Coincidences: Dad Meets Joe After Sixty Years and Other Unlikely Events

December 22nd, 2010

I was discussing coincidences with a Cryptogon reader over email. Here is a part of what I wrote recently:

I spoke with my dad a while ago. He told me an astonishing ‘coincidence’ story.

I’ll try to boil it down as much as possible.

Dad desperately needs some major dental work done. He’s sick of being swindled by dentists, so he thought, “Do I know a dentist I can trust?”

He remembered a guy that he used to play football with sixty years ago who went on to become a dentist.

He looked the guy up in the phone book and found a phone number and address. Rather than trying to call, he drove over there. Indeed, it was a dental office, but Joe (the dentist) was no longer practicing. Turns out, a younger dentist took over the practice after Joe retired.

A few weeks later, my sister, who lives in Long Beach, California, invited my dad up to a BBQ party that her neighbors were having.

*drum roll*

At the party, my dad met Joe, the dentist he played football with over half a century earlier. Joe’s son and daughter in law live next door to my sister. Dad had actually met Joe’s son before, when visiting my sister’s place, and never had any idea the guy was Joe’s son.

—

While I’m at it, here’s another one:

In 1995, my mother paid for and insisted that I show up to have a reading by an astrologer. My mother was very much into astrology (Western and Chinese), numerology, I Ching, Tarot and Kabbalah. She had been interested in these topics since she was a girl. So, I was not new to astrology, but, at best, I was agnostic as to what insights might be gleaned from it. I never took astrology very seriously, and was dreading having this reading. But, I went anyway.

The reading was done by a French man who called himself Dr. Louis Touri. (I have no affiliation with him and haven’t been in contact with him again since I had the reading described below.) It was a very hot summer day in San Diego. After exchanging greetings, in the strongest possible French accent, he called out, “Wife, where are you? Please bring me some watt-air.” His attractive American wife, who I estimated was less than half his age, emerged with some cold water in a glass, and then promptly retreated again.

I thought, “WTF has my mother gotten me into this time?”

Long story short, this is what happened:

He placed a playing card face down on the table and asked me to pick a number between one and ten.
(This was 1995, so if this isn’t exactly right, excuse me, but this is how I remember the part about the cards.) I said some number. He turned over the card and, of course, it had the number I picked.

“Cute,” I thought, “This is probably trick number 1 in card tricks 101.”

Then, this process was repeated several times. Maybe five times. Each time, the card he laid face down had the number that I then picked. I don’t think I picked the number one. Maybe the face cards are one. I’m not sure.

I was tying to figure out the probability of him being able to do this, when he said, “I know you don’t believe any of this, but that’s ok, it’s just how I make sure that I’m in sync,” and he made a gesture with his hands toward the ceiling.

Then he did something with Tarot cards.

Here’s the bottom line.

He said, the girlfriend I was with at the time, “This Virgo, with the short brown hair and the cough… Yes?”

I must have looked frightened, “Yes, that’s her.”

“She’s not the one for you.” He shook his head.

Indeed, I already knew that Kathy, a Virgo, with very short brown hair and a persistent cough, and I weren’t going to last long. But I had this kind of, oh shit moment, thinking, “Is this guy looking through my bedroom window at night?” I laughed and said something like, “My mom told you all of that. HAHA. Good one.” Well, my mom didn’t tell him anything about her.

He continued, “You will eventually meet and marry a foreign woman. You will have children with her.”

“A foreign woman?” I asked.

“Yes, not an American,” he said.

“What nationality?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, “Not an American is all I know.”

“I don’t want to have children,” I said.

“I know. That will change, I think, but you will have them anyway.”

“Children? You mean more than one?”

“Yes, children, more than one,” he said.

He looked around and said something like, “You pick all these water and earth women,” referring to water and earth signs, “But you’re already too heavy and serious. Be open to a relationship with a fun-loving Libra.”

“A Libra?!” I asked in astonishment.

“Yes.” He said something like, “Don’t get bogged down with your silly understanding of sun signs. It’s much more complicated.”

He continued, “As for work, I see you doing something high-tech. Computers. Global consciousness and computers. And maybe something related to education and children.”

Now, as you may know, in 2005, I went on to marry Becky, a Libra from New Zealand and we now have two children.

I don’t know if Cryptogon counts as being related to global consciousness, but it’s definitely computer related. Also, I handle IT for my mother and father in law, who own an early childhood education business here in New Zealand.

Now, dear Backchannel reader, I know, even you don’t believe this. But it happened. And, somewhere, probably in a box of random stuff I left behind at my dad’s house, there’s a cassette tape of the whole thing. Back then, he recorded the readings and gave the tapes to his clients.

Posted in Backchannel