Whenever I fall a little too deep into a true crime rabbit hole my partner likes to remind me that things like that “hardly ever happen, statistically.”
Which is true, but listen…they do happen to someone.
These people are those someones (though not necessarily with crime), and they’re here to tell you what happened.
And it was white to boot!
After losing an AirPod while skiing I was able to find it the next run.
It’s like a novel.
When I was a teenager I picked up a hitchhiker and then a few years later the same guy picked me up when I was walking after I ran out of gas.
Never saw him before or after those two occasions.
Wrong chick.
I was almost murd**ed in a case of mistaken identity.
A guy came chasing after my car on the highway, waving his gun out the window. He eventually got in front of me, blocking my car, and stopped his car and got out.
He came right up to my Window, pointed the gun right at my head, looked me in the eyes and said “Sorry. Wrong chick”, then got back in his car and drove away.
I still have no idea who he was or who the “right chick” was.
A double (quadruple?) glitch.
My friend had two sets of monochorionic-monoamniotic twins–the rarest kind of twins–in back-to-back pregnancies.
Identical twins that share the same amniotic sac and same placenta.
“Mono-Mono” or “MoMo” twins happen in about 1% of identical twin pregnancies, and less than 0.1% of all pregnancies.
His own lawyer.
Lost my house in civil court.
Represented myself and won in appeals court twice.
Since my case was unique in this state, my cases were published both times.
Moving back into my old house soon.
Sometimes they’re wrong.
First got cancer in 1993.
In 2003, they told me to get my affairs in order, I had 6 months.
In 2021, they told me it’s spread to my bones and lungs. They gave me 5 years.
In 2023, two years down and feeling about 90%.
The sweetest thing.
Not an exciting life or de**h incident, but something rather sweet:
I took care of my late father for the final two years of his life. He had Alzheimer’s and pulmonary fibrosis, among other issues, so we had a lot more bad days than good. In the summer of 2019, I took my dad out for a “date” one day to a historic old drugstore that has phenomenal milkshakes (one of his favorite foods in the world). It was one of Dad’s increasingly rare good days, where he chatted merrily with me about all sorts of old memories. I felt like I had my dad’s former self back for just a little while. We had such a wonderful time that I intended to take him there again soon. However, this ended up being our last “date.”
For most of the remainder of that year, Dad declined too much (mentally and physically) for me to take him out for anything other than very short grocery trips or to appointments. The following year . . . enter the pandemic. It was a very, very rough year with Dad. In January of 2021, my father died, alone, in a hospital in another state (our state ran out of hospital beds and he had suffered a traumatic fall that required hospitalization). That day in 2019 ended up being the last truly happy day I had with my Dad and the last fun outing he ever got to experience.
Three months after my dad died, I met a wonderful man online. (Nine days after signing up for a one year membership, because “surely it’s going to take time to find someone truly compatible with a shy nerd like me!”) A few months later, we decided to try a first date. He lived three hours away, but wanted me to be comfortable, so he volunteered to drive to my town for the date. He looked online for an appealing restaurant to suggest, and excitedly told me about this really neat historic drugstore we could go to. . . .
We went on a very crowded day (local festival — oops) and had to wait quite a while for a table. The waitress sat us at the EXACT same table where I sat with my dad nearly two years earlier! I was even in the same seat.
Three months later, we got engaged at that drugstore.
So the beginning of the end of one chapter of my life crossed paths with the beginning of the best (so far) chapters. My husband and I have since decided to make a trip back there at least once a year. Dad really would have loved my husband.
To say the least.
Got attacked by a robin in the morning, then attacked by a hawk 3 hours later.
Weird day.
Nigh impossible.
Not me, but a friend.
He was a merchant mariner. Lived here in Virginia Beach. He was always calling and texting, posting pics from around the world.
One time he’d been out a while, we knew he was heading to Dubai, but didn’t know where he’d be after that. 4 months go by, nobody’s heard from him.
