving a slideshow about his recent travels in Canada at their hotel and decided to go for the heck of it because they were homesick. About halfway through, the guy giving the slideshow brings up photos of my uncle's hometown... then his street... then his house... then him being served tea by my uncle's mother. That would be pretty wild nowadays, in the fifties it must have been an absolute mindf**k.
Okay this would be really insane but really cool at the same time.
I was studying abroad in Japan and volunteered to go to a middle school to help students practice conversational English. The coordinator for the program was giving us a tour of the school and she mentioned that she lived in the US as a child. We asked where and she said that she lived outside of the city I grew up in.
I asked where and it turns out that it was the town I grew up in. I'm half Japanese so we went back and forth naming the Japanese people we knew from that town to see if there was any overlap. We were about 15 years apart in age, so not much overlap, but eventually discovered we had that same piano teacher and probably were at the same recital one year.
Then she stops and kind of looks at me funny. And she says, 'your Dad is white, you have an older sister, and you had a huge dog named Star'. All accurate.
Turns out she babysat me and my sister once.
To add to the hilarious situation: in our family we liked to joke about a famously bad babysitter who didn't even know how to boil water for pasta. When I told my Mom the story about this run in, she told me that this was that babysitter!
I one day found a wallet in the parking lot of a Walmart not terribly far from where I lived, so I decided to return it to the address on the ID inside. 30 minutes out, no big deal the woman was glad and I went about my life.
2~3 years later I start seeing this girl from a college course i was taking and when going over her house for the first time it turns out it was the daughter of the woman whose wallet I returned years prior, what an exciting twist that was.
I'm currently living it.
My mom and her best friend both got pregnant with their first pregnancies at 33, and gave birth to me and my friend a month apart, I've known him since I was 3 days old. We grew up together like cousins, he was a bridesmaid at my wedding.
I just told my friend I am pregnant for the first time, at 34. He then tells me his wife is also pregnant with their first, and she's 2 weeks away from my due date.
So my mom and her best friend became moms together and are now becoming grandmas together.
I can't tell you how excited I am.
When I applied to University, I was accepted into a sciences/arts hybrid degree, but they accidentally enrolled me in a bachelors of education program and said it would take them a couple weeks to switch it. I’ve been a teacher for 9 years now and I love it. When people ask how I became a teacher I just say by accident.
So my parents and I were on holiday on the other side of the world from where we live. And we were in one of those places that’s very isolated and only has a few people staying there at the time.
It was dinner time, and we were mingling with the other guests. I was sitting by the fire, making small talk with a random woman. In the course of the conversation, I mentioned where I went to school, and she got the shock of her life, as her son was in my year. I asked his name, and it turned out to be a classmate I knew quite well!
If that was the end of the story, it would be weird enough as it was, but when I called my mother over and told her the weird coincidence, she started chatting to the woman as well, and over the course of the conversation, they made a second big discovery - they had been classmates at school as well!
The thing is, they didn’t go to school in the same country as us. They had gone to school in Southern Africa, classmate and I had gone to school in Europe, and we were in South East Asia when we met.
One of my dad's good friends was adopted as a baby to loving parents as their only child. Grew up knowing nothing of his birth parents, though he looked for them. He got married, bought a house and had children. His children grew and became best friends with the children similar ages across the green (houses in a circle neighborhood, surrounding a large park). The parents become close friends, and the children spend countless hours together, including sleepovers at each other's homes.
It is discovered, years later, that my dad's friend is full blooded brothers with his across the green neighbour. The children were actually best friends with their cousins. After putting him up for adoption being young parents, they stayed together and had another son. They had spent his whole life looking for him and he was across the street.
Oh that's so lovely. I hope he was able to reconnect with his parents too.
I had a crazy idea of trying to sell T-shirts online. I sold like... 6. 4 of them were sales from my parents and their friends trying to encourage me. But one of them was from someone who would end up becoming my wife. We are still married today.
Met a guy on tinder and we hit it off. Went on a few dates and started swapping stories about past relationships and it turned out that our most recent exes (who cheated on us) are now dating each other. We come from different cities and have no mutual friends, so just found it quite funny.
A likes B. C likes E. B cheats A with C. Algorithm picks up and matches A with E. Makes sence
A friend's best friend was badly bullied in high school for being gay. The football quarterback was the worst offender.
Guess who ran into one another in a gay bar ten years after high school?
My great uncle was a Jesuit priest. He sort of always kept to himself. He was very serious, bit of a curmudgeon. My dad gets a phone call in the middle of the night in 2005. Great uncle says he needs my dad to pick him up immediately from Port Washington, Wisconsin.
