What Are the Odds of My Movie Marathon Coincidence?

[Ivan Seeking]

Not the "most amazing" by any means. The odds are 1:365, or 366 on leap year. But it got my attention.

About a week ago, on May 5th, I was looking for something and opened a small box that I hadn't open in years. Inside the box, on the very top, was a note from a man who had been my dearest friend for almost thirty years. He passed away a few years ago. I don't know why it was even in the box. It was a note indicating where he'd be staying when he came up to visit, about fifteen years ago. As I read it, I remembered that it was May 5th - his birthday.

 

[Mk]

Yesterday I was listening to Michael Savage on the radio (he was REALLY making a fool of himself that day).

He was speaking the phrase "lone ranger." I peered through the windshield as a car passed me in the left lane. The license plate read: LONE RANGER

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Yesterday I was listening to Michael Savage on the radio

Why?

 

[EnumaElish]

As my mind was "deciding" on posting this, my fingers were starting to type on the keyboard. Not only that, they spelled out pretty much the identical phrase that I was thinking about posting! "Man," what are the odds? (This has been happening to me at a spooking frequency, almost as far back as I can remember.)

 

[JeffJo]

When I saw this thread, I had to reply with my mind-boggling coincidence. It takes some setup because it is multi-leveled. It involves two friends, both named Mark C.

Although we met elsewhere as adults, Mark #1 grew up in a small town (near where I did) in Indiana, called Gas City. According to Wikipedia, it has a population of about 6,000 and "was first known as Harrisburg and ... became something of a boom town when natural gas was found in the area in 1887. The Gas City Land Company was founded on March 21, 1892 and the town of about 150 people changed its name to Gas City a few days later."

Mark #1 introduced me to model railroading in the NTRAK system. You build one or more 2'x4' modules, and can connect them via defined standards with other modules anywhere in the world, especially Europe. We also participated in another (unnamed for privacy) activity, where he was instrumental in leading me to become involved in a mailing list of experts from around the world. That's where I met Mark #2, who was a student at a college in England. Which is about all I knew about him.

One day I had two search tasks to perform on the internet. The first to find some information about the unnamed activity for Mark #1. While searching, I ran across Mark #2's home address. It was in a place called Huddersfield, which meant nothing to me. The second task was to look up information on the NTRAK system (so it was also related to Mark #1, in a way) to present to my son's Boy Scout troop. That went quicker than I expected, so I had some time left. I clicked on the "layouts" tab, and the very first one was from England. It was a mock up of the train yard, at Huddersfield.

I picked my jaw up of the floor. I now had to find out what a "Huddersfield" was, so I looked it up as well. It's a large town (about 150,000) near the center of England. But it is apparently overshadowed in fame by three much larger cities nearby: Manchester, Sheffield, and Leeds. I would likely have forgotten all this except for what happened when I described all that to Mark #2. He also explained that Huddersfield deserved more fame than it has, but unfortunately was not considered a "city" because historically, it never had a city wall. He knew such conventions didn't apply in the states, because on a trip he had once driven by a collection of 14 houses on the side of the road that had the audacity to call itself Gas City, Indiana.

Thus completing the circle. Mark #1 unknowingly led me to Mark #2's home town, and Mark #2 unknowingly led me to back to Mark #1's.

 

[CDTOE]

An old, but interesting topic. I had a lot of such experiences in my life that I'm still not sure if they can be attributed to coincidence.

The latest experience was a year ago. On an empty weekend, I decided to watch three movies, which are Wolf Creek, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Joy Ride. In the next weekend, I turned on the TV on a free movie channel, one of the few and the most famous one in my area, and surprisingly I found them showing Joy Ride with an announcement that they will show Wolf Creek and Texas Chainsaw Massacre next. I asked myself, how could that be a coincidence?