Fantastic coincidences

I listened to the Art Bell radio show one night and they were talking about coincidences and someone insisted there was no such thing as coincidences, yadda yadda yadda.

The next day I had a softball game. I usually wear contacts. This time I decided to wear my glasses for no particular reason. During the game I am playing outfield and call for a fly ball. One of the other outfielders cuts in front of me at the last second, sticks her mitt up right in front of me. Ball ticks off the edge of her mitt and redirects right into my face. I had no time to react. It smacked square on my glasses.

Only damage was a nice little cut on my cheek from where the ball pressed the rim of glasses in, and of course a big, swelled up, black eye. I remain convinced that had I not been wearing my glasses for about the only time ever while playing softball, I would have suffered a broken eye socket.

 

Growing up, there was this kid who played soccer against my brother frequently. But my brother and this guy did occasionally play on the same team.

Any way, we saw this guy everywhere. The mall. Kansas City Comets games. Restaurants. Games I played in that my brother and this guy had absolutely no involvment in.

We used to joke that was saw this guy everywhere.

Well, we went to the 1994 World Cup in Dallas. My brother and I are outside the Cotton Bowl before the Argentina/Bulgaria game at a souvenir stand. The guy in front of us? Yep, the same dude. Of all the places to see him ... nine cities hosted the World Cup. Tens of thousands of people milling around. Dozens of souvenir joints. And he was at the same place at the same time.

Funny thing is, I don't think we've seen him since.

 

I don't know if it's "fantastic," but...........

I went to the New Jersey wedding of a good friend; he's in the music business and works with Gary Tallent, the E Street Band bassist.

I oh-so-casually mention this to a co-worker ("Yeah, last week I went to a wedding and Gary Tallent was there"). It turns out the week before he had gone to a friend's wedding in Louisiana, and E Street organist Danny Federici was there.

 

This happened a few years ago when I was back in Jersey/NYC visiting friends:

The plan for one particular night was to meet up with my cousin, who had recently moved from Michigan to NYC, at his apartment and then we were going to meet up with a bunch of my college friends at a bar. My cousin had never met any of them.

I get to my cousin's apartment somewhere near 115th and Broadway, and he says he's going to bring his girlfriend along. "That's cool," I said. "Not so sure," he says, because she just got out of a mental home and is a little skittish/embarrassed by her whole stay in the loony bin. This is going to be her first social outing since she was released.

At that precise moment, my friend calls to let me know he is getting on the PATH in Hoboken and will see me in about a half hour, and by the way, his friend Crazy Matt is also going to meet us. Crazy Matt was one of his friends who I had met on a few occasions, a failed comedian who had taken an unfortunate spin into schizophrenia.

Crazy Matt was convinced there was a conspiracy to "get him." He said clues had been covertly placed in The Daily News and on Jeopardy for the people out to get him.

My buddy then says, "Matt just got released from Bellevue a few days ago. This is his first time out, and he is still pretty out of it."

I get off the phone with my friend and tell my cousin, "Hey, Drew's friend Matt is also going to meet us out. He just got out of the loony bin too!"

Cousin: "Which loony bin?"

WBCC: "Bellevue."

"Cousin: "My girlfriend was in Bellevue. She had a friend there named Matt."

He calls his girlfriend and says, 'Hey, is Matt Smith your friend from Bellevue?" My cousin's girlfriend confirms that Matt Smith is indeed her friend from Bellevue. Now both are, through happenstance, scheduled to meet up at a bar later that night with me, my cousin and a bunch of college friends.

We marvel at this small-world coincidence.

Once we pick up my cousin's girlfriend, it's obvious that she's uncomfortable with the strange circumstances. But she comes along anyway.

We arrive at the bar, and Crazy Matt is still completely out of his mind. He's still on meds, and when he sees the girlfriend, he doesn't even recognize her, even though it had only been days since they'd been apart. They sit across from each other, and she grows frustrated with the fact Crazy Matt can't even recognize her.

Once he finally does, he immediately senses that this fantastic coincidence can't be just that. He accuses her of being a "spy" in the conspiracy against him.

The night culminates in the revelation that Crazy Matt had been banging my cousin's girlfriend while they were both locked up.

The whole thing was hilarious.

 

Mr Huggy,

Never, ever, watched King of Kensington and I once interviewed Al Waxman (He had stiffed a friend who did construction work for him to the tune of $1500 so it was the least I could do to show up late.) You can ask Stan Butler. I'm an East End guy.