My dad drives from Indianapolis to Wisconsin to get my great uncle. My great uncle is living in a mansion on the water. My dad is trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Long story short, when my great uncle was teaching at a well known Jesuit University, he fell in love with a young woman and she with him. They secretly led a life together and when he was 97 and she 80, she passed away. He had no idea what to do. They had always planned for him to die first. But to make this wilder, he still went about as a priest. He took the vow of poverty, hung out with priests, etc. Martha, his girlfriend, went big with IBM and became a millionaire! She took my great uncle all over the world, they did fancy things. He even had a different name when he was with her.
After she died, my great uncle lived with my mom and dad, when my mom took him to the doctor they couldn't find any of his records. After a few minutes, he said "Oh...check under the name Peter Rockford", and they found him. My great uncle was a total bad*ss. I'm not sure he could get away with this today. Maybe he could. He lived to be 103.
I used to enjoy telling people my father was a priest - the taken aback looks given - and I would say he had four children - even more astounded looks - and then I'd say the vital point, that he was an Anglican (Episcopalian) priest. It would be good if Catholic priests could have relationships and marry. Just as well my father could!
Once there was a round of layoffs going on at the steel mill. Union was buzzing about it for weeks and weeks and everyone was worried. As a multinational, usually corporate would handle this but this time, local HR let EVERYONE know they were large and in charge.
The local HR Manager spent weeks toying with people and essentially letting them know he was THE MAN.
So, layoff day comes along and the whole plant (600+) gather in the parking lot. HR Manager begins reading the list slowly - a 120 had to go - and it was torture. Bastard had a smile as he read names of people he didn't like. Until name 120 - HR Manager's face went pale and the d**k started to cry. His assistant read the last name - it was his.
HR went bot-based after that.
My grandfather was a wheeler-n-dealer kind a guy, charismatic and knew everyone in Berlin before fleeing to Shanghai in the late 1930’s. When the Japanese wanted to have a midnight ”conversation” about the status of the Jewish refugees in Japanese occupied Shanghai - the head of community decided to bring him to help with negotiations. My grandfather and the young Japanese interpreter got along so well, both had high EQ and had side conversations that helped nudge the the “official negotiations” allowing the Jewish community to remain and survive the war.
In 2015, I was waitressing at a Japanese restaurant in suburban DC - one of my regulars was a guy my age and we became friends. he told me he was going to Shanghai to do some research on his Japanese grandfather - a young doctor who spoke German from his medical school days and was woken up one night to act as an interpreter in a clandestine meeting between the Japanese military and the Jewish community, and that his involvement and subtle influence had helped saved the Jews of Shanghai.
I was a graduate student in clinical psychology. Broke, eating Ramen noodles, and having a hard time seeing a successful future.
We had an assignment to analyze one of our favorite historical figures. I picked a comedian I admired, as I previously had a background in comedy. The teacher really liked it and told me I should take it somewhere. I basically just did the same assignment for a couple of more comedians and self-published a book with a s****y cover using Amazon's lame self-publishing software at the time.
Three weeks later I got a call from a TV producer. A couple of weeks after that, I was heavily featured on a major TV show featuring some of the world's biggest comics and TV critics.
Everything changed. My financial fortunes. My confidence. My hope about the future.
I've done another 15 or so TV shows since then.
I never saw any of it coming. Everything changed in a month.
When I was in college, I was walking one morning with my then-boyfriend and saw a pitch black burnt pizza in a tree. We took a picture, laughed about it and went on our way.
A year later, I'm hanging out with some friends of friends. I'm on their balcony and realize it looks over the tree where the pizza was. I tell them the story and they confirm that yeah, it was their old roommate who got drunk, burned a frozen pizza and flung it out the window. I never thought I would end up learning the story behind that burnt pizza.
When I started high school, a guy in my class had the same, quite unusual, name as my childhood dog. To give you an idea of how rare the name is, only about 3 people in 100 000 have this name (my dad chose it as a tribute to his favorite football club). So, let's say the name was Burnley. I of course told my parents about the coincidence, and they thought I should tell my new classmate. I argued it would be weird to blurt out: "I once had a dog with your name", so I decided not to.
A year passed and Burnley was now in my circle of friends. We had all gone to a party together and I was in earshot of my friends talking about how long it'd been since they'd seen me and how they missed me. Weird. I've never known anyone with my name (let's call me Adia) and, as far as I knew, they didn't know anyone else with my name either as only about 40 people in 100 000 share it. They then said that they really wanted to pet me. The weirdness of it all got to me and I jokingly asked them what they wanted to do to me, to which they replied: "Oh, not you - Burnley has a cat called Adia".
And that's the story of how I found out about the other Adia and Burnley of the other Burnley.
My roommate and I discovered after living together for several years our great-grandparents were next-door-neighbours for decades in the early twentieth century and remembered each other. We met at university with zero prior connections.
