Charity shop

I work in a charity shop and all the volunteers have noticed that when you are thinking about something you need, it often just turns up. Nobody can really explain this. Then a customer who had just painted a room in her house eggshell blue said that everywhere she went, she saw stuff that was egg-shell blue and she had just found an egg-shell blue vase and she bought it. I thought that given she had been staring at the colour for a couple of days, it was not so surprising that she should really notice other things that were the same colour - they woud just leap out at her because she had really been focussing hard on that colour. But in the shop, we have all noticed that things you are focussing on tend to turn up - books, bicycle panniers - net curtains, all sorts of things. I was asking the ladies in the shop about this and suggested that perhaps it is not that surprising becuase given that so much stuff is donated, it is not that surprising that you will find at least one of the things that you have been thinking about recently - but we don't tend to notice all the things you have been thinking about recently where nothing is donated. But the ladies did not think that was a very good explanation. This was the example of an interesting coincidence that one of the ladies gave me: a young teenaged boy came in for a trial and two of the older volunteers (both in their seventies) teased him and told him that they were lesbians who wanted to have a surrogate baby and they suggested to him that he could be the sperm donor. One of the other ladies went into the room where all of the donated bags are kept and came out with a turkey baster that is a long implement that you insert into a turkey when you are roasting a turkey - i.e. it could be used for implanting sperm. When she did this, the young man went a bit pale. He never came back. She felt that perhaps they had been a bit unfair on him but they did have a laugh. She thought that this was a very unusual coincidence that could not really be explained by just saying that given the variety of things that are donated, it is not so surprising that the thing you are thinking about turns up. She was of course having a bit of a laugh herself at this very strange coincidence. My husband suggested that we should focus very hard on a holdwall with wads of notes in it but to date we have been unsuccessful, perhaps becuase we are not focussing hard enough.