489: No Coincidence, No Story!

This is Hannah. Oh, hi, Hannah. This is Sarah from This American Life. Hi, how are you? I'm good, thank you. How are you? Good. Before we go any further, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Sarah Koenig, sitting in for Ira Glass. And you're about to hear this story the same way I did, blind. All I know is that it's going to have a coincidence in it. I have no idea what you're about to tell me, so lay it on me. So, the story is, I was a freshman in high school at Bozeman High School. Oh, in Montana. Yes, and I was in the orchestra. And it was early in my freshman year, and I had made friends in high school, but didn't really have orchestra friends yet. And we were taking an orchestra trip, so that was a little nerve-wracking. When you're a freshman, this qualifies as a demi-crisis. A long bus ride to Seattle, sharing a hotel room with someone you don't know. But there's this one girl, Lindsay. She and Hannah have friends in common. So they decide to pair up, to room together, ride the bus together, to be orchestra friends. So, we go to Seattle, and we're like, it's awkward, you know, because we're like new friends trying to get to know each other. Right. And on one of our free days, they send us to the Space Needle. And I don't know if you've ever been to the Space Needle. I have. There's that, like, carnival area all around it. Uh-huh. We were playing the little games all around there, and we won Poopa Troopers. Do you know what those are? No. Okay. They're like the little plastic soldiers that have a plastic parachute. And you're supposed to drop them from somewhere, and the plastic parachute sort of expands. Oh, what did you call them? Poopa Troopers. Really? I didn't quite believe Hannah about this, but she looked it up. It's true. Poopa Troopers. I just did a Google image search for Poopa Troopers, and I'm seeing images of the little guys. But wait, is it a generic name, or is it a brand name? I think it's a brand name. I think from what I'm seeing here, Imperial Poopa Troopers, maybe? His Highness, four-star general Poopa Trooper? Yes. Exactly. Back to the plot here. Hannah and her new friend Lindsay go to the top of the Seattle Space Needle to try out their prizes. So we got in the little elevator. We got in the little elevator and ran to the top and ran to the edge and threw the Poopa Troopers over the edge because there's nothing to stop you, really. And we were just, like, in peals of laughter, and we thought it was so hilarious, and it sort of broke the ice in our friendship. Lindsay and Hannah become best friends all through high school. Cut to senior year. Four years later, another orchestra trip, this time to Reno, Nevada. Hannah and Lindsay are in their hotel room, studying. And so Lindsay and I are both sitting at the desk, in this hotel room in Reno, Nevada, and a Poopa Trooper comes flying out of the sky and lands on the windowsill of our hotel room. And we both, like, we couldn't believe it. We opened the window and we grabbed the Poopa Trooper and we ran into the hall to try to, like, find other people in our orchestra like we thought someone had been playing a trick on us. But no one knew what we were talking about. No one even remembered the thing in Seattle. And so I. I still, to this day, don't know why that happened. Every once in a while, we get pitches like this at the radio show. Coincidence stories. And since they don't really fit into our usual every-week-we-bring-you-a-theme format, we've been setting them aside, wondering what to do with them. They mean so much to people. I don't know. It felt like it was about our friendship. You know, it was just. It felt. You know, I'm not someone that believes in God, really, but it felt a little bit like an act of God or something, like, just sort of cosmic and larger than us. Finally, it hit us. If we got enough of them, we could put them on the radio as their own thing. So we put out a call to listeners. Send us your coincidence stories. And you did. Hundreds and hundreds of you did. We've read at least 1,300 coincidence stories, interviewed dozens of people. Here are just a few things we've learned. You're most prone to coincidences when you're young, teens or 20s. Lots of coincidences involve your grandmother. You're likely to experience a coincidence if you're in or near the Netherlands. Coincidences also happen to you in or near airplanes or on Craigslist. For many of you, coincidences were the answer to your prayers or helped you find your missing bike. Also, there are coincidences hidden in your name, your keys, your clothes, your address. Like when Flora and Regassiana Peña first started dating. When we met, he said that he was born in Salmonella. And I said, well, I was too. And then when we were going to get married and we needed our birth certificates, we compared them and it was the same building. We heard stories about a lost roll of film discovered, coincidentally, in the stomach of a decomposing hyena. About the man who got his favorite T-shirt back from a stranger's knapsack. In Slovakia. About the woman who was dating not one, but two Mark Stephen Andersons at the same time. About the student whose car broke down in rush hour on a busy highway and the one person who just happens to stop who comes to her rescue. It's her dad, who lives four hours away. And one of my favorites, from a woman named Jill Peterson who felt nauseated on the subway in New York City. As they pull into the 2nd Avenue stop, there's a garbage can perfectly positioned to help her out. The train door's open and I'm beelining it for this can. And as I get there, out of the corner of my eye, I kind of see, like, another person heading my direction, kind of like going for the can, too. And, you know, it's all coming up and I'm throwing up and as I'm throwing up in this can, this person that's coming towards me starts throwing up in the can, too, and we're both, like, simultaneously barfing into this can into the subway station. And we kind of look at it at each other, like, whoa, I don't know, what, how are you feeling? And she's like, oh, I'm feeling a little bit better now. I'm like, me, too. What's the only way to survive throwing up in front of a subway car full of strangers? Have a nice girl your age do it with you. And numbers, so many coincidences with numbers. One woman told us how she was at Thanksgiving with her extended family, and I suddenly realized that six of them had the exact same number of letters in their names. 