Something similar happened to my parents - they met at university and when the families were introduced it turned out the fathers had met before on a random business trip years prior and were even in a picture together (one was an architect the other a mining engineer, so there was overlap to their professions)
Was studying in my uni library one day minding my own business when the guy in the seat next to me popped his head round the partition and silently offered me Cheetos. I'd never met this person before in my life and wasn't a huge fan of Cheetos so I politely turned him down.
Fast forward several months I'm on a bus coming back from a whole different State. The bus is relatively empty and there was no assigned seating. An hour in the guy sitting in front of me gets onto his knees on the chair and turns around. It's the same dude from the library that one time. And what does he do? Stick his hand out and offer me Cheetos.
Okay this oddly strange and oddly cool. And just a little creepy but kinda sweet.
20 years ago I was a regular on an online law forum. Admin was a lawyer from a town 500 km away. He occasionally shared anecdotes about his goofy secretary.
At the same time I met a woman I became close friends with. She told me anecdotes about her goofy best friend who was a secretary for a law firm.
Turns out the goofy best friend and the goofy secretary
are the same person. (And it was interesting to hear the other side, apparently the lawyer was an alcoholic.)
On a vacation several hundred miles from home. I’m wearing an athletic shirt with my unusual last name on it. A tourist behind me says hello, do you happen to know XYZ Mylastname? I said yes, that’s my uncle! Turns out he was the same age as my dad, grew up in my hometown and moved to my dad’s hometown after college. He and my dad had a ton of overlapping friends, to the point where he had stayed overnight in my current room 20 years before during a sleepover.
I'm wondering why random tourist named the uncle if he knew OP's dad well enough to go to his house for a sleepover.
Divorced my husband 36 years ago. Best thing I ever did. The day I put his stuff in the front yard and changed the locks someone set him up on a blind date. He ended up moving in with her immediately and they've been together ever since. Years later one of our daughters got into ancestry.com and started mapping all of our families. Come to find out the woman he married is actually a cousin of mine. Turns out all three of us were originally from a little town in Florida. She and I share a great grandfather. I am descended from his illegitimate family and she is descended from the legitimate family. Then we find out my ex-husband is related to both of us. We're all distant cousins.
My dad's family hated my mom's family. The land my father and his parents are buried on once belonged to my mother's family. I absolutely love it.
Deployed during deep water horizon. Away from my partner. I start getting a burning sensation when I pee. They drop me off the ship and I start driving back to the hospital. Get cell signal and call my partner to ask if there’s something I should know. She responds with “S**t, f**k, goddamnit” and then hangs up the phone.
Turns out it was a UTI from the oil.
Never would have suspected infidelity otherwise.
I think the op means they had a uti from exposure to toxins at work, but before they knew that they suspected std so asked their partner who coincidentally was cheating and swore because they were found out, even though that's not how the op actually got the uti
Finding out that I happened to have bedded another set of cousins after saying I would never do it again - even though both times I had no idea these people were related.
I was on a work trip, single at the time, and this guy started flirting with me. At first I was interested, but I did a little digging and found out he was married with kids. When I confronted him, he got really nasty towards me and I avoided him the rest of the trip. I heard through the grapevine that my rejection didn't stop him from cheating on his wife with others.
Fast forward a year later, I find out Cheater had been let go from his job due to budget cuts. At this point I had started dating my now husband. When I met my FIL, I learn that not only do FIL and I work in the same field, FIL is Cheater's former boss! When we were talking about mutual people we know and Cheater's name popped up, I made a comment about how he sucks and cheats on his wife. FIL goes "interesting, he just called me yesterday to see if we're hiring again..."
Happy to report that Cheater hasn't been re-hired.
I've apparently known I was trans since before I can remember. When I was 4, my first trip to a movie theater, we saw a reshowing of Disney's Cinderella. I fell in love with GusGus and asked to be called Gus. Nickname followed me through school and into adulthood.
When I was 22, I legally changed my name so I wouldn't have a feminine name, and Gus became a logical nickname of my chosen name.
In 2010, I traveled 700 miles to see some family. During the trip, we visited my maternal grandfather's grave. While wandering the cemetary, I happened upon another grave.
THAT HAD MY NAME ON IT. Different middle initial, but my first and last names, and my surname is uncommon. It definitely caught my attention.
Turned out the man was my paternal great-great grandfather (dad's father's grandfather).
About a year after that, I found out that ANOTHER great-great grandfather (dad's mom's mom's dad) had the same first name. Not only that, one of his daughters bore the feminine versiom of the name. Her younger sister was my great-grandmother. My great-grandmother married a man whose middle name was also... my name.
I inadvertently gave myself a family name that hadn't been used in a couple generations. All because I liked an animated rodent when I was 4.
