Plot Twists and Unbelievable Turns: Real-Life Stories That Will Amaze You

The Missing $200

1991, I’m 19, just signed the lease for my first (solo) apartment, just got the first paycheck from my new job, and I deposit the paycheck at an ATM (another first! I’d always gone into the bank to do it). Two weeks later, I get my bank statement in the mail and see with horror I have only $1.87 in my account. Way wrong, I should have at least $200, I’d been very careful with my spending. I’m freaked, I came within $2 of bouncing my first rent check.

I’m literally reaching for the phone to call the bank when the phone rings. It’s the police, asking if my ATM card was stolen. I check my wallet and the card is missing (my job at a theater pub came with cash tips so I didn’t use the card often), and tell them I was going to call them anyway because I was missing $200 from my account. “Well, we’ve got your card, and your $200, so come down to the police station,” they tell me.

I can’t figure out how they have my card AND the cash. Doesn’t make sense. I drive down there.

The detective says someone (let’s call him Bob) pulled in to use an ATM and saw a man acting suspiciously while he was using it, moving back and forth as if trying to dodge the camera. Bob says the man then left the ATM, got into a car, and drove away at high speeds as if fleeing. Bob then went to the ATM and put his card in, which popped out. Bob then withdrew $200, and then another ATM card popped out. My card. Bob’s card had popped out because the crook had left my card in the ATM before speeding away. Bob realized he had withdrawn the money from my account and not his, so he brought my card and the cash to the police and reported the attempted theft.

The detective gives me the description of the crook. According to Bob, it was a man of 5’7″, with brown hair, and round gold-rimmed glasses. I say out loud “So, about my height, my color hair, and glasses like mine,” before realizing Bob was describing me.

I’d never deposited a check in an ATM before, so I was moving back and forth, following the instructions on the screen, filling out the envelope with my account number, punching the amount in, etc. I then forgot to take my card out and just left because I’m a f*cking idiot. I drove away at high speeds because I was 19 and that’s how I drove everywhere.

Worried the detective might be annoyed, I didn’t tell him I was the crook, I just thanked him and left with the money I stole from myself. Somewhere in a box in my closet, I still have the police report where I’m both the victim and the perp.

Unplanned and Unforgettable

A few years ago I got invited to a friend’s engagement party. They were throwing a huge bash because they were planning on a very small destination wedding. Later in the evening, my friend’s fiancé takes the mic and starts thanking everyone for being there. “Sorry, Jen will be out to thank you guys in a minute, she’s just having a wardrobe malfunction”. He goes on to tell the story about how they met, how they were best friends and decided to get engaged and finished along the lines of “we wish you could all be there and that we could get married right now. So we’re going to”

Out walks Jen in her wedding dress.

RockG

Getting the Last Laugh

I once had a job interview. It was very early in my career and I was trying to move 500 miles to a new place. I built prototypes and brought samples of my work. It was a 9-hour drive, but everyone seemed so enthusiastic that I figured it was a lock.
I did not get the job. I found another job in the area and took it. 6 months later they called and asked me to interview for the job above the one I had applied for. I was given an offer on the spot and worked there for almost a decade. In the first few months, the people there told me the guy whose job I had (who would have been my boss if he hired me initially) had actually said the samples and work I did was beyond him and he didn’t want an employee who knew more than him. Well, I guess he doesn’t have that problem since they fired him and replaced him with me.

reddituser

Never Judge A Book

I was a Starbucks barista before the whole “names on cups” thing was big- or at least, it wasn’t really practiced in my tiny store.

There was this very cute guy who came in maybe 4-6x to a week. A little often, but nothing out of the ordinary. I flirted like mad. He flirted back. It was all great. Then he comes in with his fiance. I was betrayed and treated him coldly from then on.

A month later, two of him come in together and I find out that he–uh, they–are twins and I’d shot down any chance I had with the single one.

mindovermacabre

Tinder Matches Collide

I was seeing a guy from tinder for a couple of months but it fizzled out and we stopped talking. I was on tinder again shortly after and matched with a girl (I’m bi) who told me to follow her on Instagram. I noticed the tinder guy also followed her so I ask how she knows him, she hits me with “He was dating my best friend for ages but they broke up a couple of weeks ago because he was with some girl from tinder.

