AMAZING STORIES WHAT ARE THE ODDS

Very freaky Joe.....because it reminds me of an incident I had in 1968.

My brother, who is 5 years older than I am, graduated from University and then went into the Navy. He went to Nuclear Submarine School in Rhode Island (if I remember correctly). This was the last I heard of him for a while as I was drafted into the Army in 1966.

I was eventually sent to Vietnam in 1967. In August of 1968 (again, if I remember correctly), the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia and entered the Southeastern border of Germany in an attempt to occupy a "buffer" between West Germany and Czechoslovakia. This was very near Prague. Neither the Germans nor the USA had much "fire power" in West Germany at the time, thus, the US sent my unit to Germany to help clean out the Russians and push them back into Czechoslovakia. We did that fairly easily. At that time the Russians and the Czechs were very poorly trained, and it only took a week to clean them out of there.

We flew C-130's into Ramstein Air Force Base to get there. On the way back, our plane developed some difficulty and we landed on the Island of Crete for a few days so they could repair it. We were in heaven. Imagine spending a year in the swamps of SE Asia and ending up on a 2-3 day furlough in Crete.

So, what's the first thing GI's do on a furlough? Find a bar and drink to excess. We were very near the city of Chania, Crete and took a bus into town. We ended up at a bar called "Steve's Place" (An American retired there and opened a bar......kind of like a Donovan's Reef type story). I was getting a pretty good buzz on when the 7th fleet sails into town and all the Swabs roll into Chania looking for what we were looking for..........booze and women......big commodity on both in Chania.

Steve's Place fills up with these Swabs and........just like in the movies......about a half an hour later a fight breaks out. Seeing as how I had "limited time" in Chania before going back into the "Dark World", I elected to stay against the wall, get out of there and go across the street to the "Red Light" area. In doing so I bumped into one of the Swabs and (no kidding, this really happened) he was my brother.

We were successful in getting out of there, went next door to another bar and talked most of the night. He told me he graduated from the Nuclear Sub school but was interviewed by Admiral Rickover and failed the interview. Thus he was on a mine sweeper in the Mediterranean, which he believed was punishment from Rickover.

At any rate, it was bizarre to say the least.

My only regret was..................I never made it across the street.

I haven't seen him in about 5 years. I think I'll call him tonight. He's now a math teacher in Austin......go figure.

amazing daddy what are the odds, its hard to explain a lot of these , but they do happen enough to say ,amazing.
but some work the other way but.
when i moved into my home a long time ago , from dining room to kitchen there was a sliding door missing , nut we did not worry about it , then one day we said we should get a door for there , the door was not a problem but it had all the hatches and slider already there on the wall, we just needed the wheel attachment for the top of the door. well do you think i could find them going to most stores , they prob were deleted , so you had to buy the complete kit , but was not in a hurry , so after 1 year poping into stores here and there , i gave up and brought a complete kit . i installed it . next day i go outside and my neibour put out some stuff for a hard rubbish pick-up and yes there was a door whith the wheel attach i needed , that would of taken me 1 minute to remove and a couple of minutes to install instead of taking me 1/2 a day and 1 year looking. [not a happy chapy argg arg ]

That sort of timing factor annoys me somewhat with that sort of situation.
Maybe it means, we need to wait a bit longer for what we need to "appear"?

Talk of amazing coincidences, my daughter and I went to see the documentary in Ringwood Karalyka Theatre, called "Time is Art" about synchronicity.

Sort of reminds me of what Mulder said to Fox (In the X files)..."If coincidences aren't coincidences, then why do they feel so contrived?"

1 once had a paint pick up from an old girlfriend that i had not seen in 30 years,
back to schools a few years back my daughter was studing health worker type of thingy.
anyway she had to spend 2 weeks at a school working with a teacher now we live in keysborough so they gave her a map of about 20 schools all around that had a spot , somehow she picked berick school which was not the closest but thats what she got , she was then taken to her class with a teacher called mary. anyway after a few days the teacher asked my daughter your surname sounds italian , my daughter said yes my grand parents come from italy, but my daughter said you prob wont know the place as its an island and only has about 300 people living there all year round as its a holiday place in the summer and my daughter said it was called stromboli, well the teacher nearly fainted as her husband came from stromboli and her grand father was the posty there , then talked a bit more and her grandparents were a regular visitor at my sisters place and i knew them.

AMAZING over night when i got to my computer this morning i had 3 orders from ebay and each order came from the same suburb heidelburg heights a small suburb of melbourne , big odds diferent streets but. so i get into work and put this mornings pick ups on a trolly 3 of them, all 3 orders had the same can of paint ,
i would be lucky to sell 10 of these in a year. wow. they say things come in 3s