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What's the most unusual way or bizarre set of circumstances you've made a new friend?
- Sorry, this is gonna be disjointed and long:
I was working for the county coroner's office and we went to pick up a body (which is what we did) that was found out on one of the backroads in my county.
It was January, and the body was frozen, which made the pick-up a bit more difficult.
Some dumbass officer had brought the young woman's husband to the scene of death to identify the body (apparently forgetting protocol was to have the relatives ID the body in the coroner's office).
He, understandably, was a mess when he saw the corpse, with a film of ice covering her, still rigored into the sitting position she had died in.
I let the other two guys on the crew finish the delivery (once we had gotten her in the van) and I took him into town while we were waiting for the body to be processed in.
We grabbed a cup of coffee at the local Mom and Pop diner and he talked about his wife. They'd only been married for a year, she was schizophrenic and had gone off her meds abruptly.
He had called her in as a missing person two days prior. Seems she had decided to go for a walk in a sundress in January and (eventually the autopsy confirmed) had died of exposure.
I was able to sympathize due to mental illness in my own family, and having taken some loss of loved ones shortly prior to this day.
My shift was over at 8 am, so, I went with him to ID the body and assisted him with the thousand details that have to be handled when a loved one dies (he had no family nearby).
Anyway, I was glad to assist as much as I could with getting his wife's funeral arranged, and he asked me to be a pallbearer.
I was honored, but, I didn't want to step on any toes if there were relatives that could have stepped in. Turns out, there really wasn't anyone but me and her brother.
I called up the rest of the guys I worked with, we all attended the small funeral and carried her to the gravesite.
He was apparently touched that a bunch of relative strangers would put on suits and show up to pay respects to his wife.
He called me a few days later and asked if I wanted to come over for a dinner. As a thank you, he said, but I think he just didn't want to be alone and he didn't know anyone else in the area.
So I went over, we had fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy and we drank whisky and talked about his wife.
This became a regular thing, once or twice a week. Dinner, drinks, but the reminiscing slowly stopped and the conversation went more towards plans for the future or discussion of the present, less and less about the past.
I took him out, when I could get him to leave the house. Introduced him to my friends. They became his friends, too, and introduced him to other friends. We started building him a social/support network in our community.
Ten years later, I had left our town for the military and came back to find him still there and thriving. He owns a second hand/rare books business, is a pillar of the community.
He's met a woman, they're planning to get married. Neither of them want kids, and they're kinda perfect for each other.
He stood as godfather to my youngest son and I was asked to be best man at his wedding this summer.
Sometimes, from tragedy, we can extract some happiness.
I don't think he ever really got over the circumstances of his first wife's death, or the associated guilt, but, he's managed to leave the past in the past and move forward, and that's all most of us can ask for, I think.
EDIT: Wow, did not expect gold for this. Thanks! As Bill and Ted said, "Be excellent to each other!"
— GreenGlowingMonkey
- In grade five, a kid in my class I didn’t know said that our older brothers knew eachother. Became best friends that year simple as that.
— mrcatman1
- Discovering the rarest element known to man.
Well... he did, not me. When element 118 was announced as oganesson, I wrote to Yuri Oganessian, the man who made the discovery, and asked if I could interview him. I'd never met him before, never heard of his work if I'm honest, but he was wonderful: said yes immediately and invited me over to his nuclear research lab in Russia.
Long story short, nobody else seemed to think of interviewing him, so we had a long chat and hung out for a few days, had some nice meals. And since then we've met up a couple of times for dinner or a chat, and I'm writing a book about his research. We're next going to see each other in about a month or so.
TL;DR: He's an 87-year-old Armenian-Russian physicist, I'm a 30-something British journalist, and we became friends after he discovered the rarest thing known to man and I thought that was pretty cool.
— mrcchapman
- I was in a small discussion group and one woman was my polar opposite... religious, conservative, fussy, tidy, etc. But when a move fell through after I had sold my house, she invited me to stay in the other side of the duplex she owned, rent free, with my cat and dog, and helped me find a new house. We had supper together every night and now I consider her my closest friend.