Gone with the Wind?

I work at a prison and a lady flew all the way from Nigeria to visit her brother who was supposed to be incarcerated at my unit. She speaks little English but we tried to explain to her that the inmate was not in the system anymore. He must have been released. We call a supervisor and it turns out he was released over 5 months before. She walks away confused and comes back in with her husband who speaks English much better. We tell him the scenario and he asks, “well where did he go? He doesn’t have any friends or family in the US.” We told him we don’t know where he went, he was released he could be anywhere. The guy, obviously confused, says “Well… he couldn’t have gone anywhere… because he doesn’t have any legs.” So a legless Nigerian ex-felon with no ties is scooting around the US and no one knows where he is.

OGDanx2

The Unholy Transformation

Grew up obsessed with being a perfect Christian daughter. Dad was a pastor, mom a nurse and played the piano at church.

Church three times a week, Christian school, only listened to Christian music. I felt guilty reading and enjoying fantasy and sci-fi and would mentally rewrite things to be more acceptable and used a pen to scribble out swear words, on and on.

I was just as insufferable as you could imagine.

Now I’m a polyamorous neo-pagan who writes smut and has a sailor’s mouth.

Never went crazy or anything, never been drunk or done drugs, but I’m pretty sure my family wishes that was the direction I took to be honest.

Last-Minute Bridesman

The day before my wedding, one of my bride’s maids (bridesman? Dude in my bridal party) went AWOL. He’d been one of my closest friends for years, and he didn’t show up to the rehearsal dinner, wasn’t answering calls, anything. (I found out later he was silently battling drug addiction and was strung out; he’s clean now though and has been for a few years).

So in a last-minute scramble, one of my husband’s friends who came to town for the wedding and was the same size as my friend stepped in. I had all of the guys’ shirts and ties already since they were all going to be getting ready together anyway, and it was a summer wedding so suits weren’t being worn.

My matron of honor ghosted me the day after the wedding despite having been my best friend since we were kids (and hoo boy the abandonment issues that have come from that), and I’m not as close with my other bridesmaids as I was, but my last-minute bridesman? Probably my very best friend now. We text daily (even if it’s just exchanging memes), and he’s just an all-around great friend. So even though I didn’t know it at the time, my best friend was at my wedding party, it just wasn’t one of the ones I’d actually picked to be there.

Family Feud

In 40+ years, my family on my dad’s side had never fought. Never a single argument. Never a disagreement. Then, my grandma died. The entire family fell apart into 2 different tribes of war. One side attacked my dad, and the other side defended him. The bad side blamed my dad because my grandma died of stage 4 terminal, fully metastasized, pancreatic cancer within 3 weeks of diagnosis because, apparently, the cancer is his fault.

It’s been going on for about 3 years now and is not easing up. So much hate that never existed before. It makes me sad because I like my family.

Just Be Yourself

When I was a teen some 25 years ago, I played trumpet in the school band. We did a Halloween parade, but I had nothing to dress in costume for. I decided on a large black sheet with a hole in the top for my huge ponytail to stick out from the top in all its glory of crazy frizzy poof of curls, and a hole for my face and arms to stick out. I got a lot of “Wtf are you supposed to be?” I don’t know, I suppose.

Anyway, after the parade, my mother wanted to see my locker before leaving just to surprise check for anything not allowed. We pass by the auditorium and notice a talent show just beginning. Mom pressured me to enter playing my trumpet. In this weird costume no less.

By the time I was to go on, I still had no clue what to play. I felt silly in my Halloween costume getup when nobody else was in costume unless they were dancing or a magician acting.

I walked down the aisle towards the stage with trumpet in hand, contemplating what to do in my nervousness. Heard whispers among the crowd, as I climbed the little three steps of stairs up the stage, I trip and fall up the remaining two stairs. I’m so clumsy.

