Cambridge Coincidences Collection

I attended high school in small-town New Hampshire and graduated in '89. I eventually settled in Boulder, CO. I recently sold my house in Boulder and the purchaser turned out to be my high school chemistry teacher from New Hampshire who I had not seen in 26 years. I recognized him the instant I walked into the closing. It brought back a flood of bad memories...I was a horrible chemistry student.

On a Saturday in my early 20's, I was sitting at a sidewalk cafe in Tokyo when I recognized a woman walking by as being someone I'd gone to high school with in Connecticut (USA). After I stopped her to say hello, her husband turned as well and he turned out to be someone I had gone to college with in Massachusetts.

After graduating college, I took a long road trip with my best friend (very long - the Alaskan Highway). We took his car, and traded turns buying gas. At one gas station somewhere in a remote stretch of British Columbia or the Yukon Territory, it was his turn to buy gas, and he discovered upon opening the tank door that the gas cap was missing. There was only one real explanation and it was clear who to blame. We hadn't stopped since our last refueling a few hundred miles before, so I must have failed to replace the gas cap on his car at the last station. I felt sheepish, and he somewhat grumpily said, "I guess I'll go see if they sell them in the station." At which point I said, clearly relieved, "why don't we try that one right there?" There was a gas cap sitting on fuel pump behind him! It definitely was not the same gas cap (it was metal, the old one was plastic), but it fit. Something about the setting -- the remoteness, the weariness following thousands of miles on the road -- made this little coincidence seem extra mystical.

My mother passed away in 1999 when my younger child was one and during the mourning period, while friends and relatives were at my house, I took my son outside on my shoulders. Within two minutes a hawk came over and circled approximately 15 feet over our heads. I'd seen hawks in the neighborhood before, but never so close. I said, out loud, "that's grandma Edie hawk," because as children my brother and I often said our mother watched us like a hawk. Fast forward to exactly one year later at the cemetery. I was sitting alone at my mother's footstone when a hawk came by and circled about fifteen feet above. No hawk has gotten that close since.