I've always had an unspoken theory that trans people are remembering a past life where they were the opposite sex. I think its interesting that very often trans people use names that were popular generations ago. I don't talk about it because i don't want to offend anyone but I do think this. Sometimes we come back.
Moved to a new city years ago. Got lost and stopped at a bookstore to buy a map. (I said it was years ago). I was in front of the store smoking while my wife bought a map. Asked directions from a Santa looking stranger and got to talking about where I was from. Within a minute he was all "You're (my dad's name) and (my mom's name)'s kid."
He was my mother's first cousin I had never met
I went to a restaurant I had never been to before on the opposite side of town at random because it was lunch time and they looked good.
I was in line waiting to order and I thought "That woman in front of me has the same haircut as my mother". She turned around and it *was* my mother.
Thing was, she lived in a city 1000km away, was only in town for a day for a meeting and just chose the restaurant at random as well.
I grew up in rural Indiana. My brother and I were late to our early morning (5:30am) seminary often. My mom taught the class. It got bad enough that my parents told us if we were late again, we’d lose our phones. Pretty serious for the early 2000s.
Well one morning, we were starting to run late, but could barely still make it. There is a newly built 3-way stop sign at a subdivision entrance next to our house. Being in a bigger rush than usual, my brother decided he would simply speed through the new stop sign with his lights off.
As soon as we crest the hill of this new intersection, we see the vague silhouette of a man jogging on the side of the street. Our side of the street. We swerve and he dives out of the way. Barely miss him. Close one.
After seminary, we come back home to eat before school. As soon as we get back, my dad launches into an incredible story about how he started jogging again, and this morning, some idiot with his lights off came zooming into the new intersection without stopping and almost hit him. To this day he doesn’t know my brother and I almost killed him.
A doctor was really mean to me and giving me the side eye because she didn't like it when I asked if it was possible for me not to take meds for her diagnosis until the test results came back. She tried to handle me out of her clinic which took me by surprise and I had to grab my jacket before I was pushed out of the room.
In the madness, my work ID badge fell out of it and she picked it up, then went very pale. She realised I was a senior manager at the same hospital as her.
She was nice as pie afterwards.
In high school my friend had a pen that just wasn't working. It was the four-in-one coloured pen, and none of the colours was working.
He became more and more visibly frustrated, furiously scribbling in his notebook with each colour yielding no results. He got so angry he stood up and threw the pen on the ground with all his might, as everyone was watching.
The pen hit the floor, bounced, did a 360 degree flip and landed PERFECTLY back on his table in its original position.
The class erupted in cheers and laughter, while my friend slumped back down into his seat staring at this cursed pen in disbelief. Definitely one of my favourite memories from high school!
I was raised Catholic but don’t consider myself religious, but I do believe there is a God with an ironic sense of humor. Two incidents… (1) As a teenager, I’d drive past a p*rno store near the mall I’d hang out in. It sat in this giant parking lot and had these long stairs leading up to it. Anytime I’d pass and see a guy walking out, I’d lean on the horn and start shouting “Pervert” to embarrass him. Fast forward, ten years later, I’m living near that store and prepping for a guys weekend up the mountains. I figure it’s be funny to bring an inflatable love doll, so I stop in the store to pick one up. As I’m leaving, some teenager in a car driving by starts blaring his horn and screaming “Pervert!” as I’m walking down the stairs. I just doubled over laughing. (2) After our first born, my wife is diagnosed with a brain tumor. The first neurosurgeon we see says “It might be cancer. I’m gonna need to cut it out and biopsy it” (we eventually saw a neurosurgeon at a large academic hospital who assuaged our fears and confirmed it to be benign - this was over 20 years ago). Anyhow, having been raised Catholic, my first instinct was to pray and I pray “Please let it be me, not her. I can’t lose her.” Six years later, I wake up with the worst headache I ever had, it’s causing me to vomit. Wife takes me to the hospital and I’m diagnosed with…a brain tumor that is now bleeding. They rushed me to the same academic hospital we went to for her and they had to do surgery; I’m now on a ton of meds due to a tumor damaging with my pituitary gland.
I’ll keep it short but:
In my friend group, I’m known as “The Single”, because I have this innate ability to be abso-f*****g-lutely blind and deaf when a girl flirts with me.
So we’re on holiday with the group to France (8 hour drive, nothing too far) and there’s this blond girl from a female group also on holiday there, our groups mix, guys and girls doing what they do, I’m chatting to this girl, and we really get along, we’re flirting and stuff like that.
Then at some point, I hint at that I am probably not a good kisser since I’ve only ever kissed once before. She backs away from me a little and asks:
“Wait, what did you think I was trying to get at?”
I respond:
“I don’t know, I was trying to hint at that we should kiss.” (See why I’m single? It’s because Dutch people are too f*****g honest)
She rolls back her sleeve, exposing a rainbow armband. “I’m lesbian.”
