In the early 1980s, I was hitchhiking from Massachusetts to Virginia to attend a wedding. My brother dropped me off at the junction of the Mass Pike and route 495 that morning, and, about ten minutes later, a trucker picked me up. I rode with him all the way to Baltimore… a great first ride.
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More than two weeks later, after visiting Virginia, Illinois, and Wisconsin, I was hitchhiking home and my ride dropped me off after sunset at the junction of 495 and the Mass Pike. Getting rides after dark is almost impossible, so I was facing sleeping out or walking 15 miles home.
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While standing there by the side of the highway, thinking through my options, I was startled, and jumped straight up in the air when a truck hit the brakes so hard the tires smoked and the truck looked like it was about to jackknife. After the truck stopped a few yards from me, I ran up to the passenger side and opened the door; there was my friend from the first day of my trip. It turned out that he lived about a mile from my house and he dropped me off right at the end of my street. He was so stunned that he had given me both the first and last ride of my trip that he couldn’t stop exclaiming about it during the drive.
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Nevertheless, he could not have been any more astonished than I was, and it still stands out in my mind as one of the most impressive coincidences of my life.
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