From article I wrote for AARP on coincidences:
Early in my use of the Internet, I was astonished by its ability to create coincidences -- true story! I was consulting for an online service which gave me an email address used only for their work. I received a note at that address with the intriguing subject, "I am you", from another <my name> (Nowadays, that's the sort of spoofed email I'd likely delete without reading.) He'd checked his entry in the service's directory and found my entry next to his. We exchanged pleasantries, described ourselves, shared wonder at having found each other; he mentioned that he was a music student in Boston.
Later that week, I received another note at my regular email address, from a woman who said that she'd known a <my name> years earlier, the last she'd heard from him he was going to Boston to study music, and was I that person. I replied to her, copying the other <my name> that either they were playing a joke on me or we had a mighty powerful coincidence. Truth is stranger than joke: they were former high school sweethearts who had drifted apart.
