Sideswipe: May 11: One-in-a-million coincidences

1. "My crappy bright green Ford Pinto got stolen. Later that day a friend gives me a ride to the police station to make a report. We stop at a light, and my Pinto pulls up right next to us! I look at her, she looks at me, when the light changes we follow the car. The car goes about three blocks and pulls into a liquor store. Guy gets out, leaves the car running for the a/c. She pulls up, I get out, open the Pinto's door and drive my stolen car home. Never even made the police report."

2. "My now-husband was in a terrible car accident as a teen. He was found dead on the scene but was revived. His sister was the random EMT who was called, the defibrillator that was used to revive him was recently donated by the company his mum worked for, and a doctor who heard the car accident from his house and came to assist was the obstetrician who delivered him when he was born. So freaky."

3. "I was cutting vegetables in my kitchen, and a fly was buzzing around my head, so I swung around with the knife in my hand and somehow managed to slice the fly clean in half."

4. "I stuck my hand out the window for half a second to see if it was still raining, and a bird shat right on it. What the hell are the chances? Never doing that again."

Packaging fail

Uninvited guests hard to swallow

Gary and Patti Reitemeyer returned from a trip to their California home to find hundreds of swallows hanging out in their living room, apparently having entered via the chimney. "We open the door and it's like an Alfred Hitchcock movie," Gary Reitemeyer explained. "There were birds flying everywhere. I mean, it was crazy. We were ducking and dodging." It took the couple several hours to usher all the birds out the door. "You can't get all that bird stuff out of the furniture," he said. "So all of the furniture is gone, all of the carpet is gone, the blinds are gone ... everything. Everything is gone." Unfortunately, their insurance will not cover this bizarre incident because of an "exclusion" on their policy in regards to birds.

Creepy kids

When my daughter was around 4 years old, she had a habit of waking me up by getting 10cm from my face and staring at me until I opened my eyes. Once my eyes opened, she'd say, "Mommy your face is pretty. I want to wear it on my face." Okay, Hannibal, let's get some breakfast.