— Feltedskullpuppets
- My wife and I hired a prostitute for an expiremental threesome once. Turns out her day job was working as the receptionist at the office where my best friend worked.
It was.an odd set of circumstances, but she was a genuinely nice person and we all kept our secrets to ourselves.
— Drumlin
- I met a friend once at the strip club where she worked. She asked if I wanted a dance and I said no. We talked for awhile, then she went on stage, then she came back. This went on for over three hours. When the place closed she said, "Oh my god, I got so into our conversation I didn't make any money tonight." I gave her $100 and said the conversation was better than a dance anyway. We really hit it off. I got her number and we had a few dates. It didn't become a relationship but we kept talking.
Turns out she had just gotten divorced and really was trying to figure out how to pay the rent and feed the kids until she could move back to her home state. She moved and opened a store that is very successful, got remarried, and has two kids in the military now and one still at home.
We have continued to stay in touch via phone and FB over the years and now, as I'm going through my own divorce, she has been one of the most supportive people and a great friend. We first met in 2002 and have been friends for 16 years now. That's probably my strangest "how we met" story for a long term friend.
— relativex
- Bullied a guy because he had a hearing aid, found out he's into gaming. Somehow ended up in a lobby of a game together. Liked each other, he's my best friend now. (I'm so sorry Dave)
— The_Blue_DmR
- I met my best friend at our junior high bus stop when we were about 12. We were there insanely early and standing in awkward silence. Out of nowhere, she told me she was thinking of running away. I asked her what she was going to take with her and she replied, "Canned socks."
We speculated about how canned socks would work until the bus showed up. We sat together and chatted and haven't really stopped for 22 years.
— storyofohno
- I moved to a new city at age 5 and was standing at our screen door taking in the new neighborhood when the neighbor boy, same age, appeared in a shared driveway between our houses.
First thing I said to him was "Dummy."
He replied with his touch of southern draw "If I'm a dummy, you're a dummy."
There began long friendship as the neighborhood hellions.
— PM_ME_DAT_TUMMY_GIRL
- I was in a Facebook shitposting group where you posted as a bitchy suburban housewife, and somehow became IRL friends with three people in that group.
— hyperpearlgirl
- Got scammed while trading on Steam. Decided to contact the guy and he felt bad so he traded me back the item. Next thing I know I play coop games with him at least twice a week.
— IReallyLikeAvocadoes
- I kicked him from back and he turned out to be sweet.Now we are best friends
— nrme28
- He was a weekday visitor to the cathedral where I was trying to tune a few pipes before an organ recital the following Sunday. The guy told me that he was a musician, and offered to hold keys at the console while I climbed up into the pipe chamber to tune.
From there we just hit it off - with him volunteering to hold keys in the future whenever the instrument needed tuning. Not only that, but he was an excellent trumpet player and we did several programs together.
— Back2Bach
- Got arrested one night in December, while I was sitting in this "waiting room" area waiting for my paperwork to be done, another girl gets taken into the same room, not long after me and we end up both sitting there for over an hour. Once it's time for us both to be taken to jail, we get put in the same squad car and immediately start making bets on what the cop will do/say once he gets in the car.
About 5 minutes into the drive, cop asks us if we wanted to listen to anything in particular on the radio, other girl shouts "Christmas carols!!" and he turns it to the Christmas station. We ended up singing tons of Christmas tunes on the ride (poor cop).
We had to spend the night in the same room, but we ended up just spending the whole night talking. Next day we added each other on Facebook, exchanged numbers and went on our ways. We still chat every once in a while, and turns out I work with her roommate.
— Czulax
- I was taking a child development class during undergrad and my best friend and I would show up early on occasion. One day, we went into the classroom like an hour early assuming we'd be alone, but there was a guy dressed in a full suit already there (there was a campus career fair that day). We ignored him and went about chatting.
At one point, I brought up the fact that I hated it when lesbians acted like gatekeepers for bi women who've had sex with men. I said, a bit too loudly, "like, excuse me for having looked at a penis once!" There was a long period of silence and the guy in the suit turned around and introduced himself.
Suit guy became a very close friend and he introduced me to my now-boyfriend of 2 years.
— SolidVirginal