Everybody loves a story about a too good to be true moment they never saw coming, whether it’s an unexpected cash windfall or a few unexpected moments of terrible timing. Hearing about some ordinary person being thrown into an extreme moment of circumstance gives us hope there's still a chance we can still get trapped in an elevator with Taylor Swift.
Okay. Maybe that's just a dream I have been waiting on. But I'm sure we all have our own version of that we wish would one day come true.
We took to the Internet to hear some stories of happy or misfortunate circumstance in moments of "this is too good to be true."
Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#25 Four Eyes Ready To Fight
I was at a busy pub and a guy carrying two pints of beers bumps into my then girlfriend, spilling some over her shoulder. I get over-protective, put on my war face and tell him to watch it. Everyone within earshot stops talking and looks in our direction.
While holding both of his drinks he responds, "You wouldn't hit a guy with glasses, would ya?"
Everyone bursts out laughing, completely defusing the atmosphere, and we all leave as friends at the end of the night.
#24 New Leg
When my surgeon saved my disfigured leg and I walked properly for the first time in 18 years. It didn't dawn on me until I started climbing a flight of stairs. I was halfway up them when I broke down crying.
#23 Meme Money
As a 20-year-old college student depending on his parents, I made a meme site in two hours just for fun and spent about half an hour each month updating it. Within four months it was making $250 a day which lasted about three years.
#22 America The Beautiful
When I was 11 years old I entered an essay contest about what makes America great. I was a C student and never wrote a thing in my life. I came in second place and got a $100 gift certificate to a toy store. We were on welfare so it was a huge deal. I bought one of those Talkboys from Home Alone 2 and a stunt kite.
#21 Mood Change
For a few weeks, people were asking what was wrong with me because my mood had completely changed. Nobody could make me mad. I put it towards LESS stress than usual. But they noticed a difference in my motor skills. I'd reach for something that was clearly further than I had seen it, react a split second slower (which is unusual because I'm typically the guy who catches the mistake or awkwardness before anybody else), and I generally looked lost. I had no idea.
On Friday I suddenly got a random nosebleed and went to the restroom to clean up. When I bent over to grab some toilet paper I vomited onto the floor of the restroom. I cleaned myself up, but it looked like I'd ruptured every blood vessel in my face and went to see the on-site medic.
Upon inspection, he said it looked like dry sinuses, but in the worst case scenario I could have had an aneurysm. He was almost positive it was sinuses, but it turned out that I'd had a micro-cerebral aneurysm that was at a rupturing point and my body managed to expel the pressure and blood through my sinuses. My mood was changed because of the pressure the swelling caused on my brain. I could have died.
#20 A Coke And A Smile
Back in 2012, Coca-Cola was running one of those text-in competitions in the United Kingdom: "Send in the code and win four tickets to see the London Olympics!"
My family proceeded to text in the codes on every can and bottle we used because we really wanted to go and see the Olympics, especially since we'd failed to get any from the ticket site.
Lo and behold, we won not once but twice. That's eight tickets and £600 in spending money on a prepaid Visa card. Together the prizes were probably worth many years of Coke consumption, and we saw the events on "Super Saturday" when Britain won three gold medals
#19 Just In Time
I had forgotten about a ticket I had to pay and received a notice in the mail that said if I didn't pay $500 within two weeks then my license would be suspended. I was 21 years old and working part-time. My paychecks were less than $200 a week, so there was no way I was going to be able to pay it in time.
The next day while getting gas I bought a scratch-off lottery ticket and won $500.
Ten years later I still can't believe it happened. Before that day and ever since then I have not won more than $5 on any form of lottery.
#18 Getting Paid For A Date
I took my girlfriend to the movies and instead of putting $25.00 into the credit card machine the employee put $2.50 in. She discovered the mistake when the receipt printed off but said we could go in for that price. We walked in and I found a $20 bill on the ground. I made money by taking my girlfriend to the movies.
#17 A Rollercoaster Of Emotion
M&M's was doing a contest where if you got an entire bag of purple M&M's you win $1,000,000. I was driving to school with my mom and picked up some M&M's on the way. When I opened them up the impossible happened: they were all purple! I couldn't believe it. I was rich. I was in the 6th grade and I told my mom I wasn't going to school anymore and that I would just live on that money for the rest of my life. I was in pure ecstasy.