The Trouble with Tracy was on in the afternoon when I was working midnights. My wake-up show and it made factory work seem interesting by comparison.

YHS, etc

 

Back when I was doing a column and a radio show, I'd recognized around town. My wife hated it, because we'd be walking through the grocery store, some guy would stop me and I'd wind up talking sports with him for five minutes. We go to Vegas for her brother's wedding. At lunch, her father jokingly asks if anybody has recognized me. Nobody had, but as we were leaving the restaurant a guy stops me and says "Hey, I heard you talking about Vegas on your radio show, I wondered if I'd see you. I'm Joe from Podunkville (a regular caller to the show)."

This summer, a large group of friends are converging on Ocean City, NJ, for a wedding. A few days before the wedding, some of us are in NYC. We wind up having drinks, dinner and drinks at PJ Clarke's. We're in the back room. One of the other groomsmen lives in Boston. He was in NYC hooking up with an old booty call. They're having dinner at PJ Clarke's in the middle room at a table in the corner. How he never spotted us (or us him) as we went through the middle room to the restrooms.

 

Here's another one from the crazy files of Mayfly's hook ups...

This happened pretty recently. But anyway:

I met this girl online again, yeah, yeah, I know, you always find the weirdos on there, but anyway. She comes to my house and we have our fun. I decide I am not really into her, so I try to think of a way to get her out of the house. I just end up telling her I am tired and not feeling well, so she leaves. She texts me a bit and I text her back, but we eventually fall out of contact within the last week.

Anyway, I leave for the half-marathon on Sunday and it's like 2 am in the morning when I am driving down to the place that is holding the marathon. It's 3 hours away. So I hop on the Interstate and come to a toll booth.

The person at the toll booth says "Hey, I know you." I was completely out of it and said "how?" She was like "I'm XXXX, we hooked up a couple of weeks ago." I just sat in my car stupified.

Needless to say, after a minute long conversation, I step on the gas and got out of there.

 

ELAINE: Well, I mean, he was in the apartment, and then it's gone and it's in your apartment.

RAVA: Maybe you think we're in cahoots.

ELAINE: No, no.. but it is quite a coincidence.

RAVA: Yes, that's all, a coincidence!

ELAINE: A big coincidence.

RAVA: Not a big coincidence. A coincidence!

ELAINE: No, that's a big coincidence.

RAVA: That's what a coincidence is! There are no small coincidences and big coincidences!

ELAINE: No, there are degrees of coincidences.

RAVA: No, there are only coincidences! ..Ask anyone! (Enraged, she asks everone in the elevator) Are there big coincidences and small coincidences, or just coincidences? (Silent) ..Well?! Well?!..

 

Outing alert: Inky is Mark Madden

 

Sirs, Madames,

I guess this fits too. I was with a couple of buddies and we dropped in at a real dump, a bar frequented by shift workers, construction guys, those who needed to go somewhere before the made it home to shower. Never been there before. We sit at the bar and a guy whom I don't recognize turns around and says, "Hey, Joyce." For a second I think he's talking to a waitress but he is instead talking to be and, yes, my last name is Joyce. "How are you doin'," I say, scrambling to put a face to a name. Well, for 15 minutes, he talks about the neighbourhood, yup, same one I grew up in, a couple of names that rang a bell, some people I knew. I'm struggling with this--imagine a conversational equivalent of a boxer fighting with a broken left hand. Winding up to say goodbye, he asked how my brother was doing. "I don't have a brother," I told him. "Yeah, Don Joyce," he said. "Your brother, he was in my class at Tech. His family had a stained-glass business on Logan Avenue." I advised him that I'm an only child with no cousins or anything like it in the city and I didn't go to Tech.

So I was mistaken for a guy with the same (hardly common) surname who grew up blocks away from me and knew some of the same people I did.

YHS, etc

 

I might've posted this before, but this was an odd one:

I made plans to go to San Francisco to visit my sister and her family. I bought tickets for all of us to go to the Giants game (when they were still at the 'stick) a couple months before I go.

I fly up to Oakland on Southwest. I was in the first row, where they used to have rear-facing seats. A couple was in front of me, in the rear-facing seats. I exchanged about 2 words with them on the flight up.

My sister picks me up, we go to her house in the City, then go to the game. We're sitting in the outfield seats when the couple that had been on the flight comes up and sits right behind us. I say "Hey, how's it going--long time" or something like that, and we laugh over it. Meanwhile, my sister's looking at me like I'm crazy.