Well great.
Funniest thing here is that I recently moved house, closer to the German border, and I sometimes go to Germany to get my groceries cheaper. I walk up to the register to pay, lo and behold, out from the back-room comes a very familiar blonde…
I have an extremely unusual last name, so rare that we've checked and at the time (about 2000ish), there were only 5 households with that surname and 4 of them were my dads, his brother, his dad, and my brothers households. So we move to a new city and my dad was looking at townhouses and the property manager looks at our last name and goes...hmmm any relation to peter? And he's like nope I don't know any peters, it's just us, my kids/brother and his kids and my dad afaik. First day of school, teacher asks "...any relation to peter?" Nope don't know any peters. A few weeks pass and we've been asked this a million different ways until finally, the people two townhomes over come over to introduce themselves....and they are Peter Sr and Peter Jr (our last name). Absolutely no relation. None. In the entire country of canada, the only other family with our surname that we aren't related to ended up living 2 doors down. Came full circle a few years ago when Peter Jr and I went for drinks at a bar his friend owns. We walked in and he says hey friend! This is Cate- cate (our last name) and then kisses me on the mouth. The look on his friends face before he looked over and said "oh, no relation" was incredible. Nice guy, peter, still chat sometimes.
Well if OP would've married Pete Jr, she wouldn't have to change her driver's license.
My grandparents lived in a flat in London for decades, sold up then migrated to New Zealand. The sale was done through lawyers etc.
A few years later they are having dinner in a Returned Services Association having a chat with some other elderly couples on the same table. Hearing a British accent they enquire where they are from.
London
Where in London?
NW London, but we've only been there a few years.
After a few more rounds, it turned out that they had purchased my grandparents flat through their lawyers and were now visiting their children in NZ.
🎶 It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all, it's a small, small world. 🎶
I'm European-Asian and had exactly one American friend when I was young. Met him online while playing a game and he visited me and everything. Years later I live in Japan and get to know someone else from the US. That someone shows me pics of his childhood and sure enough, my friend is there.
My grandma and grandpa turned out to be from warring families (no joke - 40 people died on both sides). The feud was ongoing from 1870 to like 2003 but none of us knew about it. They got divorced 15 years into their marriage so not too surprising.
When I was 27, my live-in bf of 2 years, whom I think I'm spending the rest of my life with breaks up with me because he doesn't want kids and I do. I'm miserable, really loved the guy, but eventually moved on. Fast forward two, maybe 3 years (it was a long time ago, can't recall the deets) and I see him across the street from where I live (about a half hour away from where we lived before), he is friends with the neighbor it turns out. We get to chatting and next thing I get an email from him, he wants to rekindle our relationship, he misses how great our relationship was, and how it now defines what a good relationships really mean to him. I then find out he accidentally knocked up the next person he dated after me and had a kid! I decline, continue moving on. Fast forward again, marry at 40 and it turns out, I can't have kids. Go figure!
I worked in a bank (many years ago) and we had brand new pop up solid steel security screens that could be activated in the event of a hold-up robbery to barricade the staff safely behind the counter.
We had the company arrive on the first morning after they were installed to show us how to use them, and a co-worker asked what would happen if the robber jumped over the counter and somehow the screens activated trapping them inside with the staff?
' that would never happen because the staff obviously wouldn't activate the screens'
Six hours later an armed robber jumped the counter and pulled cash from the drawer, including the cash under the clip which triggered the screen, trapping him inside.
Edit- He screamed for the screens to be lowered (everyone was on the floor and nobody moved) and then he saw the back door which was supposed to be deadlocked but wasn't.
No shots fired don't even know if it was a real gun.
This was late 1980s
Went to a club in Manhattan to get my dance on, ended up meeting a lovely Belgian guy and we went to his hotel to hook up. Ended up spending the weekend together seeing the sights before I headed home to Brooklyn.
Roughly a week later, I get a call from my mom (who lived and worked out of state) and she is just catching me up. Mentions this nice Belgian executive who has started to work at her office.
I'm sitting there, phone pressed to my ear, wondering . . . what are the odds?
About two days after that, I get a call from my mom asking if there's anything I want to tell her.
Apparently, he came in to her office for a little meeting, to be polite he looked at her pictures and saw ME in one, then mentioned he met a young woman who looked just like the woman in the photo when he first got to the States and how generous I was with my time in showing him around NYC.
That's me, the friendly neighborhood, tour guide.
She still likes to tease me about this - some 25 years later.