23 letters. Michael Arthur Vandeputty. Mary Elizabeth Vandeputty. William Arthur Vandeputty. There was a guy at the mall doing surveys who had to ask people their phone number. It's obvious the guy he's surveying starts to make up a number. He says, 933-456. When he read out that last number, he said, eight? And I kind of stepped back for a second, but I was cool, and I said, no, sir, I'm sorry, that's not your phone number. And he said, well, why isn't that my phone number? And I said, because that's my phone number. That's my phone number. The phone number that you just made up is actually my phone number. These stories reminded me of an old Chinese saying I once heard. Actually, I learned it a couple weeks ago, and I have no idea how old it is. But it goes like this. That's my friend, Yuan Yuan Di. And what does it mean? If there's no coincidence, there won't be stories. No coincidence, no story. To imply that, of course, lives are all, I don't know, developed in the ways that we can't predict. So is it like if you heard a story with a coincidence, afterwards you might be like, no coincidence, no story, like that? That's right, yes. Just expression, you use the two quotes. Is it like a corny thing to say? Mostly, I think, no, it won't be a corny thing to say. Do you ever use it? When I'm corny, yes. At the risk of being corny, I'm going to say it. Today's show, no coincidence, no story. While the big man's away, we're going to sneak these coincidence stories onto the air. All the stories you'll hear today first aired on our show in 2013. And they're all verified true stories that my colleagues hid from me until the actual interviews. So it wouldn't spoil the surprise. Which is also why there is so much unprofessional giggling this hour. And full disclosure, I came into this topic a coincidence skeptic. Believing that a coincidence is just a coincidence. Nothing more. I judged, I confronted weakness, I countered wide-eyed faith with statistical probability. And by the end, well, stay with us. It's This American Life. Act One, Grandmas. Blake Oliver is living in Nicaragua right now. We talked on Skype. About four months ago, he was on the phone to his friend Camille, who goes by Cammie. He mentioned to her that the screensaver on his iPhone had been the same picture for a long time, that he wanted to change it. So I asked her to just send me a picture of something. Uh-huh. And it was really funny. She ended up sending me this picture of her, as a little kid, as a joke. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's kind of funny. It's not what I was expecting, but that's funny. It's funny. And then I glanced back at the picture and I saw my grandma walking through behind her. What? Yeah. How crazy is that, right? Very crazy. The picture was taken about 18 years ago. But you recognized her right away. Oh, oh, absolutely. There was no question that was Grandma Joyce. It was without question, Grandma Joyce. Coincidences like this one usually have a dense nest of details to bolster the craziness. Here goes. Blake is from Michigan. That's where he met Camille. But Camille's family isn't from Michigan at all. They're originally from Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. That's where she grew up? Yeah, that's where she grew up. Was this photo from Utah? No. And that's the funny thing is my grandma lives in Melbourne, Florida. And I'm thinking, oh, she must have been in Utah and walked past it. And Camille's like, no, no, that picture was taken in Parksville, Vancouver Island in Canada. But yeah, right. Blake figured out that at the same time that Camille and her family were on vacation in Vancouver, Grandma Joyce had gone there to visit some of her husband's relatives. Like, what are the chances to think that not only did I meet Camille, but she sends me this picture of her in the background of my grandma? I don't know what the chances are. Yeah. Minuscule. Right? Yes! And not only, like, I don't know if you've seen the picture, but not only just in the picture, but like perfectly behind her. At that moment, a fellow producer emailed me the photo. And there it was, cute four-year-old Camille in the foreground facing the camera and not far behind her, a blonde woman walking past wearing blue shorts and a matching top. Yeah, and she has no idea she's in the picture even. Yeah, right. It's not like, yeah, she doesn't seem aware. But I have to say, it's a little, you know, it's not a very crisp photo. Like, I'm sort of surprised you would recognize her right away. Well, yeah, there's not a lot of, it's my grandma. I don't know, I was like, I was like. For my first reporting job decades ago, I interviewed a woman who, just turned 100 years old. I asked her, admittedly, a rookie question. What's the most amazing thing that's happened in your life? She thought for a while, and then she said, the most interesting thing that happened to me was that on my first day at Patchogue School, the principal said to me, what's your name? I said, Esther Tuttle. And he said, I have a friend in Shelter Island by that name. I was 12, she said. And that, to me, was remarkable. This woman had seen the advent of cars and movies, and computers, and space travel. And this was her answer. At the time, I thought it was lame, that maybe Esther was losing it a little. But since I started hearing all these coincidence stories the last couple of weeks, I've reconsidered. Coincidences feel so rare, and that sticks with you, even when the coincidence is barely a coincidence at all. An academic study of people's reactions to coincidence stories from the early 1980s found that we have an egocentric bias toward our own coincidences, that people find stories that happen, far more surprising than the same stories happening to other people. Case in point. My name is Juliana Bontrager, and I'm 16 years old. Juliana, she's got a problem with her grandmother. My grandma has been obsessed with coincidences, and she finds them in her life all the time, and she always wants to tell everyone about them. And we get kind of annoyed with her sometimes, because she thinks they're so incredible, and how they happen to her all the time. And it's just. You know, it's every time we see her, oh my gosh, you