So I stand up and play it off like I meant to do that. Began acting silly and tooting my horn like a duck. Did a silly dance to an improv version of the most basic song to play, Hot Cross Buns/Three Blind Mice.

Ripples of kids are giggling in the audience. I see my mother’s face contorted in displeasure that I’m not being serious enough to win this. Too bad Mom, this is my time to shine in all my goofy glorious weirdness.

I wiggle my topknot poof and play a few jazzy bits of songs some older folks should know.

Then to finish off, I act like I’m swimming a bit and begin playing “Under The Sea” from The Little Mermaid I had learned the year before. End it by pretending to drown as I left back down the stairs without falling.

Mom took me out in the hall to have her fit for about 10 mins while the last contestants finish the show.

She then goes off to look thru my locker while I put away my trumpet and prepare to leave. I wait for her by the auditorium exit. They begin announcing the winners.

I won first place.

A Lucky Twist Of Fate

Studying abroad in England, I planned a weekend trip to Barcelona with this girl. This is a pre-cellphone.

I overslept. Got to the airport three hours late. As soon as I arrive, there’s the girl. At the exact same time we both say, “I am SO sorry… Wait, what are you sorry for?”

Turns out she overslept too. British Airways changed our tickets for us, at no charge, and we got to Barcelona a few hours late.

Who Was He Really?

During the last year of my grandfather’s life, he had dementia and was having trouble keeping track of reality. Before he was placed into hospice he kept complaining about a man that was in his house, he would say that he would come around at night and that he was taking his things and using his stuff. Grandma of course kept reassuring him that she was the only one there. His doctor increased his medications because he was losing touch with reality so badly.

Fast forward to my grandfather’s funeral and a man showed up that wasn’t known by more than a few people in the family. Turns out he was an old friend of my grandmother’s who showed up to give his support. In a small town like that it wasn’t exactly an unusual thing to have random people who show up at the funeral home who knew the person at some point.

Well about a year later my grandmother lets slip that she is seeing someone, the guy from the funeral. At this point nothing too odd, they got to talking at church and we thought it was sweet.

Then a bit later sweet innocent ol’ grandma mentions that it’s their 3rd anniversary.

Grandpa died two years prior. This man was the person that grandpa saw in his house every night. He was the reason that everyone thought grandpa was going crazy, he was the reason that my grandfather was medicated to the point of being a vegetable for the last horrible year of his life.

A Train Ride to Remember

My buddy and his girlfriend took a train to London to see a band play. It was a long journey (almost an hour) with a few stops, and once they were one stop away from London they realized they didn’t have the concert tickets.

They got off the train, checked their bags, searched every pocket, checked their bags again and decided to go back home to look there. They got back and found the tickets on the table in the hall of their house, and headed back out again.

When they were arriving at the station for a second time, they had to wait because there was a potential bomb threat. It turned out there was an unattended bag that was being checked over by the bomb squad.

Whose bag? My buddy’s girlfriend’s bag. She’d left it at the station after looking for the tickets.

The Coincidence Of A Lifetime

I was adopted from South America to the US when I was a toddler and have no memory of my birth parents. I had an older friend/mentor I met in college. I knew him as Mike. When I learned that my birth mother passed away I got a few of her belongings including some pictures. Who was in these pictures? Mike. He was my birth father.

Only To Find Out

I was 19 and I had just started a job at a new sushi restaurant. Well, the manager that was showing me around my first 5 days was young and pretty cute. She seemed flirtatious, but I wasn’t trying to push or assume anything because I was a new hire. Well after that week, she went on a vacation for a month to the Philippines so I kind of forgot about her.

Well a month later she returns and she is out drinking. So at 2:30 in the morning I get a random call from her saying that she has been drinking and is now driving (which I hate) and she wanted to talk to someone. Anyway, after a lot of bullsh*t from her end, she ends up at my place cause she needed to go to the bathroom (and I wanted her off the road)

She ends up deciding she can’t/shouldn’t drive and she wants to stay the night. So I set up the extra futon for her (cause she is my manager and I ain’t trying to cause no problems lol). Well, she decides that she sobered the f*ck up when I turn out the lights and she starts getting talkative and flirtatious. Things escalate and I end up stopping it before we have sex. At this point, it’s 5 in the morning and I ask her “You good to drive?”

