A good friend of mine had a crisis today. She inadvertently dialed a very out-of-date phone number. It had — a long, long time ago (more than 25 years) — had been Garry and my number. Back when we lived in Boston. I think before we were even yet married.
When she called the number, she got (on that number) a high school boyfriend from whom she had not heard since high school.
How do those ancient phone numbers somehow creep back into our files? It was originally a secondary phone number belonging to Garry, back when he had two phones — one for the office and the other for personal friends. Before cell phones. Before even the giant old brick of a cell phone.
She was convinced there was some cabal behind it. How could that ancient boyfriend from high school somehow wind up with her college best friends’ out-of-date telephone number? There had to be collusion of the most heinous kind.
Maybe it’s the times we live in. Or maybe the problem is that we read too many books and watch too much television and old movies where “there’s no such thing as a coincidence.”
Except, really, there is. Not just one, but many coincidences. Reality is full of things that just happen. Entirely by chance. No collusion or planning.
It took a delightful hour of chatting for me to almost convince her there was no cabal or conspiracy — and the Russians had nothing to do with it. It was just “one of those things.” Stuff happens. For no reason.
I don’t think she really believed me.
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Categories: #Photography, Friendship
ANOTHER DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD 
THE CHANGING SEASONS – JULY 2023 
A PHOTOGRAPHICALLY FREE CHOICE 
A LOST & FOUND WEEKEND 
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
I have several Coincidence Theories. I know you can’t wait to hear them. My favorite (Movie worthy) is that we are linked inwardly – though we don’t know it. I’ll try to mesh this together with my Sub Space Anomaly and Time Travel theories … hmmm …
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I’m pretty sure the last three books I read did that. Sometimes more successfully than others. Occasionally, though, a coincidence IS just a coincidence.
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Years ago I met someone new in town and we became friendly and exchanged phone numbers. Much to my surprise her phone number was my childhood home phone number (I am still living in the town I grew up in) It had been about 10 years since my mother had moved and the phone # was out of use. There is was again, back in use – crazy that someone I actually knew had that number!!
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And yet, it has apparently happened many times. So either is’s some kind of karmic link — or just that number came up when your friend was looking for a number. Take your pick 🙂
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Karma- she was assigned that number, and then we met and became friends- I think we were supposed to meet and become friends… that’s the karma part 🙂 We are still friends now 23 years later
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Well, if not a clue than it was at least sort of Karmic 😀
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It is as if we’ve stepped back in time to a horrible era in time, instead of the enlightenment we all sought so hard to achieve. As for coincidence, there are several. It happens!
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Not an admirable time for we humans.
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No, unfortunately not!
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Life in 2018 is a vast series of small miracles (which is what some call coincidence). I was thinking that as I microwaved some food….what would my grandmother have thought of microwaves? Something that only happened in science fiction novels I bet. The minute cell phone, which one can now wear on their wrist? Surely Star Trek, although I believe Star Trek came along after granny died. I don’t think grandma would have been greatly surprised at the political climate though…it’s much the same as in her day – sans the intelligence factor.
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It’s that the political climate has a strong rhyming factor to 1929-1931 Nazi Germany. I think my mother would have found it entirely familiar enough. I’m glad she is gone. She would hate this world.
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Wm S Burroughs said there is no such thing as coincidence. I am not sure but I have decided not to make more of things than I find on the surface. 🙂 Still, that’s really weird.
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It’s like when I got a new phone number in San Diego and I wanted it to spell a certain word. Then I called my brother who was living at my mom’s house, using her phone (she was dead) and damn. That was HER number.
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There’s a whole lotta synchronicity going around.
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Did you ever read any of the books by Jasper Ffjord? He’d got “real” characters who cross over into the “book world” which is his version of “outer space” and one of the things he warns his “book operatives” (as opposed to the “human operatives”) is that in the human world, there are coincidences. Don’t get tangled up in them or we’ll have to send you to the lethal land of conspiracy theory where ANYTHING could happen.
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There are an infinite number of things going on in the world every day, so even things that have a one in a billion chance are going to happen somewhere to someone, and eventually to you. We wound up getting a new member placed on our bowling team this year to fill a vacancy we had, and come to find out she grew up in the house I live in now (which is only 45 years old). Out of the thousands and thousands of houses in this area. Weird coincidences will find us all the time…
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I know. It’s just that we live in a time of cabal and conspiracy, so it has to be … THE RUSSIANS! Or Trump.
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Kind of freaky if you ask me. Same for the situation that happened to Ben…..
Leslie
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Freaky, but not meaningful. There is a difference. I met a woman in town who had a really hot relationship with someone who turned out to be my cousin. Second cousin, once removed. It was weird … but it wasn’t meaningful. Just weird.
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Makes for a good story.
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There are tons of coincidences in life. Only on NCIS or Law & Order do they “mean something.” The rest of the time, they just make good dinner-table conversation.
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I ran into someone I was related too about four generations back. He reminded me of my brother.
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Garry met a lady I was teaching with who was a dead-ringer for his cousin. They were sure they were related, but couldn’t figure out how. Faces sometimes carry on when we’ve lost all the other links.
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It was the strangest thing when this fellow brought out his family history and my father’s name was there.
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I had a funny experience when I moved to Salt Lake City UT, back in ’89-’90, to take a new job. A friend of mine had arranged a new apartment and phone line for me so all I had to do was move in. On the very first night.., the first freakin’ night, I get a call on my new phone. Now bear in mind, I hadn’t even given it out to anyone yet. So I answer and a voice says “Hi Ben, are we still on for the church(Mormon) singles dance tonight.” HUH!? Singles dance? Then it hit me she called me by my name, Ben. I say “Who are you, this is a new phone and, Yes, my name is Ben but I don’t know anything about a “singles dance,” or you, for that matter?” There was a silence on the other end and finally, she said, “well, would you like to go anyway?”
That was my first date in SLC.
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Synchronicity.
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I want to hear about their conversation! I, too, see it as synchronicity.
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She did NOT relate the details. I will have to call her back and ask for more specifics. But we had a great conversation, so maybe the point of the thing was for she and I to really talk. We get old and we forget to call each other.
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My Boston phone history is “interesting”.
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Oh, my — that really is a coincidence — or synchronicity!
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There was simply no way it could have been anything BUT coincidence. We haven’t had that number since we moved to Roxbury in 1990. So anyone could have it now … but it is kind of odd that it ended up as belonging a boyfriend from high school. Synchronicity.
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Y’now what Leroy Jethro says about “coincidences”.
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