His neighbor, who I was friends with, gets married and goes to Thailand for his honeymoon. He texts me one day and said you aren’t gonna believe this shit.
He said he asked a local where a good local spot to eat was that tourists wouldn’t be at. Guy takes him 30 minutes from the beach, to some dive bar/restaurant with no sign, no clearly marked entrance, he said it looked so shady he was afraid he was about to be robbed and killed. He goes in, and it’s a legitimate restaurant. He eats, drinks some beers, goes to the bathroom. Out walks my friend, so he took a pic and sent it to me to confirm he’s ok.
Imagine taking a flight several thousands of miles away, getting away from the tourist areas and going into a local dive bar, and running into your f**king next door neighbor you haven’t seen in months.
It can be done.
I got a degree after aging out of foster care.
You’d never believe it.
I received my heart transplant after being on the list for only 7 hours.
At least things (probably) won’t get worse.
Many years ago I had a terrible day where my then GF broke up with me, then I did terribly in a final exam for a college class, then I lost my wallet, and finally, as I was doing the Charlie Brown sad walk back home some random branch broke off a tree as I was walking on the sidewalk underneath it and the damn thing fell on top of me and hit me square across the shoulder and knocked me to the ground.
I just burst out laughing because it was so ridiculous.
Not superhuman strength.
Riding my bicycle on a commercial fishing pier as a kid I lost control and rode off the edge with a 20′ drop to exposed rocks at low tide.
I tried to stop myself going over by planting my feet on the edge of the pier, but I knew my bike was too heavy.
Somehow the bike stopped, halfway over at a 45 degree angle. However now the seat was in the small of my back preventing me from getting off, and I couldn’t budge it at all to get the bike back up.
A fisherman finally ran over to help me and we decided he would pull me as hard as he could and I’d let the bike fall.
I jumped to the side as he pulled me back to the pier, and it worked.
However.
My bike was still there, not moving at all.
When I examined what had happened, there was a piece of rebar sticking out from the edge of the pier bent upwards in an L shape, and it passed diagonally through the spokes of my front tire and completely wedged my bike in place.
It was the ONLY spot on the 300′ long pier with ANYTHING sticking out.
I most certainly did not stop myself and my bike from going over.
Definitely unlucky.
I underwent a surgical procedure called a stapedectomy to improve the significant hearing loss in my GOOD ear. Instead, I ended up completely deaf.
My surgical ENT said this has only happened to 5 patients IN THE US. (He was doing research to try to help me afterwards.) I don’t know how true it is, but hey, lucky me.
The grand prize.
I saw an ad on a Pepsi case at a grocery store for a text to win contest to see Beyoncé in concert. I figured why not, and sent a text and was entered.
A few weeks later I got a text back from the same number that told me I won the grand prize! I ended up winning 2 tickets to Beyoncé’s Mrs Carter World Tour in Brooklyn and $500 on a Visa gift card. Used the $500 for some bus tickets and a hotel down the street from Barclays.
The seats were awesome and it is something I’ll never forget!
Waiting just for her.
Husband and I visited our old hometown and went to a used book store we used to frequent.
I picked up a familiar title in nostalgia and flipped it open to find a school student’s ID card.
The name and photo on the ID?
My husband.
Turns out his mom had donated books to that store many years before we all moved away from that area. He must have been using it as a bookmark and forgotten.
It’s not so surprising considering we used to live in that area, but the ID was nearly 10 years old by the time we found it.
That book was sitting on the shelf for nearly a decade untouched, waiting for me to come along and pick it up. Bizarre.
This made me laugh.
I was on a road trip with my cousins in the 80s.
One of them kept playing the same song over and over by rewinding the tape and playing it again.
The song was “another one bites the dust”.
After three plays in a row the driver pulls out the tape, says enough!
And turned on the radio… sure enough that song was playing on the radio right then.
I don’t think most of us want to be the statistical anomaly.
Unless we’re talking about the lottery.