|
Weird
Happenings Ronnie Dee
(c) Copyright 2026 by Ronnie Dee
|
|
I have been thinking lately about some of the creepy and strange incidents I have been a part of and I wonder how many weird coincidences other people have experienced. I mean like, you are sitting in a chair reading and you get up. Five seconds later, a 100 pound clock falls off the wall onto the chair.
What made you get up at that moment?
A thought pops into your head. Something you haven't thought of for years, if ever, and within seconds, it manifests itself. That sort of thing.
I can count at least twenty, "I could easily have been killed" incidents, two ghost encounters, and who knows how many weird "coincidences."
Sometimes it would get really spooky. Like the time I was eating a fish sandwich and for some reason the thought struck me, "You know, people used to get fish bones in their sandwiches quite often, but it just doesn't seem to happen anymore."
I hadn't thought about that in thirty years. So the very next bite of fish I took, I felt something and thought, "Oh, no." Sure enough, I reached in my mouth and pulled out a little fish bone about 3/4" long.
On another occasion, I was riding with some friends up to Cincinnati to go to the zoo. We were driving up old U.S 42, a hilly, twisty, two-lane road when a Greyhound bus zoomed past us going toward Louisville. A thought just struck me and I said, "Man, you see those Greyhounds flying up and down the roads all the time, but you never see one lying on its side off the road, do you?
My companions agreed with me and five seconds later we came over a hill and there was a Greyhound Bus lying on its side off the right side of the road. Everybody looked at me and asked, "How did you know that?" Well, I didn't.
Then there was the morning I was walking down the street and for some reason I began to think about an office building a few blocks down the street where an old friend of mine, Earl, worked. I hadn't seen or thought about him for ten years and I wondered if he was still working there. I came to the corner and stopped for a red light and when I looked across the street at the first car at the light, going the same way I was, sitting at the wheel, was none other than the aforementioned Earl. I was stunned for a moment and then hollered "Earl!"
At that moment, the light changed and he looked around, but didn't see me as he had to drive off with all the other traffic, but it was definitely him.
Another time I was listening to the radio and the guy was talking on and on about his trip to Holland. He was astounded by the number of bicycles in Amsterdam. "They were everywhere" he exclaimed, "I almost got run over several times. It was very dangerous," etc. and he kept on.
I was thinking, "Okay, enough about the stupid bicycles."
He finally stopped and the program ended a few minutes later. I turned off the radio and went to my pc. While it was coming to life, I picked up a little book I had bought about random facts. It was a little paperback, 120 pages with "1,800 amazing facts" listed in two or three line vignettes. Example: "New York is the most populated city in America with over nineteen million people." On that morning I randomly opened it up on page 26 and the first item I saw proclaimed; "Over one third of the people in Amsterdam, Holland own a bicycle."
I had one happen recently. I had made some pancakes for breakfast and the instructions said to use "a little less than 1/4 cup for each pancake."
I wondered, "How many tablespoons are in a quarter cup?"
I didn't know, I would look it up later. So I ate a couple pancakes and went to make a couple more when I noticed one of those little magnet ads you stick on the side of the fridge had fallen on the floor. I picked it up and looked at it. The first thing I saw was a little diagram and the words, "4 Tablespoons = 1/4 cup."
It was an ad for a plumber, with some kitchen measurements printed across the top. If it had been dark outside, I would have run screaming into the night. I mean, this is not normal, right?
Another strange one occured one day at the office. We were sitting around at lunchtime when one of the guys said: "Hey Ronnie, you think you know baseball, here's one for you."
Yes, I am a true lover of sports, particularly baseball, so he throws this one at me. "Who has the highest lifetime batting average in the all-star game?"
Well, I know a lot about the game, but come on, I had no idea what the answer was. Lots of names swirled through my head and I finally burst out with, "Charlie Gehringer."
He put the book down and looked at me and looked at the front of the book and said, "You're right, Charles Gehringer. How did you know that? I never heard of him."
I had heard of him, but don't ever recall talking about him, ever. He played in the 1930's. I have no idea how I came up with Charlie's name.
The one that proved the most fun was when five of the older guys at work tried to con me. We used to hang out at a bar in the Highlands in Louisville called The Blue Cottage, and one night everyone thought it would be nice to have some fried chicken. It was about 10:00 when they decided to draw straws to see who would go get the chicken. I saw them conferring and shortly, I (SURPRISE) drew the short straw. While they were giggling and writing down their orders, one of the gang who wasn't eating came over and told me what they had done.
I told him, "Don't worry, I've got it covered," and I cordially took their orders and money and left, with the guys nudging each other and cajoling me to, "Hurry back, we're hungry."
So I went straight back to my neighborhood, stopped in a local bar, laughed about what I had done with another friend from work and then went home to bed. The next day I didn't see the guys because we worked on different floors, and all morning I was trying to think of a clever way to return their money with some sort of wise-crack note. I went to lunch, still perplexed and what do you know, they were serving chicken noodle soup that day. It sounded good, so I ordered a bowl. With my first spoonful I stared with astonishment at what I had scooped out of the bowl. It was a huge chicken bone, I guess a thigh bone. It was over 2" long and thick. I could hardly believe they had left a bone that big in the soup. But, Eureka! I had my prop. As soon as I finished eating, I hurried down to my desk and put the bone in an inter-office envelope with a note that read; "Dear Bob, here's what's left of your "freakin'" chicken."