Do you think her mom secretly knows that they hooked up Or would it not be out of the ordinary for her daughter to play the role of friendly NYC tour guide? A little more clarity for those like me, would have been nice. Lol
Last month I had three dead trees taken down from my yard so they wouldn’t f**k my house up by falling on it if a winter storm hit. A winter storm hit yesterday and the winds straight up blew the alive-and-now-no-longer-well 100-foot-plus Doug Fir right over out of the ground and across the middle of my house.
Taking the other trees down loosened up the root structure underground... Bummer.
Husband's mum got knocked up by her affair partner and made him. Her husband (his "dad") wasn't super enamoured of this little blonde kid who looked nothing like him. The relationship ended when hubby was six, dad f****d off, made minimal contact, then eventually died ten years ago.
Hubby did 23andme a year ago so he could have some proof in hand when reaching out to AP in the hopes of getting to know his real dad. Turns out his mother's husband was his real dad all along. We did not see that coming. Sweetie looks NOTHING like his five older siblings. At least they were finally willing to add him to the sibling group chat they had going for years and left him out of due to his supposed status as a love child. 😅
My husband and I met when we were in high school. We've known each other for 24 years, been together for 19 years, married for over 10. A few years ago, we were chatting with my parents about an after school care program I was in when I was 6 years old. Turns out, my husband was in the same program and possibly in the same classroom as me. We went to different elementary schools and lived in different neighborhoods, and we live in a densely populated area, so this is a fairly unlikely coincidence that we would later end up friends and eventually get married. For 20ish years, we had no idea that we may well have been playmates when we were 6 years old.
I’m good friends with a couple, and while I met them while we all lived on the west cost, the husband grew up in my midwestern town, is my age, and we’ve learned that we’ve shared space when we were younger without knowing it.
His parents - also from and still living in the same midwestern town - came over to my house one year for Thanksgiving. I posted pics on Facebook. My sister messages me and asks why Dr. Friendsdad is having dinner at my house. Evidently, the dad was both my nephew’s child psychologist when he was a kid (he’s an adult now), and my niece’s current psychologist (she’s still a kid - 15 year age difference). It’s like our families are meant to be together!
About two decades ago, I started online dating. I was getting all of the same matches that I could get for myself in my small town, so I expanded my search radius.
I got matched with a woman living in a major metropolitan area six hours away. She'd been born and raised there.
We started long-distance dating, and things took off. We got serious, and had to go through the "meet the parents" phase.
I met her Mom first, and learned that her Mom's family was from the same backwater town as my family. Questions were asked about the possibility of relation, but I know my family pretty well, and was sure it wasn't an issue.
Then my girlfriend met my family, including my grandmother, who offhandedly pointed out that we had some kin with my girlfriend's last name, somewhere back in the woodpile.
Several little old ladies were immediately consulted, and ancient family documents were referenced. After several days of consultation, both families agreed that we were of no relation to each other, but that our families had absolutely shared stomping ground not more than a couple of generations ago.
I've been married to that woman for almost 20 years, and we live happily in the major metro in which she was born, but the fact that we both came through the same dirtball, not-on-all-the-maps little town seems almost unbelievable.
Sort of similar thing in my family. My parents are from two regions that, before 1918 used to be different countries. The village my mom's family is originally from was founded in 1860 by immigrants from the village my dad's family is from - of course, that also means no direct link, just a funny coincidence.
I live in Blantyre Scotland. I was in a hotel in Canary Wharf and asked a random guy who was sitting next to a plug socket if he could watch my phone whilst it charged.
Stayed in eyeshot of him and an hour later I went to retrieve my phone.
Asked him where he was from and he replied “London born and bred” he asked where I was from
Me : just outside Glasgow
Him : my daughter lives just outside Glasgow, in a town called Blantyre
Me : 😳 where in Blantyre
Him: a new estate next to the motorway
Me: holy f**k please describe this estate?
Him: it’s got a big pylon in the middle of it.
Meet a random guy in london and it turns out his daughter stays across the f****n road from me 😂😂😂😂
A friend from 60ish miles away was talking about how his family had a homestead like 100 years ago, and how he wished he knew where it was. Upon researching, turns out it was in our pasture.
Went on a date with this guy. Went well. Next morning we got breakfast in this cute little café near my uni with outdoor seating. While we were sat outside eating he recognises his aunt walking by and says hi.
His aunt was my lecturer. She was not happy to catch us in what was clearly the morning after.
I felt too uncomfortable dating a guy who referred to my lecturer as 'auntie' so I ended it.
Few guys later I meet this new guy. We like each other, we go on a few dates, he decides to take me to a family function.
One of his uncles was *also* my lecturer.
And this is what happens when you pick a uni that gives fee waivers to relatives of staff.
