Strange Coincidences: The Inseparable Helmet Shield
Ordered a white russian. The waitress said, “Its funny you’re drinking those because Jeff Bridges is upstairs eating right now.” The Dude!!
– A tweet by @jcroft
For those who have watched “The Big Labowski”, the hilarious coincidence by @jcroft is both funny and intriguing. We have all had these kinds of “Strange Coincidences” in our lives, and like most of you I have always been fascinated by them, especially the more complex coincidences. The ones where not only many prior events have to line up correctly, but also seems like even the stars have to line up correctly.
So here is one such Strange Coincidence that I experienced recently:
The Inseparable Helmet Shield
Sometime towards end of July 2009, as my wife and I were selling and getting rid of things we owned prior to moving to India for a year; there was this strange coincidence that happened with a helmet shield I owned.
At that time we had already sold our condo, and so we were staying at my friend Sunny’s place. One of the last few things I had to get rid off, was a Shoei helmet, which included two shields: a clear one and a bluish iridium shield. So, I listed the helmet for sale on KSL Classifieds, which by the way is a great local online classifieds in Utah.
After a few days I got a call from someone who was interested in buying the helmet. I can’t remember if it was the same day or few days later, but the person who called came by and had a look at the helmet. He liked it, size wise it fit his head, and so the helmet was sold. But, one thing was missing, the bluish iridium shield. I could not remember where I had kept it, and so the guy ended up taking the helmet with just the clear shield.
A few days later, the day before we were to fly out to Dubai, as we were doing a final clearing up of things, I found the missing blue shield. At that point, we were out of time and so decided to put the shield in a bag which we were to drop off at the DI (Deseret Industries), a local thrift store that takes used items. The initial plan was to drop off the DI bag on the way to the Airport. But as the list of things to do before we headed to the Airport started to grow, my friend Sunny offered to help drop the bag off at the DI.
Flash forward to a month later, Sunny pings me on GTalk, and says he has to tell me about the “Biggest Coincidence” that happened, and it’s about the blue shield. After I had left, and after procrastinating for a while, Sunny had a look at the bag he was supposed to take to the DI and figured he liked it. So, he decided to keep the bag instead, and started transferring its contents into plastic bags. Which is when he came across the blue shield. Since he knew a couple of colleagues who rode motorcycles, he decided to give the shield to either one of them.
Sunny took the shield to work, and gave it to the first colleague he ran it. But, that colleague did not have a Shoei helmet, so the colleague decided to give it to his brother who had recently bought a used Shoei helmet. To make a long story short, that brother was the guy who had bought my Shoei helmet. And so was reunited the shield and the helmet, and ends this long tale of Strange Coincidences.
So many things had to happen and line up for this elaborate coincidence to take place, and the sheer probability of this probably makes winning a lottery seem easier.