would not believe what happened to me. And they're always, you know, I was at the hospital with, you know, she lives with her cousin, so she takes her cousin to the doctor's office quite a bit for appointments and stuff, and she'll be sitting in the waiting room, and then, you know, they'll drive to go get lunch after that, and they'll see the people they were waiting in the waiting room with at the restaurant. And I've always, you know, I always thought that was funny, because it's like, yeah, that's a coincidence, but, you know, maybe they're just going to get lunch, too. Like, it's not that big of a deal. Yeah. So then, a while ago, I was doing a project in the English class. We were reading the Scarlet Letter book. Uh-huh. And I was. Once we finished the book, our, like, end project was we had to come up with what our sin was, or what sin we struggled with the most. And I chose envy, so we had to create our own letter out of paper, and then, you know, we had to, like, safety pin it to our shirt and wear it around school the entire day. So as I was coloring in my letter and cutting it out, my mom was listening to the show Monk in the background. As we were watching it, I was literally, like, cutting out my last, you know, line on the letter E for envy, and it said on the show, I've studied the seven sins, and the most prominent one is envy. Mm-hmm. As I was cutting out my letter. And so I immediately called my grandma and was telling her about it, and she was like, oh, uh-huh, that's a good one, yeah. And then I didn't really hear back from her after that, and I thought, like, well, maybe she's just envious of my great coincidence. And I was sitting there like, are you kidding? Mine was so much better. You just happened to run into a person twice in one day. I do that all the time, you know? What are the odds that as I'm cutting out this letter E, they would talk about that, on a show, and I was so confused about it. Okay, so Juliana's coincidence is a common one. We've all had those moments when you're reading a certain word, and then someone says it on the radio or on TV. But remember, Juliana's 16, so maybe this is the first time it's happening to her. Still, I'm on her side here. I think it is more remarkable than her grandmother's example of the people in the waiting room being at the restaurant. Do you have a phone where you can dial up your grandma right now? I can try. Okay. Try it. Okay, one second. So Juliana conferenced her grandmother in so we could settle this. I'm here. Elaine Olson. Elaine Olson, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, dear. I laid out my argument for Elaine about the purity, and therefore superiority, of Juliana's example. But Elaine argued right back. There were several hours between the two sightings, plus the restaurant was about four miles from the hospital. And in that four-mile radius, you might say, I could have gone to Antioch, I could have gone to Antioch, I could have gone to Antioch, I could have gone to any number of restaurants. The fact that I ran into her at that restaurant, I think is a coincidence. She could have gone any place, too. That's true. I mean, that's true. I'm not saying it's not a coincidence. I'm just saying it's not maybe as pure as, like you can break down the sort of probabilities of a certain kind of person in a certain kind of neighborhood going. I don't think so. You don't think so? I don't think so. Wow. Do you think you're somehow prone to coincidences, like coincidences that are not coincidences? Do you think coincidences find you more than they find other people? I don't know. That's why, you know, in my own family, I've asked them, does this happen to you? And don't get, you know, much of a response. You also are impossible to argue with. So when you ask for coincidences, we have nothing to give to you because you are so set in your way. I'm 81. Okay, yeah, okay. So what would Juliana, like what would Juliana have to, experience in terms of a coincidence that would impress you, do you think? Like what would it need to be? Well, you know, it's hard to tell. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had my cousin up at another doctor's and I was sitting in the reception area, gentleman across from me was Asian. This time it was about an Asian man in the waiting room, whom she later saw buying a melon at Trader Joe's, which Elaine admitted wasn't as good as the other one. And I was like, "Oh, I'm not going to buy that." And I was like, "I'm not going to buy that." And I was like, "I'm not going to buy that." So Helen's mother says nothing, goes home. But later that night, she tells her daughter, this was the one, this was the man who might have been. She explained that the reason they hadn't married was because her father, Helen's grandfather, had chosen a different husband for her, the man who became Helen's father. All of them ended up living in the U.S., but they quickly lost touch. And Stephen didn't find out about any of this until a couple of days later. That's when Helen, you know, calls me up and says, I have something to tell you. And she tells me, and I was floored by it. And, you know, together we called my mom. And, you know, she put on a good face on it, but she was, you know, she was pretty shocked. Did she know that there had been this other woman that your father had been in love with? That's the thing. My dad told her years and years ago, you know, there was this other woman that he had been in love with. There was this other woman that I was in love with at one point, you know, long before I met you. But mom was like, look, you have a past, I have a past, we all have a past, who cares? Of course, you know, never thinking that she was going to share grandchildren with that woman. I mean, she later admitted to me that if she had known this from the very beginning, she would have not supported Helen and me. Really? She would have, you know, it would have just been like, look, being with the daughter of the other woman your dad loved, I mean, it would, you know, find someone else. How did you take this coincidence? Did it come to mean anything to you or to Helen? Yeah. There's something about it, the fact that, you know, I didn't have the time with my dad that I wished I had had. Yeah. And then suddenly to kind of have him be kind of an active part of my life again, to think that I can talk