Went to an out-of-state friend's wedding and was sat at the same table as this woman who was a friend of the couple as well. I normally don't mingle much with other wedding guests if I dont already know them, but we got to talking a bit. It was fun but pretty superficial so nothing happened and I returned back to my normal life. Fast forward like 2 years later and I moved to another state for work. Randomly, I get a call from a different friend saying one of their friends was moving to my new town and was hoping I could show them around. I say sure and he gives me her number. We then arrange to meet up at this local bar. When I get there, I see some of my coworkers unexpectedly sitting at a table and with them is that same woman I met at my friend's out-of-state wedding!
Like what the heck are the odds that I meet a person in a random state that neither of us live in at a mutual friend's wedding, then meet again in yet another different state thanks to a random friend that wasn't connected in any way to the original friend who had invited us to their wedding?!
But was there a whirlwind romance leading to a blissful lengthy marriage?
I ran into a old friend at a music festival and he asked if I knew of a bluegrass band he could hire to play at a private event. I told him no. Later that day I was jamming with some people and ended up agreeing to fill in on a couple of gigs. A couple of weeks after telling the guy I didn't know any bands, I show up at his event as the bass player in the band he hired. I didn't put the two things together till I asked where to set up. This wasn't a small community, it was at a hotel party room in Nashville and I live 80 miles away. Also, I didn't know who the banjo player was till I got there. It was my sister's ex fiance who I hadn't seen in 15 years but he had been to my house, kids bday parties etc.
My friend in high school on the East Coast : "My brother is a beach bum in California."
Ten years later, in California, I realized my new boss was the former beach bum.
A friend and I were finishing out a week long vacation at an amusement park. We were kind of stressing because we needed to take two buses to get back to the airport to fly home, but on the way there we’d had major trouble with the bus line. Our last day at the park, my sister texted me and asked if we’d run into our uncle there. She saw our cousin posting pictures on Snapchat from the same theme park. Shortly after we did run into my uncle and got to talking, and it turned out they had road tripped down and were driving the next day to the city our flight was out of. So instead of dealing with the buses we just hitched a ride with them and made our flight just fine. And like, to be clear this was a pretty random theme park not anywhere near where we’re from. The odds of us being there at the same time and also heading to the city the airport was in on the same day must have been insanely low, but I’m glad they worked out.
About 12 or 13 years ago I was in Lodi Ohio training for a general manager position with a truck stop chain. I had to work the register for my first day. All the drivers knew this is where they trained their managers, first guy I rig up asks where I’ll be and I tell him the town in New Jersey, he tells me he grew up up in southern New Jersey, turned out he went to my high school and graduated and played soccer with my brother.
I was stranded in the mountains out in the middle of nowhere. Wound up hitchhiking my way out. Got to chattin with the driver and his gf. Turns out the gf was a friend and coworker of my (now ex) gf. Very weird. Especially considering how removed we were at that moment from the rest of society.
I was on a little local train in Asia, young student sitting opposite kept striking up conversation. From what he said, he was British and had lived in some random places. I'm in an industry that might lead you to live in those particular places, so started thinking what Brits I knew who might have 20 year old kids. Kid nearly fell off the seat when I asked if his surname was XYZ .
I was convinced a guy at work was gay. I think I have pretty good “gaydar” and several gay male friends. I befriended him and became very chummy and flirty with him. Calling him handsome and stuff like that. We were good work buddies. He asked if I wanted to go to dinner and I said of course. Then the day before the date something told me I should probably confirm that he was gay. I asked a coworker. He was not gay.
I kept on dodging this phone call because I thought a former client was suing me* and I thought this caller was a process server. Figured eventually, I had to pick up because you can't dodge them forever. Nope, it was a guy asking me out (I didn't know his last name, and it turns out it was the same name as an infamous process server in town). We've been married almost 13 years.
*She was angry that I couldn't hep her take inheritance money from a baby and that I was collegial with opposing counsel.
Thought I accidentally sent a text complaining about my boss to my boss. Turns out, it was actually my friend with the same name. Lesson learned: always double-check the contact before venting!
The girl every boy has a crush on in high school, who was pretty, smart, sweet and athletic, came out as a lesbian junior year of college.
Hopefully still “pretty, smart, sweet and athletic” 😉
My college boyfriend told me someone absolutely destroyed the men's restroom and was disgusted by it. Like 5 years later I casually found out it had been one of my best friends while he was telling the story about the time he got really sick in the dorms. I felt like everything in the universe had come together nicely at that moment lol.
My husband had the most psychotic teacher who would rag on students for their disabilities being a “disgrace to the university” and was only there because tenure.
Anyway a year later we adopted a kitty and guess who our shelter volunteer was? Plot twist, she was nicer and only barely remembered my husband and just said toward the end “that was a crazy year wasn’t it”.
Yes Ma’am, that sure was a crazy year.
She works at an animal shelter but rags on people with disabilities? The cognitive dissonance must hurt. And no, she is not nice.
