Number Rhumba

A One-In-A-Million Coincidence

So you think you have a story of great coincidences? Forgive me, but it is my very humble assertion that you ain't seen nuthin' yet. When my wife traded in her car for a new model a few years ago, I went with her to the dealership and listened as the sales manager detailed all the electronic gadgetry on the car. He explained that all she needed was to remember a special code if the car's security system was ever disabled. My attention was arrested as soon as he told us the code.

It was my date of birth, in the exact order of day, month and year.

I thought that was strange. Since all the paperwork for the purchase was in my wife's name, how on earth did the sales team have my details? "How did you know my date of birth?'' I asked him, astonished.

But he was even more startled. He explained that since it was an imported car, the codes were set overseas, on the assembly line. It was just a sheer coincidence that the car had been allotted to us. Mathematically, the probability was one in several million, because you don't just compute the chances of the digits falling in precise sequence, you also have to take into account the number of cars made of that particular model.

For more amazing coincidences in my life, check Fate Accompli.

Fate Accompli

Too Many Coincidences To Be A Coincidence

I've had many amazing coincidences in my life, but this one took the cake.
Just before I left Calcutta to come and live here in Melbourne, the receptionist in our newspaper office rang me and said there was a young man at the front desk. He was applying for a job as a journalist and wanted to know if anyone could read through his application before he submitted it.
No worries, I said to the receptionist, send him up and I'll look through his paperwork. He was on our floor in a few minutes and I took the pleasant young man into the magazine area.I chatted with him for a few minutes and then I began looking through his application.
``Is that really where you live?'' I asked him. Yes, he said.
It was the house where I was born and lived for the first 12 years of my life. Even the telephone number was still the same.
Quite a coincidence? Absolutely. But factor this into the equation - this took place in a city with a population of 17 million people. Go figure.
And it happens to me all the time. At an overseas wedding, thousands of miles away from the city where I grew up, a woman came up to me and asked: ``You're Michael McMahon, aren't you?'' No, but I was Michael's younger brother. And the last time she saw me, I was about six years old. Go figure.
Another time, during the years when I travelled the world as a sportswriter, I had just finished work during a Test match at Lord's. I walked down to St John's Wood, the closest Tube station and on a crowded platform, a bloke my age came rushing up to me, greeting me with an exuberant``Lester, how are you?''
I told him I was not Lester, but I knew exactly who he was mistaking me for - a childhood friend of mine with whom I had many amusing instances of mistaken identity. The bloke on the platform and I got talking and in a few minutes we realised we had played cricket against each other as schoolboys in Darjeeling, I in the colours of North Point and he in the Mount Hermon squad. Go figure.
Some years ago, when my son was at kindergarten here in Melbourne, he had a friend called Nathaniel. But like all four-year-olds, neither of them knew the other's surname. On the last day of kindergarten for the year, one of the speech-makers thanked a woman called Indrani Guinan. My ears pricked up. Later I approached the woman and asked her if by any chance she knew the brothers Roger and Michael Guinan, from Sri Lanka.
She certainly did. She was married to Michael Guinan.
Michael and I were classmates in Darjeeling, India, ten thousand kilometres away. They, of course, were Nathaniel's parents. My classmate and I had lived within a few streets of each other for years, without knowing it. And, against all odds, our sons were classmates a generation later. Go figure.
Want to read some more of my experiences? Go to Kismet, Kate at Terry Fletcher's excellentAnglo-Indian Portal. See if you can explain (or work out the mathematical odds of the occurrence) how my birth date came up in the most unexpected manner.
Like I said, go figure.