She responds “Yeah, I should probably get going. My husband is at home waiting for me.”

….. WHAT THE?!?

When the Tables Turn

I worked for a bank at their call center as a workforce admin. We had a supervisor with a higher-than-normal personnel rotation. People would be doing OK, then suddenly their numbers would drop and quit.

In one of those, the guy quitting made a big f*cking scene called him out, insulted him, pushed him around and ended up being restrained by other coworkers.

At the HR meeting, the supervisor is going off on this guy, bringing up every single thing the guy did wrong. He was boasting a bit too about how he had to fix all of this dude’s mistakes.

The entire time, the guy sat silent, said nothing, and just stared at whoever asked him something. When the HR rep asked if he had anything to add, he pulled out a tape recorder, and just… played recording after recording. Of what you ask? Of the supervisor literally threatening the guy. Harassing him, belittling him, and overall being a complete a**h*le.

Apparently, this guy would target overperforming agents and make their working environment h*ll, to protect his position.

I’m told the supervisor simply stared at his feet and nodded when told he was fired. The agent, as I understand it, was also let go, but very well compensated.

reddituser

Mile High Betrayal

Was on a flight from Paris to Boston. I had the aisle seat across from a little hall of bathrooms in the middle of the plane. At one point a man from a few rows up goes into a bathroom and after a couple of minutes comes out and is just standing in the aisle so it gets my attention. He keeps going in and coming back out looking up towards where he is sitting. I see a woman who is sitting next to his empty seat shake her head at him but he doesn’t give up. Finally, after like 5 times of coming in and out he finally gets the woman to come back there. The lights are out and most of the plane is sleeping and once she comes back to him they start making out in the bathroom hallway before he goes into one and pulls her in with him.

They are in there for quite a while and then he comes out and goes back to his seat and a few minutes later she comes out and does the same. They are really flirty in their seats and about an hour later repeat it. The man goes in and then she joins him. They end up doing this three times throughout the flight. My husband who is sitting next to me has caught on to what they are doing as well and we made a joke about how they must be newlyweds on their honeymoon.

We get off the plane and the woman is standing at the gate waiting and the man is nowhere in sight. As the people from the back of the plane get off a completely different man goes up to her and gives her a kiss on the lips and asks her if she was able to get any sleep on the flight and calls her dear. Then they walk off towards the luggage area with their arms around each other. So apparently what we thought was an adventurous newlywed couple was actually a woman hooking up with her seatmate while her husband was sitting in the back of the plane.

Surprising Family Tree Connection

In primary school, We had a WWI memorial lesson and we were asked if anyone had any relatives who fought at the time.

My friend brought in a picture of his great great grandfather with his wife.

A girl also brought in a picture of her great great grandfather with his wife.

The teacher said they looked similar. She put them side by side and looked shocked, we gathered around and it was the same man who had kept his two wives a secret. Both had been married privately.

They were cousins and didn’t know.

meditatorBear

Sweetest Job Referral Ever

In my last year of university, a friend’s boyfriend whom I’d only met once decided to refer me for a vacancy at his job, even though I had no relevant experience and hardly any relevant professional knowledge.

But he’s just a very sweet nice guy and somehow genuinely thought I’d qualify, and I didn’t want to disappoint him by rejecting the idea completely. So, I sent over the (near-empty) CV.

Got a call the next day inviting me for an interview (had to check twice whether it was a scam). Figured it’d be very painful when they realised how unqualified I am, but interview experience is valuable, so I went.

I told them I had no idea what that particular position was about, so we just chatted about maths and stuff and said our goodbyes.

Got a call the next day asking whether I could start next month. Figured it would end at the trial period but who am I to decline?

That was almost 9 years ago, I’m a senior analyst at that same company and love my job.

