I’ve had some delightful coincidences that I’d like to note. I’m noting them because perhaps coincidences are more than just happenstance. Perhaps they have some meaning when looked at over time? Here, in this wee little blog, is the perfect place to make such notations because maybe the world is trying to tell me something.
Mid December, 2025: I’m at lunch with a coworker who mentions that her face has been breaking out so she needs to go home and wash her bed pillows. I inquired if she normally washes her pillows and she does, in fact, make it a semi-regular practice. She puts them in her washer and dries them in her dryer, just like she would with laundry. We Googled the washing of bed pillows and low and behold, it’s a regular thing for people! I was stunned that I’d missed this little bit of adulting wisdom because I’ve never washed my pillows. (I checked with my mom and she doesn’t either so this blatant pillow neglect is passed down.) I’m not even sure I’d ever even purchased a pillow in my life. The ones I have now were something that my ex gave me because he didn’t like the “pancakes” that I had to offer whenever he slept over. I can tell you with certainty that I’ve never washed them in the many years they’ve been in my possession.
This led me to survey pretty much everyone at work and much to my surprise, I received a wide array of feedback. One gal puts them in her bathtub to soak in borax, then puts them on a drying rack. Another washes them with her laundry. Two others were in the same boat as me and never considered doing such a thing. One coworker is apparently a pillow aficionado and collects every kind of pillow under the sun: gel, foam, water, down… I never knew such a variety even existed. Then I expanded my survey to friends. Some put their pillows out on sunny days to let the UV do its thing. Others regularly wash and then discard their pillows after a year. When I told one of my most mild-mannered, normally the sweetest one in the bunch, friends that I’d never washed my pillow, she looked at me with contempt and was not able to stifle a sound of shock and horror. I’d been officially shamed into submission. Days went by and every time I reluctantly put my head on my pillow, I’d wonder if I’m gross.
December 25th, 2025: Christmas came and went. I loved everything that I got but I had one secret wish and it was for a new pillow. I should have asked Santa but by that time it was too late. Pillow shopping is not something that interests me, clearly, but to save me from this internal conflict, I’d have to step foot into some god awful department store in the new year. That did not sit well.
December 27th, 2025: It’s book club day. Yay! We all excitedly gather together in the back of a book shop to exchange gifts and talk about the film, It’s a Wonderful Life. It wasn’t a planned gift exchange, it was just something we all just did. Most gifts were bookish and fantastic, however, one shooketh me to my core. Someone handed me a large, fluffy bag and told me that the best gift that they could give me was the gift of rest. Inside the bag was a fluffy pillow with two monogrammed silk pillowcases! Now, you’re probably thinking that I must have mentioned “Pillow-Gate 2025” to him. I assure you that’s not the case. Not a peep was spoken. My laments were saved for my coworkers and very close friends… I didn’t want the greater population knowing what a garbage person I am. He just knew what I needed though, even before I did. In fact, the purchase was made months ago. When I saw what he had given me, my jaw hit the table and I was at first completely freaked out (not the response from me he was expecting). I then had to come clean at book club and explain my strange reaction. I’ve now had a few weeks to recover and I find the story to be charming. And I love my new pillow, of course!
December 28th, 2025: I told my mother about Pillow-Gate and she of course tops my story. Right before Christmas she had mentioned to her boyfriend that she wanted an old school type of clock. You know, with a round face and hands that move. Something that you can just glance at and know the time without any obtrusive glowing numbers. Nowadays, the younger generations never learned how to read these types of clocks so they’ve been increasingly harder to find, everyone opts for digital versions instead. Well, my mother was longing for such a clock and her boyfriend just brushed it off as silly so he totally forgot about it. Christmas came around and my mom was happy with everything that she’d received but she still wished for a simple clock to put on her nightstand.
A day later, my mother and her boyfriend went to visit his three sisters to exchange gifts. Low and behold, one of them gave her the most beautiful Mackenzie Child’s clock! It’s everything she wanted: a round face with moving hands that fits on her dresser. My mother was so delighted! The assumption was that her boyfriend didn’t get her a clock because he told one of his sisters that she wanted one. Come to find out though, her boyfriend hadn’t said a thing to anyone. It was another case of someone just knowing what a person wants.
January, 8th, 2026: I was at dinner with a friend, updating him on all of the Christmas gift-giving coincidences of late. He said that for Christmas, his father had given him a brand new piece of carry-on luggage with all of the high-tech bells and whistles. He thought it was a very cool gift but he travels so infrequently that he knew he’d never use it. Well wouldn’t you know it, yesterday, his work informs him that he’s flying to Mexico next week. Hah! How’s that for strange coincidences?!
And the fun weirdness continues…
January 5th, 2026: It’s Monday and it’s my first day back to work from the holiday break. I wake up to an alarm on my phone that’s connected to Spotify and randomly picks songs from their catalog. Each day is a new song from all sorts of genres, which is always an adventure. Well, the world has a sense of humor because on that particular day–the day that hurts the most to get up early and go back to the grind–I hear, “Back to Life/ Back to Reality/ Back to the hear and now, yeah.” Yup, Spotify viciously chose Soul II Soul to serenade me with. All I could do was shake my head and wonder whose sick joke that was.
January 7th, 2026: I’m finishing up a book called The Forget-Me-Not Library which I received in a bookish advent calendar. It’s about a town called Forget-Me-Not and one of the main characters is stuck in the town after suffering from amnesia. Despite my bad description, it’s actually a cute and cozy read. I have a couple pages left but I fall asleep with it in bed with me, unfinished. I wake up to my Spotify alarm playing, “Sending you forget me nots/ To help you to remember/ Baby please forget me not/ I want you to remember.” I thought this was odd so I told my coworkers and they were VERY disturbed. I should preface all of this by saying that I’ve never said the name of the book out loud around my phone, just in case you’re thinking that an app might be listening. I didn’t order the book online. It came in an advent calendar so it was a surprise even to me. And Spotify has no idea that out of all of the books in my home waiting to be read, that’s the one I was working my way through at the time. I have no explanation for it. I choose to find it cool but others are very creeped out. What do you think?
Do you have any recent strange stories that you’d like to share? Please comment, I’d love to hear them.
Cheers to a spooky 2026!
The Unmaker 