Coincidental Prompt

11/20/2014

Think of a wild coincidence that has occurred in your life. Now write three-four paragraphs and develop the incident, giving us the necessary background information and specific details.

I was travelling to New York City with my mother to see a soccer match between Chelsea FC and Paris Saint Germain at Yankee Stadium a few years ago. The match was in the early evening but we wanted to get into the city early so we could find an interesting place to have lunch. We also had the agenda of visiting the Little Lebowski Store in the Village. We got off of the subway a few blocks away from the small store, which is completely devoted to selling merchandise related to my favorite film, the Big Lebowski.

We had heard about the store when we were watching a PBS documentary about Jeff Bridges. In the documentary he visited the store while they were covering the large cult following the film has, and especially his character becoming iconic. Since we knew of the location of the store, we fit it into our plans.

When we were approaching the store and about to enter it, two men pulled up on bikes and one of them instantly looked familiar to me. I quickly conferred with my mother that we were both pretty sure it was Woody Harrelson. I approached him and his equally sweaty friend and confirmed that he was who we'd expected and asked if I could get a picture with him. I was surprised that in his disheveled state he was still willing to be in a photo. He was really cool about it and we four then spent about twenty minutes together discussing the film in the shop and the film's relation to Woody, him being in another comedy surrounding bowling, King Pin. We also talked to the owner of the store about the struggles of owning such a niche shop and about how cool it was that Jeff Bridges visited it.

The day was already going to be a great one with the soccer match, but the coincidence of meeting Woody at the Little Lebowski made it one of the better vacations of my life so far.