Then I opened the inside of the package and read the fine print. "You are our first prize winner!" I won and then I read further: "First prize winners are entitled to a free jumbo bag of M&M's (shipping not included) and the grand prize winner will receive $1,000,000!" I threw all of my purple M&M's out the window and went to school a broken man.
#16 Parlez Vous Francais?
I had terrible anxiety in high school and I was terrible at French. In my third year of French, I had to do an oral exam with a mean teacher and I was absolutely petrified. I knew I was going to fail badly. We sit down to do the exam and before I can open my mouth there is a ruckus outside (some sort of fight between students or something) so the teacher gets up to deal with it. She came back five minutes later, apologizes, and doesn't remember that we never started the exam. She dismissed me and I got out of there and didn't say a thing. I got an A on the exam.
#15 Gone Fishin'
I'm doing deliveries for a store and a customer comes in and buys a whole house full of furniture. I load it up and take it to him. He writes me a check and starts asking me about the area and invites me to go fishing. He tips me $25 and asks if I'm up for a little more work. He tells me he bought some mattresses from another store and it'd be cheaper to pay me to pick them up than to pay their in-house people.
I say sure and go get them. He pays me with another check. No tip this time. The next morning, he calls me and says an item he ordered has arrived over at FedEx and asks if I'd mind picking it up. I say sure and go get it. He pays me again, then asks me if I have time to move some furniture he has stored in his garage to his parent's house. I say sure.
He meets me at his parents and asks what I'm doing on Saturday and tells me he has a boat down on the lake. He asks if I have a fishing pole and license. I say no on both accounts and he tells me to give him a call the night before and we'd meet up and go fishing. I go buy a rod and reel and pick up my fishing license and I call him. He apologizes and says that we'll have to wait until Sunday because he has to go to work the next day.
I checked my bank account and realized he'd paid me with a check every time I did a job for him. Every one of them bounced. $425 in bad checks and they caused a bunch of my checks to bounce, too.
It was pretty satisfying when the Secret Service arrested him. Turns out, he'd posed as a tornado victim to get relief funds and had written $160,000 in bad checks. I'll never get my money, but he won't taste freedom for at least 10 years.
#14 Almost Out Of The Hole
I'd been out of work due to illness and it had taken a huge toll on us financially. I'm better now, but I lost my car and I have no way to get to work. A few weeks ago my husband got a call out of the blue that we'd overpaid a bill by about $2,500. That would have gotten me a car. He leaves work to come get me because we both have to sign for it. He gets halfway home and they call back saying they'd made a mistake. We didn't overpay. I sat and cried.
#13 It's All Connected
I run an Internet horror series and my brother was given a side character's profile to produce and maintain on YouTube. At one point, he decides to customize the background and avatar so he looks for a picture of a classy man with an afro. Now, in terms of the series' and genre's lore and background, fire, ash, and arson play a major part. My brother finds a random image of a man in a suit with an afro and makes it his background. Occasionally, we blacked out his eyes to mess with viewers, but we just thought it was funny, messing with an unassuming picture to scare people.
However, it turns out that the image was a reporter by the name of Larry Langford and at the time, we had a plot point about an arson in Chicago which led a viewer to search for Larry Langford. This was also the name of the "mad mayor" of Birmingham, Alabama, where he was charged with a devastating fire by arson. All of this coincidence is on top of the fact that a character we had been developing had run away from home in Alabama after she set her family's house on fire.
It was so out-of-the-way, mind-blowingly connected, that we just sat there in disbelief after it came full circle.
#12 Moving Day
My wife and I were desperate to move out of our house and feeling trapped. The basement had flooded and was torn up for two years so we were living in half the space we needed, and the neighbors were awful.
The last straw was when our ex-cop neighbor sprayed weed killer on our lawn without warning us, which killed our grass in a three-foot strip along the property line and may have been the cause of one of our dogs getting sick. When I confronted him, he got angry. He told me he had lots of cop and military friends who could make my life difficult. I did what I could to diffuse the situation, but tensions were high.
I had to leave for a convention and I felt horrible leaving my wife home alone with this psycho next door. We were both pretty distraught and didn't know what we were going to do.
My first night of the convention I won $48,000 on a slot machine. We closed on our new house a few months later.