I dropped it in the mail tray and about an hour later I received a phone call from Bob who was laughing hysterically. He loved it. A couple of the guys didn't think it was so funny, but screw 'em. After all, they started it. The story became a legend. How come I got a bone in my soup that particular day?
Then, there was the time in 1964, I was stranded in St. Louis when I lost my return plane ticket. All I had on me was a twenty dollar bill. When I asked about the one way fare to Louisville, I was told, "Twenty dollars."
Recently, I was doing a giant crossword puzzle with the TV aimlessly tuned to whatever, when I came upon 311 across: "Chocolate syrup brand that was George Costanza's ATM password?"
Answer: Bosco. I remembered.
Following a baseball game on TV, a couple of Seinfeld reruns were being shown. Incredibly, the "Soup Nazi" episode was just concluding and guess which, of all the Seinfeld reruns, came on five minutes later?
Yeah, Bosco.
It just makes me feel a little weird, you know-.
Late one afternoon, Donna and I were at the bank doing some business when the man asked for my driver's license. I complied and he said, "Ronald, I can't accept this, it's expired."
Not only was it expired, it had expired a year ago. So as soon as I got home, I looked up to see how much time, if any, I had left to renew. It was going to expire tomorrow. I had been informed of my negligence on the last day!
So we had to go to the County Clerk's office the next day to prevent me from having to take the written and driving tests all over again, like a newby.
There was another time in high school when I had to write a book report over the weekend. I hated being told what books I had to read, but when I went to the school library and reluctantly chose my book, dozens of Cliffs Notes fell out of the book. Easy book report just when I needed it most.
I had a dream one night that I kept running up and down Heck's Lane. Heck's Lane is a street in Louisville's West End. It is actually an alley that has houses on it. I used to ride my bike on Heck's Lane a lot.
I hadn't thought about it for forty years. I had no reason to, then one night I dreamt about it. The next morning, I open my newspaper and the first article I see is a story about a murder on Heck's Lane staring right back at me.
And of course, there was the time my grandmother and I went to Columbus, Ohio and my car broke down twice. Once in downtown Cincinnati and once coming back on lonely US 42 at 10:00 at night and both times there was a service repair place right at the spot were we broke down.
I seem to have experienced a lot of those things and I'm sure I have forgotten many more. I know they happen to other people, I'm just curious about how often. When Donna and I bought our second house, and after we got moved in and all papers were signed and immediate bills paid, and we were free and clear, we had exactly $100 dollars in our checking account.
When I was about nine years old, I had a wart on my right elbow. It was always getting cut and scraped, but it wouldn't go away. I would pick at it and it would bleed and it plagued me for over a year. Some friends visited us from Florida and the man noticed the wart one evening and he asked, "Ronnie, do you want to get rid of that thing?"
I said "Yes, very much."
He took out a length of string from his pocket and approached me. I thought, "Uh oh, what's he going to do?"
He said, "I'm not going to hurt you," and he wadded the string up and rubbed it over the wart. He then said, "I am going to put this string in this coat pocket and I'm going to leave it there and the wart will go away. You'll see."
I said, "OK, great."
And that was that. I almost forgot about it until a few days later when I noticed it was getting smaller and within two weeks it was completely gone and never came back.
I had two strange incidents with glass that remain unsolved. Donna and I had a glass cutting board, sitting on the counter beside the refrigerator in our apartment. One evening we came home and there were glass pebbles all over the kitchen. It had just exploded for no reason.
Another time I was putting glass doors on a TV storage cabinet in our new house. I took one of them to apply and set the other one in the box that it had come in. The doors were about one foot tall and a foot and a half wide. The box was about three inches high on all four sides. While working with the one, somebody fired a shotgun right outside the back door. We both jumped and I went to see what the Hell had happened.
There was nothing out there and then I noticed the glass panel that was waiting in the box was in little pieces. It had made that loud explosion and glass was all over the box, but not a pebble was found outside those three inch walls. There is no explanation for how or why that happened. The sound of the explosion was quite excessive compared to the size of the glass panel.
One truly unbelievable occurrence happened one Sunday morning long ago. Bud and his wife had gone to church and I took one of his motorcycles for a ride. It was a small motorcycle with high handlebars and it was just fun to ride.
I was out around 3rd Street Road, near New Cut Road, in that vicinity, when all of a sudden the accelerator handle went slack and I came to a halt. The little ball at the end of the cable that connects it to the handlebar had popped off. It was brass and not much bigger than a BB. I got back to Bud's house by grabbing hold of the exposed cable with my fingers and pulling it to make the cycle go.
Bud said, "Let's go see if we can find it so we can get it soldered back on."
"Okay," I said, but I didn't think there was a chance in the world of finding a brass BB in a road shoulder full of small pebbles.
Bud said,"Tell me when you think we've got to the spot it came off and we'll look."
About four or five miles down the road, I gave my best guess and we stopped. Bud, Sarah and I got out and started walking along the gravel shoulder. About two minutes later, Bud shouted, "I found it!"
I couldn't believe it. My sense of direction isn't that good, but sure enough, he found that tiny ball that quickly. That still sounds unbelievable, but it's true and he got it repaired.
Does everyone have that much weird stuff happen to them or is it just me?