to my mom. I can talk to my mother-in-law and hear what he was like in his 20s, something that my mom doesn't even know. And, you know, actually Helen's father is a strong believer in the idea that somehow my dad somehow is behind all this, that somehow, you know, he's kind of helped make all this happen. At the time this next love story takes place, a guy named Paul Graychin was working in a Chicago suburb called, Arlington Heights. He'd just started dating a woman named Esther. They'd been out maybe eight times. And I thought maybe it was time to get exclusive or become boyfriend-girlfriend or whatever it was. And I was about to go out to lunch and I was thinking about asking her on a Friday date that I had set up. And I went out to lunch. I stopped at the store prior to hitting the deli that I normally hit. And I got some change, went to the deli, ordered my sandwich. It was six bucks or something like that. I pulled out a five. And I pulled out the couple bucks change that I had gotten from the store, handed the clerk one of the ones. And then I looked at it and I pulled it back. Written on the dollar in pencil was Esther. And I thought, oh, that's weird. You know, I'm thinking about asking her to go study and I get this dollar that says Esther on it. It's bizarre. So I stuck it in my pocket, you know, chuckled. I went to the store. I got one of those floating frames and a little piece of gold lame and I stuck the dollar in the frame. So it was fine. It was floating in the middle on this piece of gold as if, you know, you're going to go in a church in Italy and they had a fragment from the robe of some saint or something like that. And I called it the Immaculate Dollar of Arlington Heights. So on the Friday, I asked her out and she was, you know, all excited and we were all giddy. And then I said, hey, I have one more thing for you. And I gave her this frame with this dollar in it. Start unwrapping it. And he's like, it's a dollar with your name on it. And he's all like beside himself. And I just look at him like, I'm freaked out. She kind of furrowed her brow a little bit and looked concerned. And I said, you know, is there some sort of problem? I was speechless for the first time ever. But I said, you know, remind me to tell you something later. So, okay, you know, I let it go. And we, you know, we had a relationship, got engaged, we got married. A couple years later, we were unpacking at a new apartment that we had. And I had the, I found the frame with the dollar in it. And I stuck it up on the dresser and she came in the room. I said, hey, you never told me about this dollar. What's the deal with that? She said, well. When I was 19, you know, I was a cashier working in a copy shop in downtown Chicago. And I was dating someone and I just wasn't happy with him. And I just thought, you know, how do people know who the right person that they're meant to be with? How do they know who that is? I said, you know what? I'm not going to worry about that. I'm just going to put my name on this dollar bill. And the guy that gets this dollar bill is going to be the guy that asks me to marry him. And I'm like, well, you can't just write your name on one. Actually, I think it was more like maybe 10 or 12. And so. So this dollar bill that you gave me, I believe, is the same dollar bill that I wrote my name on. And I knew that we were going to be married the day that you gave me this dollar bill. It was pretty crazy. And then he made me tell him the story again. He asked me like five or six times. And I said, the details don't change. It's the same story. Like he couldn't. I think he was a little bit beside himself that that actually happened. And that I didn't tell him. You know, I don't know how I found the will to not say anything to him. But I just remember like, do I, don't I, do I, don't I, do I, you know, what do I do? I don't want to freak this guy out and be like, what? This girl's already talking about marriage. Wait, what? Forget it. You know, I don't read too much into almost anything. So I just kind of move forward. And then after she told me, I think I went through all the normal stages of whatever. And I just thought, what does this mean? For us, are we going to invent a time machine? Or are our kids going to bring world peace? Or like, well, what's the, like, is there some sort of bigger thing that we're not seeing here? Now it just sits in that very same frame up on our dresser. And I look at it every day that I wake up. Sometimes I remind her that we have it when she's upset at me or angry. And I'm like, I'm going to kick this guy to the curb. But I do believe it's because of this dollar that I feel tied to him. I mean, obviously I love him, but I think that if it ever did cross my mind, I'd be like, but wait, I, this is my soulmate. I can't just walk out on him. You know, we don't, we don't even wear wedding bands. I'm like, why? Just, I know I'm stuck with you. You got this dollar bill. I guess he could also, you know, put it back out into the register. And then be like, look, I'm cashing this in. I think it's got to go to somebody else. He could do that. Paul and Esther Graychin. You know, I can't just walk out on him. There's a part of our love that I don't understand. I know the cost of providence is our currency. But there's some place I'm supposed to be. Act Three, Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? This story comes from Ryan Rosar in Los Angeles. It happened when I was in college. I was actually pledging a fraternity. And I ran into some of the, like, the seniors on campus, and they were laughing about something. And so one of them tells me the story that had happened to him that day, supposedly, where he gets in the shower, and about five, ten minutes into his shower, he hears a, and he looks down, and sitting on the floor of the shower between his feet is a nickel, and has no idea where this nickel came from or, you know, why it's there. You know, obviously, like, we, like, everyone was making jokes that, you know, he had change falling out of his butt. You know, people were like, were you eating dollar bills? Or, you know, but anyway, we have our laughs. And I go home. I don't think much about it. The next day, I get in the shower, and, like, five, ten minutes into my shower, I hear a ding. And I look down, and right between my feet is a quarter. So my first