All of my life, weird coincidences have happened to me. I realize everyone feels this way to some extent, but, as with having weird dreams, mine are just more intense than anyone else I have ever known or read about.

For instance, I wrote a thing here a decade ago called if the real world were like the internet.  I never did get around to adding the part about how my wife and I were on a boat cruise wedding party a few days later and how I met a newly retired cop from that town who had been on the SWAT team who "closed that case."  He as much as admitted to me that they shot that fucking pervert the minute they broke down the doors and saw him.  It made me giddy because that is exactly the way I assumed it went, and I was so grateful that he shared that with me, a total stranger; at great risk to himself, I think. But we had had a few wedding cocktails.

So my daughter was visiting me in the hospital earlier today.  (Please don't ask.  I won't be here long and if I wanted to discuss it with you, the chances are great that I'd have already done so by email, or at least tried to. Some of you old friends here seem to have changed your email addresses.) We had been discussing this deal about me and coincidences, and she said the weirdest one, to her, was about me meeting that cop. I opened the iPad when she left and someone has cooled Memorial Day Weekend, a writeup where I have mentioned the other story.

I know: Big deal.

But try this.  The other day my wife and I are driving down a local street and a church has a big rock with "John 3:16" carved on it. I quoted the verse to her verbatim. She thought I was making it up.  She was raised Catholic and said Bible study wasn't a regular thing.  But, as always, it turned out I wasn't lying to her. (Don't lie to your wife. You never get away with it.)

So yesterday my wife is visiting me here and I ask her if she remembers that incident.  She says "Yes, but what does that have to do with coincidences?" I said, "What's my room number here?"

It's 316.

Co*in"ci*dence (?), n. [Cf. F. coincidence.]

1.

The condition of occupying the same place in space; as, the coincidence of circles, surfaces, etc.

Bentley.

2.

The condition or fact of happening at the same time; as, the coincidence of the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

3.

Exact correspondence in nature, character, result, circumstances, etc.; concurrence; agreement.

The very concurrence and coincidence of ao many evidences . . . carries a great weight. Sir M. Hale.

Those who discourse . . . of the nature of truth . . . affirm a perfect coincidence between truth and goodness. South.

 

© Webster 1913.

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