My sister & me & the number 12

1)My sister and I were born 12 years apart. (1950/1962). We both married at the age of 20 (12 years apart) and we both married men with the surname Smith. (By another coincidence our father's sister had married a man with the same forename and surname as our father.) My sister and I both had two sons and hers followed 12 years after mine. We both live in houses with the number 12, as did our parents when they were alive. My elder son was also born on my birthday. 2) A few months after I was married in 1971my husband and I were invited to a very 'posh' Ladies' Night. Unable to afford a new evening dress my mother altered my simple empire line wedding dress by removing the sleeves and changing the trim from guipure lace to a gold trim. Feeling like the 'bee's knees' imagine my horror when we were announced and I saw that the lady who was guest of honour was wearing an identical dress! To add insult to injury yet another lady arrived wearing the same dress but with silver trim where mine was gold. 3)The coincidence which has had the greatest effect on my life happened in 1994 in Romania. My husband had become involved with a charity taking lorries of aid to that country a few years before and in 1994 I went with him as we had been invited to a wedding there. The organiser of the charity asked us to,on our way back, collect a lady from a hospital in Cluj-Napoca ,who had been working there for the summer but now needed to return to the UK. He had no idea where in the UK she had to return to , just that her name was Shirley. When we arrived at the hospital we found the group of people that Shirley was with and had a meal with them.When Shirley told us her surname I recognised it. To cut a long story very short it turned out that Shirley came from a town only about 8 miles from where we lived, furthermore she and her husband had owned a dog who had been very sick some years before and her husband had brought him to the veterinary surgery where I worked,hence my recognition of her surname. We became very good friends with Shirley during that trip back to the UK. And that chance meeting was literally to change my life on a number of levels.