thought was, you know, how did they do it? Like, my thought was, I totally assumed that this must not have really happened to him. That was a setup, and somehow they set this up to happen to me, but I could not figure out how I was just like, you know, it had to be a prank basically. oh that's so like that's so smart of you to to like figure out the whole con that's i mean that's what i assume right then i go i go and i talk to him and i tell him what happened to me and i'm kind of watching his face for that you know the laugh or the glint in his eye of mischief or whatever and he it's he just looks kind of sincerely mystified by the fact that this happened to me right after it happened to him then like a week later i get in the shower and like five ten minutes in i hear ting ting and i look down and there's about 35 cents between my feet right so each time this thing's happening there's that moment of like no way before i look down and there there's more change so at this point like obviously my my mind's going to some like weird places because i you don't want to be the butt change fairy guy you know like there's somehow there's just a there's nothing no way this story could be good for me and then no explanation comes but it doesn't happen for a while for like i want to say probably a month until one day i'm about to get in the shower and i reach behind me to scratch my back and i feel something cold and metal on my back and i i turn around to show my you know to like turn my back to the mirror right and there is like a whole pocket full of chain stuck to my back what do you mean stuck to it in what way stuck to it well this is what i figured out so like it wasn't there was no adhesive or anything it was just like impressed into my back so i figured out what was going on is that i had a bad habit of falling asleep with my pants on because i was like oh my god i'm so tired i'm so tired i'm so tired i'm so tired but you know it was college i'd nap a lot and so i'd also sleep with my shirt off because my apartment was really hot so what was happening was change was falling out of my pockets onto my bed and i was laying on it and all that sweat and pressure was just sticking the coins to my back like they're just literally like impressed into my back and it was taking about five minutes of water running on it to dislodge them and i was at which point they're dropping at my feet clearly i love this story but i did not see the coincidence in it ryan said there was absolutely a coincidence it happened to that one kid the senior and then it happened to him the very next day i disagree i think this is probably a common quirk of college boy life lounging around shirtless and groggy on unclean sofas and beds and i think it's probably a common quirk of college boy life probably have the boys at his college had change stuck to them i told ryan so i don't think there's any coincidence involved at all i do and because i'll tell you i know i've known lots of lots of guys who've lived in in pretty squalor conditions and other than me and that other guy i've never heard someone you know having the change falling from them it's just because they're not admitting it it's just because they're not admitting it i swear to god start asking start asking hello hi okay can i come in for a second i knew ryan wouldn't actually start asking so i started asking because while ryan's life is sure to contain many special and unique experiences i am positive that this is not one of them so off i went to prove him wrong because finding others would be so easy i happen to live in a college town state college pennsylvania home of a college student and i'm a college student and i'm a college student and i'm a college student of penn state so i dropped by a frat house has this ever happened to you never in my life never never in my life no never never wait so you have you never heard of that happening to anybody not even close never heard of it what about you never ever never i mean i think it'd be a nice icebreaker with like with women why because like in a conversation you could be like oh this weird thing happened to me yeah i i always got change stuck to me my back or my butt for weeks anyway lots and lots of no's i asked whole classes has this happened to anyone and then we thought pennsylvania it's too cold ryan went to college in southern california we got to go south so we sent reporters to the university of virginia all right have you heard of this happening no i've never heard that before no none of us have heard this how this happened no no no nope nope first to frats at university of north carolina never heard of that problem no all the way to miami we asked at two different universities there you never had it fall off in the shower no no i can't say that it has no no no it's never happened that's never happened to me never i've never heard if that happens to anybody so now i guess maybe it's a california thing so we went to ucla to match the climatological conditions at ryan's school has it ever happened to you no that doesn't happen i don't think it doesn't happen it's not a thing that is not a thing so does that mean ryan was right it really was a coincidence maybe i asked at one more class in pennsylvania has this ever happened to any of you oh it has oh my god ladies and gentlemen penn state senior casey phillips it's actually like an ongoing joke in our apartment that because there's just change in our shower all the time it's just from you or others in your apartment too uh just me actually there's change in my shower right now um it's there's like a roommate texted me today why is there change in the shower because i forgot to take it out because that happens to me all the time like you said i take naps all the time like i pretty much just sleep in naps like in like two hour spurts and i just sleep in my jeans and i have change in my jeans and it comes out and it gets in my bed and i do i figured it out the same way he did it that story was eerily similar i am so pleased to meet you coming up don't lift the manhole cover that's 23 letters by the way that's in a minute from chicago public radio when our program continues it's this american life i'm sarah koenig sitting in for ira glass we've borrowed today's theme no coincidence no story we first aired the show in 2013 after asking you to send us your coincidence stories