A Single Surgery

Since I was 13, I have had horrible foot pain whenever I walk for more than an hour. When I worked at my church bookstore, I would often have to sit for the majority of the time I was there. My ankle would swell up, and if it was really bad my knee would too. In every photo of me we have taken at Disney or Universal, I am in a wheelchair.

We never really got a conclusive diagnosis. I was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis, an unspecified autoimmune disorder, and even a ganglion cyst. After an MRI, a partly fused bone was discovered in my ankle. A single surgery was all it would take to fix it, or at least lessen the pain. If only we had known that back then.

I_Ace_English

Unexpected Twists Of Life

Married my high school sweetheart. It was a storybook love story, we supported each other. In our early 20s we moved across the country with no plan at all, no jobs no place to live, and it worked out. We eventually both got a master’s degree, she became a licensed therapist, and I got my MBA and got a good job at a hospital. We bought a house, things were going great. She had a lump on her ovary, but no problem it was benign. Treatment was dependent on our plans to have kids. We had talked about having kids but we were never in a hurry. We were in our early 30’s at this point. We decided we would eventually like to have kids so they surgically removed the bump and put her on hormone therapy. So here is the plot twist… turns out she is bipolar and the hormones kind of set her off. She gets completely psychotic and delusional and ends up hospitalized and out of touch with reality for about 6 months. I am with her the whole way, she eventually gets clear and is on medication that controls it. She is symptom-free for a year, her psych doc chalks the event up to hormone therapy and takes her off the meds, but she is still fine. We get pregnant, we have the baby. One day she is nursing the baby and she tells me “there are cameras in the lights.” She has her 2nd episode. I can’t describe how horrible these episodes are. She is paranoid and delusional and she thinks she is completely fine. She is treatment-resistant and unwilling to go to the hospital. It’s another hard 6 months before she finally comes out of it. Now she knows she is bipolar and takes meds every day. Her biggest fear is that she will get sick in front of our daughter. She gets another job, I get a raise and an opportunity for a promotion if we move. She was fine for 2 years. One day she is feeling off so she goes to her doc. This is the start of the 3rd episode. We don’t make it through this one. She gets violent, quits her job (even though she is currently on disability), and drains the checking account. The 3rd time she hits me it is in front of the kid. She is so treatment-resistant, I just need to protect myself and the kid, so I left her. We were together for 20 years. We were supposed to grow old together. Now I’m a single dad and after almost a year she is finally coming out of it. So the next chapter of my life is starting with a custody battle.

itspersonal2020

The Accidental IT Career

Aged 19, about to drop out of University with no real direction in life a friend asks if I’d mind setting up an IRC server for him as he doesn’t know how. He said hey, if you do this I’ll put in a good word with my boss and maybe he’ll hire you later. Took me all of 30 minutes. His boss did indeed hire me a few months later, that’s my first real IT job. Met my wife on the same server about a year later and then a year after that I moved to the USA to marry her and started a new life. It’ll be 22 years this year.

zerbey

Seven Years Later

I met a guy on a cruise ship when I was 13. Long story short, we spent a few days talking and hanging out and I basically fell head over heels. On the last night, we never got a chance to say goodbye or exchange numbers, and I only knew his first name. It should’ve been nothing more than a forgotten childhood fling, but for some reason, I could never quite forget about him. I guess you could say he was my first love, in a naive sort of way. I went on to have a few long-term relationships but I always found myself “missing” this guy I’d met so many years ago, and I left those future relationships feeling a kind of emptiness I can’t explain. By a weird string of unlikely events that would take paragraphs to explain, I reconnected with this mystery cruise guy from my childhood 7 years later, at 20 years old.

It took a few weeks for him to confirm with his family whether his cruise had been the exact same week as mine, but we confirmed they were the same length of time, both traveled to the same places and happened around approximately the same time frame. Most significantly though, the guy I reconnected with randomly told me a very specific story about something that happened at a band concert in 6th grade, and as he told it I realized it was the EXACT same story the guy on the cruise had told me. He even told it the same way.