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Went on holiday with my family (from Manchester, England) to a small town in southern France, Castillonnés, when I was 7. Met a 7 year old French boy when we were there, Arneux, I spoke little French, he spoke little English. We played tennis, football, swam in the pool, climbed trees, hid in the woods, spent two weeks not caring that we didn’t share a common language apart from being children who enjoyed playing. It was a wonderful time. Roll on nearly 30 years, I’m driving an HGV around Europe delivering components and tech for mobile phone sites and meeting engineers of all nationalities, my French was considerably better by 36! Happened to be back in Castillonnés to deliver kit, thought to myself ‘I wonder if Arneux still lives here?’, met an engineer on site, had a stilted conversation in a mixture of French and English. Guess who the engineer was……not Arneux, just a French engineer. No idea where Arneux is now.
Someone I know went on a day trip to the rocky falls with her elderly parents. She was stupidly climbing across a rock ledge. When she got to the other side her dad stood up to help her down. But she slipped and fell 80ft into a whirlpool on the top of the falls which pushed her over the edge. Her mum was terrified and thought her daughter was dead. She heard a shout and looked over to her husband who had just had a heart attack as a result if the shock I'd assume and nearly gone over himself until someone grabbed him and lay him on the floor. The woman was crying because she assumed that both her husband and daughter were dead. When she looked up again a woman was standing next to her husband. The woman said she was a doctor who specialised in heart attacks and her friend specialised in drowning incidents and was trying to recover the daughter. The third friend in the group was a long distance runner and had gone for help. I find it amazing and wouldn't believe it if I didn't know her
I forgot to add that both the daughter and father lived though the father did die a couple years later and the daughter had life changing injuries.
Load More Replies...
When I was 10, my family lived in an Arab country. I had a friend there, she was a princess of some kind. We had lunch together, at my house with PB& J's, at her house with a full nine course meal, goat and lamb and all the stuff. She helped mom and I clean up our kitchen that day, she had servants clearing the table at her place. YEARS later I'm working on a golf course and one chilly morning the couple who live by one of the greens I was mowing, brought me a cup of hot chocolate and told me they had just been to a wedding in London. So I asked the usual questions, who and all that and they described a young Arab princess who told them about an American friend she had as a child. That she had had peanut butter sandwiches and helped the mom clean up, some thing she had never done before or since. I guessed the name of the princess and we could not believe the coincidence.
Went on holiday with my family (from Manchester, England) to a small town in southern France, Castillonnés, when I was 7. Met a 7 year old French boy when we were there, Arneux, I spoke little French, he spoke little English. We played tennis, football, swam in the pool, climbed trees, hid in the woods, spent two weeks not caring that we didn’t share a common language apart from being children who enjoyed playing. It was a wonderful time. Roll on nearly 30 years, I’m driving an HGV around Europe delivering components and tech for mobile phone sites and meeting engineers of all nationalities, my French was considerably better by 36! Happened to be back in Castillonnés to deliver kit, thought to myself ‘I wonder if Arneux still lives here?’, met an engineer on site, had a stilted conversation in a mixture of French and English. Guess who the engineer was……not Arneux, just a French engineer. No idea where Arneux is now.
Someone I know went on a day trip to the rocky falls with her elderly parents. She was stupidly climbing across a rock ledge. When she got to the other side her dad stood up to help her down. But she slipped and fell 80ft into a whirlpool on the top of the falls which pushed her over the edge. Her mum was terrified and thought her daughter was dead. She heard a shout and looked over to her husband who had just had a heart attack as a result if the shock I'd assume and nearly gone over himself until someone grabbed him and lay him on the floor. The woman was crying because she assumed that both her husband and daughter were dead. When she looked up again a woman was standing next to her husband. The woman said she was a doctor who specialised in heart attacks and her friend specialised in drowning incidents and was trying to recover the daughter. The third friend in the group was a long distance runner and had gone for help. I find it amazing and wouldn't believe it if I didn't know her
I forgot to add that both the daughter and father lived though the father did die a couple years later and the daughter had life changing injuries.
Load More Replies... When I was 10, my family lived in an Arab country. I had a friend there, she was a princess of some kind. We had lunch together, at my house with PB& J's, at her house with a full nine course meal, goat and lamb and all the stuff. She helped mom and I clean up our kitchen that day, she had servants clearing the table at her place. YEARS later I'm working on a golf course and one chilly morning the couple who live by one of the greens I was mowing, brought me a cup of hot chocolate and told me they had just been to a wedding in London. So I asked the usual questions, who and all that and they described a young Arab princess who told them about an American friend she had as a child. That she had had peanut butter sandwiches and helped the mom clean up, some thing she had never done before or since. I guessed the name of the princess and we could not believe the coincidence.