and you flooded us with more than 1300 pitches we found trends we found gems we found stories impossible to classify my name is jeff dunn jeff dunn okay jeff grew up in sioux city iowa when he was 16 he was hanging out with two of his friends at someone's house the parents weren't home they're goofing around smoking pot they're in the living room that had a huge window on one wall and i was like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so and so we're sitting there and we're kind of sitting along this glass wall and there's a dirt road outside of his house and up this dirt road barrels this van um and the thing that happens next is what you think is going to happen when you see a white van like that at night these two guys get out they're all kind of bundled up and they um pretty quickly just run to the back of the van open it up and pull out this big black bag so they get out they take the bag out and they quickly run up this kind of small hill that's behind his house and it's all wooded there's no houses back there so they run up this hill with this bag and less than like two minutes later they come running back down and they get in the van and they take off so jeff and his friends do precisely what you don't want them to do if this were an after-school special this is the point where you're yelling at the tv saying don't do it stay inside but they decide they have to find out what the strange men in the van have deposited at the top of the hill so they run up there we get to the top and we kind of look around and then we see that kind of on one side of it there's this this manhole cover like a circular manhole cover like you'd see anywhere and coming from one of the edges of the manhole cover it's in place is um long brown hair human hair long brown human hair they are teenagers they are stoned they are freaked out they have to tell an adult about what they've seen a police car happens to drive by they flag it down and the officer tells them to get in the back it became clear that she was really concerned because she then said yeah there's been a girl missing on the west side of town for the last couple days oh my god so again like our hearts just sort of drop and you hadn't known that hadn't been on the news or something like that we had no idea yeah no idea okay so we we just kind of got there scared at that point can i can i stop you for a second is this story gonna get funny or is this a horrifying story wait actually don't tell me don't tell me okay don't tell me um so she calls another officer and the other officer comes there's a couple cars um and they both get out and they tell us to get out and they say okay wait at the bottom of the hill so we're waiting they go walking up to the top and it's dark so we can't really see them that well but we can see them well enough and we don't really want to watch what's going on because we see them bend over pull the cover off and i'm trying not to look but of course I'm looking and she pulls up a human figure out of the hole oh my god and then she says it's a mannequin I don't know what my friends are thinking but I was sitting there thinking that's the only like how does this story end up okay and it doesn't in any universe you know like unless you say it's a mannequin Jeff goes to school on Monday tells his story in physics class and the kid next to him says that was us we did it we went around stealing holiday decorations and we had to get rid of them so we stuffed them under the manhole cover the mannequin by the way had been the virgin mary in someone's nativity scene I think the real coincidence is that it's like a manhole cover and it's like a manhole cover and it's like a mannequin and it's like a our close friends that um caused this to happen to us oh they were good friends of yours yeah right all right no Jeff turns out that is not the real coincidence of the story my producer Brian Reed was listening to all these interviews as they were happening and he interrupted us to tell us we both missed the point Brian's just pointed out that I'm missing you and I are both missing I don't even know the coincidence of my own story yeah I submitted it to the coincidences there's a girl missing at the same time yeah I have five words for you Jeff no coincidence no story here's a definition of coincidence that seems right to me a coincidence is a surprising concurrence of events perceived as meaningfully related with no apparent causal connection it's that middle part meaningfully related that people seem to get stuck on because when events line up just like a coincidence it's a coincidence it's a coincidence it's a coincidence it's a just so you can't help it you can't help but wonder if there's a message in that in that way coincidences are kind of like shortcuts to very big questions about fate about God even to people who don't believe in either one the notion that somewhere out there someone or something is paying attention to your life that there might be a plan conjured through coincidences that notion seems to be most appealing when you're young we got one story about a young couple visiting Marrakesh in Washington D.C. and it's a story about a man named Andy Riley and he's going to tell you a story about Andy Riley and he's going to tell you a story about Andy Riley and he's going to tell you a story about one guy in particular I asked Kate what did this guy look like and Kate just stopped dead in her tracks and lifted one hand to her mouth and with the other hand pointed across the restaurant and she said oh my god he looked like that and she crossed the restaurant and tapped him on the back of the shoulder and it was him the daughter of a jazz guitarist named Andy Riley wrote a book to us about the time when she was 19 she was listening to an Ella Fitzgerald album I was listening to the song that old black magic and at the end of the song Ella throws in a line that old black magic that Billy Daniels got me in and I've heard her you know sing that line on that album dozens of times before and wondered who's Billy Daniels but on this particular day for some reason I felt inspired to go out to the to the living room and ask my dad who Billy Daniels was and he explained that in the 40s the Billy Daniels had sung old black magic in a way that made it his song and he was referred to as Mr. Black Magic I guess back in the 40s and it was