#11 Game Of Thrones
While reading A Game of Thrones during my trip to Morroco, the hostel's owner recognizes the book and mentions one of the actors is staying in the hostel, too. I laugh and think she's joking, but two hours later I'm sitting next to Jack Gleeson (Prince Joffrey) on the terrace with his buddy, talking about our plans for tomorrow. We ended up taking a four-hour tour of Tangier and spent the whole day hanging out. I refrained from cracking Joffery jokes every second. He's a pretty cool dude; completely different from his character.
#10 That's Not Where I Left It
I purchased a Honda Civic off Craigslist for $3,000 and I had a hospital appointment on an Air Force base that same day. I'm at the gate and suddenly all of the guard dogs point out my car. The police yell at me to pull to the side. They pull out their weapons and tell me to get out slowly. The dogs search the car, I'm arrested and walked to a little building off to the side where I explain how I just purchased the car half an hour previously and showed them the title with the seller's name.
It turns out that the previous owner was a substance dealer and hid substances in the car. Apparently, he tore off the headliner and shoved the substances between the roof and the headliner. They call the city police and ask them to run a search on the guy and it comes up as wanted for substance possession and distribution. I was let go and he was arrested. I decided to buy another car a few months later and was given $6,000 for the Civic.
#9 Healing Heart
For my whole life, I've had to see a cardiologist due to a defect in my heart. During my last appointment, he listened to my heart, frowned, and ordered an ultrasound. Apparently, he couldn't hear the defect. So, lo and behold, the ultrasound is done, and he said that if the hole in my heart was any smaller, it wouldn't be there.
It took me a minute to process what he said, and even longer to process that I wouldn't have to step into his office again.
#8 The Holy Grail Of Pool Tables
When I was about 12 years old my parents were both in the Air Force and we were stationed at Langley Air Force Base. My dad had just picked me up from the summer daycare center on base and we stopped at the base store. Upon entering the establishment I see a Jack Daniels pool table with an "Enter to Win" sign. I tug on my dad's sleeve and say, "Wouldn't it be funny to enter that raffle?" He filled out one of the cards and put it in the box.
Six months later my dad was deployed and my mom and I were watching television when we get a call. My mom looks shocked and hangs up, telling me we just won a pool table. As we were getting the pool table reassembled in our newly finished basement, the guy putting it together was looking at it like it was the Holy Grail. He tells us that it's one of 50 made that was only given out to the military.
#7 Text Message
I was having an argument with my boyfriend about whether his texts with a married friend of his were inappropriate. He kept arguing that I was paranoid and jealous, and I was arguing that he knew exactly what he was doing.
He was waving his cellphone around in the heat of the argument, and right at that moment it beeped and a text from her showed up on the screen:
"I'm coming to your city in two weeks, think you can get us some alone time without your girlfriend around?"
Instant argument win.
#6 Winning Shot
I was at a basketball game with a friend when they selected me to try and make a blindfolded half-court shot for a lot of money. So I go to the office, sign a bunch of papers, and a few minutes later I'm standing at the half-court line with my blindfold on, taking the shot. After I shot the ball, the crowd went wild so I knew I made the shot and I couldn't believe it! As they bring out my huge check I realize it's my friend and it was all an elaborate prank.
I didn't actually make the shot. While I was off signing papers, he told the crowd to pretend I made the shot.
#5 Karmic Force
When I was younger I was really into Star Wars Episode I and I wanted any Star Wars toy, but we didn't have much money. One day I came home from school and there was an enormous box sitting in the foyer and my mom was standing there waiting for me to get home. The box had my name on the shipping label so I was excited since I rarely got anything in the mail. I ripped it open and it was every single toy from the new Star Wars movie. My mom and I have no idea to this day who sent it but boy was I grateful!
I don't remember doing this, but according to my mom a week or two before that box came in the mail my class was accepting donations for a gift for a classmate whose father had just passed away and I brought in all the money in my piggy bank, which was about $27. My teacher told my mom about my generous donation. My mom likes to think that it was my guardian angel looking out for me.
#4 The Crush
I was leaving after an event I had been organizing with a girl I've had a crush on. I never made a move because I thought she didn't feel anything for me and I'd been busier and more exhausted than ever. She followed me out the door after the event and told me that she couldn't take it anymore and she kissed me. We're finally seeing each other as "more than just friends."
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