Thought Leadership

An odd coincidence

Life does strange things to you sometimes. It is when weird coincidences occur that I begin to wonder who is in charge …

This story is very personal, but I am going to share it anyway. Some people, who have heard it, feel that it has some deep significance. I just think it is interesting. You make of it what you will.

The background: I was married to Linda for many years – she was the mother of my two daughters. In 2006, after being sick for two years, she died. Just over a year later, I met Libby. Tomorrow we will be very happily celebrating our second anniversary; the second of many I hope.

Recently, this all came together in a rather surprising way …

I have a nice house. It is always rather untidy – I prefer the term “lived in”. All my life I have had the habit of accumulating stuff – collecting things and generally not being good at letting go. However, I really do want to get rid of some of this clutter, as it is weighing me down. Apart from anything else, I plan to move house [when I can sell this one – not easy].

I easily suffer from a lack of motivation. We all do sometimes. Starting unattractive jobs is hard, as they can seem very daunting. Libby is good at giving me a gentle nudge. A good example is books. I have a lot of those. Many I will never read again – they are just taking up space. Because there are so many, it is hard to know where to start. She suggests that maybe we will just deal with a single shelf – going through and sorting each book for keeping or disposal. One shelf inevitably becomes three, which means that we are making progress.

Having done most of the shelves, just a few remained untouched: Linda’s books. I did not intend to keep them for sentimental reasons – just had not got around to those. We bit the bullet. Going through them, one at a time, we looked at one book and we were initially very confused. Inside was an inscription – written by Libby. How come? We figured it out. Libby bought this book 30 years ago and wrote in it [which, curiously, was not her normal practice]. 20 years later she disposed of it when she was moving house. Sometime later Linda bought it. So, I had a book of Libby’s on a shelf in my home for some years before we met. Odd eh?

Needless to say, I am keeping that book. But there is plenty more clutter to clear.

Colin Walls

I have over thirty years experience in the electronics industry, largely dedicated to embedded software. A frequent presenter at conferences and seminars and author of numerous technical articles and two books on embedded software, I am a member of the marketing team of the Mentor Graphics Embedded Systems Division, and am based in the UK. Away from work, I have a wide range of interests including photography and trying to point my two daughters in the right direction in life. Learn more about Colin, including his go-to karaoke song and the best parts of being British: http://go.mentor.com/3_acv

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  • Its like something happens in Romantic sentimental Movies… I love to listen such beautiful adorable co-incidences… Best wishes for you and your happy marital life. 😀

  • I stumbled across this because i googled “An odd coincidence in my life” because for the last ten years or so, I have had lots of these odd occurrences.(this story about the books is really a good one though) Don’t know what to make of them actually. I’m defiantly not spiritual but as equally defiantly not close minded.

    Someone on my facebook suggested watching “what the bleep do we know” Its about your brain and quantum physics and whatnot. It watched some video on youtube and it seems interesting. It seems though if you were a traditionally trained scientist of any sort you might just shrug it off as hokey pokey. I guess you have to decide that.

    I’ll post the note in another comment that i had written on my facebook about the odd occurrences that have happened to me in the last few years.

  • My Life And The Odd Coincidences In It.

    Any one of these on their own could mean nothing, but with so many things that fall into place its hard for me to deny the fact that there is something odd going on here…..

    -My wife Amy has only ever dated Scotts, we met because of a Scott and at the time i was living with a Scott. Then all the Scotts went away, I’m the only Scott in our lives right now and for quite a while.

    -We used to find dimes everywhere, at least several a week sometimes daily. Sure everyone finds lose change but this was an unusual amount and it was only dimes, not quarters or nickels, just dimes. At random places, floor, pocket, table, ground, pretty much everywhere and often. This went on for about 2 years, it stopped around when my mom passed away.

    -My mom passed 20 years to the day that her mom passed away.

    -Amys fathers name is Martin and he has a brother Dan. My brothers are Martin and Dan.

    -My brother Martin and I both purchased nice fast two seater sports cars. The odd thing about it was, this happened without any discussion about our plans at all, zero knowledge of each other. We both went to the US and purchased these cars in the same week, both were 2 seat high performance sports cars and they are the same color.

    -This week I was sitting on Yellowhead Trail in Edmonton, commuting to work at 7:15 in the morning. As traffic was stopping a truck pulling a long flatbed trailer pulled in front of me. I sit low in my car and I was staring directly at the back of the deck, it was at my head level. At that instant, i got very nervous about being where i was, i don’t get nervous in traffic usually ever. But I though to myself that if I got hit from behind I would be dead, it would be very ugly, the back of the bed
    would go through my window. Almost instantly after that thought, I was rear ended! It was a Journeyman electrician driving his work van who did it. I’m also a journeyman electrician driving to work. I actually thanked him for not hitting me any harder. I drive that road every day, probably 4-5 hundred times in the last 5 years, never an incident. Funny the exact moment that i am extremely concerned about a collision and my life, it happens……..

    -Last week a electrical work van dented my drivers door at the West Edmonton Mall. Something about electricians and their work vans against my car this week.

    -I came to Alberta with from Sudbury with nothing 10+years ago with my good friend Jai. We both had very different paths for a few years, we both spent some time trying to figure out what to do with ourselves and our lives. I got hooked with a great girl named Amy and I became an
    electrician. Jai after trying his hands with a few different avenues decided to come back to Alberta. He started an apprenticeship as an electrician. Shortly after he found this great girl named Amy. Now after vastly different paths, we are both ended up as Journeyman electricians with fantastic Amys in our lives. This was not planned or structured in any way.

    Got any comments suggestions check this out on my facebook http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=577500397

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This article first appeared on the Siemens Digital Industries Software blog at https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/embedded-software/2009/07/23/an-odd-coincidence/