a big deal at the time and I'd asked my dad had you met him you know did you ever know Billy Daniels and he said that Billy Daniels was probably dead now and just literally at that moment the phone rang so I answered the phone and this playful gravelly voice asked for Andy Riley and I said who's calling and he said Billy Daniels so last September I was living in Roswell New Mexico and I had woken up in jail for like the last time this is Etta Thorderson when this happened she was 20 years old on drugs hanging out with street kids her mom offered to buy her a bus ticket to Washington state to go to rehab Etta said yes she took her dog and got on the bus in Los Angeles there was a stopover at the depot and this guy comes up to her while she's waiting in line to get food she's got two dollars just enough for some french fries the guy starts asking her questions about her dog and he starts asking the other random questions like what are you doing where you going and and then he asked me are you from Alaska and I was like uh yeah I am actually and then he asked me is your mom named Meg and I was like um yeah she is and he's like oh well well I'm Chris I'm your father I met you 10 years ago and I was like oh holy Etta had only seen her father that one time briefly when she was 11 and then he pulls out a big wad of money I'm like he pays for my food and then he hands me 40 bucks and it's like don't say I never gave you nothing and walked away that what I I'm like shocked by this story and he didn't that was it you didn't see him again he didn't no you could tell he felt bad did you expect something more to happen like did you think oh yeah I really thought we were gonna go like sit down and eat together and I was gonna you know lay out my whole life story for him and he was gonna explain his life and where where he's been I was kind of looking forward to that but then it didn't happen mostly I just I want to like study his face for longer just because that's I mean I've seen him twice and I still can't really remember what he looks like do you regret not not pursuing him in some way yeah absolutely in the moment I was just I was you know I was so sick and I was like I'm like I just really couldn't comprehend it wasn't until I got on the bus that I was kind of just like why didn't I run after him I've just spent my whole life wondering about this man and you know the chance to talk to him was put right in front of my face and I didn't really understand that at the time and I let it go you Emiliano Garcia Sarnoff also hadn't seen his father in many years since he was seven or eight years old he lived in California but he was visiting a national park in Mexico with his mother when he was 18 and they hiked to the top of a pyramid there the whole place was sort of off the beaten track we're walking walking along and there are some people passed in front of us and my mom said oh my god Raul and then she turned to me and said that's that's your father and that's your dad and it was also coincidentally it was Father's Day so I ended up sort of embarrassingly breaking down and crying on that pyramid it was a really emotional moment for me my father definitely you know his absence meant a lot to me and we said yeah we're gonna you know stay in contact and after they said bye they left and he came running back up the hill about 20 minutes later and you know you can hear him panting and he said Emiliano I just want to say I'm sorry I didn't stay in touch and that I love you and he turned and went back down down the hill Emiliano's story goes the way Etta wishes hers had gone after a rocky few years he and his father did get to know each other and each other's families Emiliano had a son who now had a grandfather Emiliano's father had left him when he was a baby but when his father died some years ago Emiliano was there at the hospital they'd had a real relationship and he was there for a long time and that never would have happened Emiliano said if he hadn't seen him that day at the pyramid walking down that pyramid I was talking out loud to myself and I was saying like this is one strong memory I have as I was saying don't forget don't forget you know just sort of getting angry with my future self which I knew would rationalize this event you know because I had a very distinct sense that I had felt that this was definitely a miracle something had intervened and brought us together you know you don't just run into your father on top of a pyramid so I think I was a believer for about a week and then and then that very pause that brings us to act five what are the chances in order to let a good coincidence live a long and healthy life to get told and retold and take its rightful place in the narrative of your life sometimes you have to stop yourself and you have to stop your from thinking it all the way through why it happened really because the fact is any statistician will probably rain on your parade will tell you these things happen a lot more often than you think but a good coincidence is like a good magic trick when you see one a struggle ensues instantaneously between the thrill of the apparent miracle and the urge to debunk it this final story is by Kerry Weeks he's a prop guy for the movies but he told this at a certain point in his life I'm going to summer camp and my grandfather gives me before I go he gives me his old pocketknife it's practically an antique and so the first thing all of us boys do when we get to camp is we pull out our knives and we start throwing them at things trying to get them to stick the way Daniel Boone did and because it's 1970s there's nothing unusual about a bunch of young children throwing sharp knives around and I got mine to stick in the floorboard it was like long and it's great but when I pulled it out the tip broke off but anyway camp goes on and a few days later I noticed my knife is missing and I'll look everywhere for it I look high I look low it's gone but then one day I'm walking through camp and I see this group of boys throwing knives at a tree and something tells me I should check this out and sure enough there's this boy there throwing my knife now there's no mistaking this knife because the handle was red and green but the colors met in the middle and kind of swirled together in a trippy psychedelic way and I've never seen a knife like that before since so I walk up