We were still waiting for confirmation but honestly, at this point, I was convinced this was the guy I met years ago. All the details kept lining up perfectly and things just felt right somehow. We got really close over those next few weeks, talking for hours and hours on end and just really hitting it off. Then he hears back from his sister, and he finds out his cruise was a completely different year than mine, and there’s no logical way we could’ve met before.

We’re still dating a year and a half later, though. Guess he was the one I was searching for after all.

reddituser

A Blast from the Past

We are living in Florida at the time and my Dad goes to the eye doctor because he is seeing double. In all other respects, he’s healthy. He explains his symptoms to the doctor. This was the early 2000s. The doctor picks up a medical book on eye problems. He finds the kind of symptoms my Dad is describing. The doctor shows him the book. In the book, there is a whole medical page explaining what he is experiencing and a picture of a kid from the 1960s. My Dad looks at the picture and says “Doc, that’s me!” The doctor says “Yes, those are the symptoms you are showing.” My Dad says “no really that’s me in the picture!”

It turns out my Dad had this eye problem when he was a kid and it was so rare that they took his picture in 1960s Ohio and slapped him in a book of rare eye problems. He doesn’t remember much about taking the picture but he did manage to get a copy of it to take home.

Love at First Conversation

Meeting my husband totally changed my life. Before I met him, I kinda just submitted to the idea that I was gonna be the 40-year-old lady who worked at dari mart, was always on the verge of poverty and lived with 20 cats in an apartment not fit for human habitation. I don’t see what he saw in me at the time, I hadn’t showered in a week, was wearing clothes full of holes, was smoking cheap cigs like a chimney, and hadn’t brushed my teeth in like three days. (Mind you, my husband comes from extreme wealth, so it’s even more surprising that he thought I was worth talking to, much less worth hitting on) But we hit it off the moment we started talking, and for the first time in my life, I felt a little bit of hope for myself. I mean, this amazing guy was hitting on me, maybe I wasn’t so awful. Fast forward three years, we are now married, I have won the battle with my depression and anxiety, we live a humble but healthy life, he is about to start a rather lucrative career that he is excited about, and we are about to get a dog, and generally have a normal and happy life. Never in a million years thought I would be this happy. He spoils me like crazy and gives me hope during my rarer dark moments. I know for a fact that he saved my life.

reddituser

Took A Surprising Turn

Several years ago I went down to the New River Gorge with my wife (then fiancée) and a group of friends to camp and rock climb over memorial day weekend. Over the course of the trip, five of us decided that on the last day, instead of doing another climbing location, we were going white water rafting. We booked with a guide company and showed up in the morning ready to go. We hopped on the bus to the launch site and when we got there we were told that we were going to have an addition to our group of five. The guy who was introduced to us said he got too drunk the night before and missed the first trip of the day that he and his friends had booked, but he lucked out since there was one open spot on the next trip! Great! We load up and start the trip, just shooting the sh*t with our new rafting friend.

Over the course of the ride down, this guy seemed to know his way around a raft and seemed weirdly familiar with the river. At one point, our guide was pointing out a class 2 or 3 rapids section that he said was safe to swim through – this guy immediately jumps out of the raft, climbs up a rock in the middle of the river, and does a perfect 360 flip into the rapids!

Near the end of the trip, our guide hits us with the plot twist: we’re his first-ever group, this was his test, and our suspicious knowledge addition was his supervisor! We were all blown away! We spend the rest of the trip just piecing together the missed clues in the best bamboozle of our lives. Needless to say, the trainee guide passed his test and got a great first review (and a nice tip), and we all got a great story.

Fatherhood in 55 Minutes

One day my girlfriend was having severe abdominal pain. So bad that she asked me to call an ambulance.

We get to the hospital, they run some tests.

The doctor comes out and says “Okay, we’re ready to wheel her into the delivery room.”

Me: “Hang on, what’s this about a delivery room?”

Doc: “Your girlfriend is 10cm dilated and ready to have the baby.”

Me: “What baby?“

Doc: “Oh boy, have I got some news for you.”

55 minutes later I was a father.

freelancer1010