Old flame ignites two stunning coincidences in one day

When I was in college in New York in the early 70s, I dated a medical student for a couple of months, but I broke it off because the love of my life didn't love me. In the college dining room, I sometimes discussed the breakup with my best friend Lois -- the same woman who 20 years later attended my small, San Francisco wedding to a different man and even took the wedding photos. A couple of years later after my husband and I divorced, I told my friend I had hired a detective who had located my old college love who was now living in Los Angeles just 500 miles away. I also told my best friend from work and she told me about her old college flame and how she would do anything to reconnect with him, too. Six months later, my old flame and I reconnected in Los Angeles. We drove across town to a museum, which neither of us had ever been to and then headed to a nearby restaurant. After the hostess seated us, my old flame asked a complete stranger sitting at the next table, what she was eating. The woman replied and then turned to me and said "I'm surprised to see you here." I had no idea who she was. Then she addressed me by name and added, "I knew you in college when we sometimes ate together in the dining room. Lois even sent me one of your wedding photos." My jaw dropped. Two hours later, my old flame and I visited his next door neighbor, a Hollywood screenwriter, whose name I don't recall. We explained we had rekindled our old relationship, and then I told him about the strange coincidence at the restaurant. The screenwriter laughed and confessed he had an old flame, too. He then told me her name, an unusual name -- it was my best friend from work. I was dumbfounded, and so was the screenwriter when I said I not only knew this woman but she had already told me he was her long lost love. Alas, the two never did reconnect, and my old flame and I soon broke up for a second and last time. Not long after that, I tried to write a novel because I very much wanted to immortalize the affair. Nothing ever came of it. But five years later, I began to hear about a hit movie, There's Something About Mary, a coarse millennial comedy about a man who hires a detective to reconnect with his old high school sweetheart who had become a doctor. Was the screenwriter involved with this movie in any way? Did any part of my story get folded into the highest grossing comedy of 1998? I'll never know, but the possibility is intriguing. Now, I've taken several statistics courses, and I pride myself on being a lifelong atheist. I know people tend to travel in the same circles, and that could explain some of what happened. Still, it seems almost beyond the realm of possibility to have not one but two of life defining coincidences occur within the span of a few hours. That's why I'll always regard this story as an extraordinary, once-in-a-hundred-lifetimes event.