to this boy he's a little older but I walk up to him and I say hey that's my knife and he says no it's mine and I say no that's my knife my grandfather gave it to me and he says no he didn't he says my grandfather gave it to me and I'm confused all of a sudden maybe I'm maybe I should have thought this through a bit more I thought he would just hand it over and the other boys they like move in close and I'm thinking could it be possible that his grandfather gave him the exact same knife that my grandfather gave me I mean is this a thing and I just didn't know it but I look at the knife he's holding in his hand and I look at the blade and I see that the tip of the blade is squared off as though it were broken and and I say that's my knife because I broke the tip off when I stuck it in the floor and he says what that no it came that way so you can use it like a screwdriver and I look at the other boys and I'm not getting any help from them and so I wander off just thinking to myself screwdriver I never thought of that well as you can imagine this really bugged me and I don't mean just while I was at camp but like for the rest of my life and you know I kept thinking why did I fold so easily why didn't I go to the counselors and the only thing I can think of is this I'm the son of a physicist and I used to ask my dad these questions all the time like dad how far away is the sun I'm the son of a physicist and I used to ask my dad these questions all the time like dad how far away is the sun dad how fast is the speed of light dad what's the closest star and he would give me these answers in these numbers that were just so huge I couldn't get my mind around them so my point is this I better than most other children had an idea of just how vast the universe is and therefore how infinite the possibilities are so my the thing is at the time I thought well maybe the kids telling the truth so the only reason why I bring this up is because this is what I was thinking of when some 32 years later I become the landlord of a small apartment building and one of the first things I did as a landlord was I threw this guy out because he was a small-time drug dealer so on the day he's moving out I get a call from his neighbor across the hall a guy I called Budweiser Bob and Budweiser Bob says hey that druggie is stealing your refrigerator and so I hop down there and sure enough in the driveway is a pickup truck and in the back of the pickup truck is a refrigerator so I charge up the stairs and I demand to know just what the hell is going on and Nick the druggie calmly tells me he says dude when I moved in here that refrigerator was so gross I bought my own refrigerator and swapped it out and I put that one in storage and now I'm just putting it back and I look in the kitchen and sure enough there's another refrigerator it's a little old a little dirty but it's working and I'm trying to think this through I mean would someone really go to all that trouble of just swapping out a refrigerator and then putting in storage and bringing it back or would a guy go to the trouble of stealing a used refrigerator just to screw his landlord and replacing it with an even more used refrigerator and well the answer to both these questions is yes but I look up and there's Nick and he's expecting me to say something and there's his buddies who are helping him move and they're expecting me to say something so I walk up to Nick and I'll look him in the eye and I say to him say you sweep up real good before you leave because there's just too many possibilities in this universe thank you Kerry Weeks his story was recorded live at a moth story slam in New York City you can download the moth podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts at the beginning of the show I said I was a skeptic but after talking to so many people about coincidences including a Stanford mathematician who spent decades studying them I end up here agreeing with this one woman I interviewed about her coincidence she knew her story could probably be explained away with statistics and probability but she said there's just a poetry to things like this when they happen there's some kind of beauty in it you can download the moth podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts there's meaning in the noticing of it at all today's episode was produced by Brian Reed and me with Alex Bloomberg Ben Calhoun Miki Meek Jonathan Menjivar Lisa Pollock Robin Simeon Alyssa Shipp and Nancy Updike senior producer for this episode was Julie Snyder our technical director is Matt Tierney music help from Damian Grafe and Rob Geddes production help on today's rerun is provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from Stone Nelson Adrienne Lilly and Ruby Schwartz as I mentioned at the top of the show this episode is a rerun I no longer work at This American Life I peeled off years ago to make the serial podcast and now I am hosting a new show it's called Metro with Sarah Koenig and it comes out this week it's stories all about New York City and its most fascinating raw material New Yorkers if you're a fan of This American Life I think you're gonna love it search your podcast app for Metro with Sarah Koenig and a huge thanks to the hundreds and hundreds of you who sent us your stories and took the time to let us interview you including Layla Wright Katherine Vandeputty Bob Yonka Eric Johnson and Hannah Jacoby thanks also to Peter Aguero John Bewin Eric Menel Jane Marie Marva Hinton Dave Hunter Percy Diaconis at Stanford University Julie Beer Jen Fallon Paula West Katherine Burns and Jennifer Hickson Michelle Harris Erin Henkin Bianca Tonis Tony Barbieri and Ben Schreier our original music about the Immaculate Dollar was written and performed by Bri Webb and Rich Burnett produced by Bri and Jeff McMurrich his website briweb.com our website thisamericanlife.org where you can subscribe to our free weekly podcast or listen to the archive of over 850 episodes for absolutely free This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX the public radio exchange thanks also to Tori Melatia who's on vacation with Ira this week they were so excited for their cruise but seems like by day three the funds starting to fade I'm Sarah Koenig Ira Glass will be back next week with more stories of this American life Subtitles by the Amara.org community www.amara.org/AbrahamGillia