Unlikely Scenarios That Led People To Believe Overthinkers Were Psychics

I keep my gym bag in the car so i have a dry outfit after getting into a water balloon fight with my nephews.

Also I carry band-aids, tissues, benadryl and stamps, which i give out frequently. Kid skinned their knee at the zoo? Got a bee sting? Runny nose? Forget to mail the kid's fafsa or your tax return? I got you.

Not me, but my mother.

Apparently at a party where my parents and their friends were playing board games, there was a realization that an hourglass was missing from one of the games they planned on playing. My mother proceeded to reach into her purse and pull out an hourglass she just so happened to bring, on the off chance they didn't have one.

HOWEVER, later in the night when some drinks had been had, someone accidentally slammed a drink down, breaking my mother's hourglass. Without missing a beat, she reached into her purse and pulled out ANOTHER hourglass. She knew the first one, being glass, might get broken so she had a backup ready.

Through a long series of events, my parents (who were not Foster parents and not looking to adopt) ended up taking care of an infant (who was not at all related to us) whose mother had just died. It was only supposed to be for a few weeks until she could be moved to a more permanent placement. As soon as I found out that my parents had agreed to help watch her temporarily, I knew where this was going, and I had all the initial adoption application paperwork printed out before she ever got to our house. Needless to say, my parents were pretty surprised the day they said they were thinking of adopting her, and I handed them a folder of forms and my handwritten notes on how the process worked. (For the record, she has legally been my little sister for seven years now.)

This was at nine years old. We had driven home and seen the beginning wisps of smoke for the California Cedar fire in 2003.

Naturally, I assumed the worst, and packed up all my clothes and spent about an hour making a travel cage for my guinea pigs. I tied their water bottle to the side so they could drink, packed up their food and their favorite furniture just in case.

I then spent the next few hours monitoring the fire on the news and out in the distance from our window, periodically asking my parents if we needed to evacuate.

At some point in the night, the fire sped up like crazy and was literally on the hillside across the street. I went into my parents’ room and said “the fire is across the street. Are you sure we shouldn’t evacuate?”

At this point, we all went crazy grabbing important documents and supplies and as we were about to lock the doors and drive when I realized I had forgotten my guinea pigs. My parents told me it was too late, and I didn’t have time to grab them, but when I cried and explained I had them packed up, I was able to grab them and go.

The house ended up ok thanks to a neighbor putting out embers before they took, but we were gone long enough my pigs wouldn’t have made it.

A person I worked with was a registered sex offender, and he had a thing for me. I told him multiple times that he made me feel uncomfortable and to stay away from me. For some reason, I had nightmares about this dude, he was 6 and half feet tall and hideous.

Anyways, he said he was going to stop at a store that I stopped at all the time after work, and it was obvious he knew my direction when I left. I pull up to this store and he’s already there, walks up to my car and I just roll down my window and spray this dude, and he dropped a billy club out of his sleeve.

Everyone always told me to stop being paranoid and stop thinking he’s going to attack me or rape me, that “he’s been to jail and learned his lesson”. F* that dude. He should’ve never been let out of prison. For reference, I’m also a 6 foot tall dude who is always prepared for the worst.

Went through a stage as a teenager where I thought I was psychic. I know, I know, stupid. A friend asked me jokingly to make a prediction. I told him to get a flashlight, because tomorrow would be dark. I grabbed one myself when I got home and put it in my purse. No idea why, just did it. The next day the Eastern seaboard blackouts happened. He still asks for predictions to this day.

One day, a friend asked me what would I do if my neighbors house caught on fire...I said I'd make sure my kids were safe and panic, and then we'd run if the fire got close. My neighbors house caught on fire and I sat outside and watched it with my kids and panicked.

I bought and learned to use a slim Jim ( open locked cars) I carry one in my car and have been able to help no less than 10 people who have locked their keys in their car. My brother was visiting me from out of town and he needed something from Target, he called me and said an elderly man had locked his keys in his car and I was able to drive over and help. Also have jumper cables that have helped start a few stranded drivers.

Someone broke into my house while I was in the shower finally so I screamed "fk yeah I get to use my shower gun" all I did really was charge the dude naked while holding a glock but the sheer look of terror on his face was priceless.

I have a similar experience. I have just about everything you could possible need to survive in the car if it breaks down or something else happens. I was driving and an old couple was crossing a driveway headed home after a nice lunch out. The lady biffed it on the curb. She had ripped quite a bit of her skin and was bleeding all over the place. I saw them, pulled my car over and was able to hop out, clean her up, and bandage everything up. It felt really good to be prepared and help the frantic old couple.

Last year my mom called to tell me there was a wildfire near San Jose, where my grandma and auntie live, but that it was nowhere near town so don’t worry.

Except my Grandma lives on the outskirts of town. I looked at a map and realized the only thing between her house and the fire was a bunch of dry grassland and chaparral. Grandma is 90 and frail, so evacuating would be a slow and difficult process for her. I called my aunt around noon and told her she needed to start packing up just in case. Everyone in the family thought I was being ridiculous but I made her promise. Tracked the fire all day and saw it slowly moving towards her house. At 8pm my aunt called and said since they hadn’t been told to evacuate yet, she was planning to go to bed early and then get up before dawn to drive to my place with grandma because it’s a long drive and she was worried about being tired on the road. I told her “Do not go to bed, that fire could move quicker than you think... you guys need to leave now.” She did.

Around midnight, when she would’ve been asleep, an evacuation order was announced for their neighborhood and the fire came very close to many of the buildings. Thankfully she’d listened to me so she, Grandma, my 10-year old cousin, and their cat were all well out of the way by then.

I remember one day in school a teacher was complaining someone had tied her blinds so tightly she couldn't get them to open or close. Me being the weird kid, I ask her if she wanted a screwdriver to get it undone. She looked at me like I was crazy and a little scared as I reached into my wallet and pulled out this tiny screwdriver from those tiny finger bmx/skateboards and handed it over. Everyone thought I was crazy and my teacher laughed in relief when she saw it. Everyone thought i was weird until I told them I used it to tighten the screws on my glasses. They were constantly unscrewing themselves and I was sick of having to go to the opticians every time it happened. Obviously the solution was to carry a tiny screwdriver with me!

I was supposed to get married at the end of May last year. At the beginning of the year, before any of the pandemic stuff happened, I became obsessed with thinking about all the things that could go wrong and how we would lose our money spent on the event. As a result, I purchased a very high coverage insurance policy for the event. As luck would have it, this type of insurance had no clause that prevented collecting if there was a pandemic. We got all of our money back.

I'm also a germaphobe and so I had already stockpiled masks, gloves, Lysol wipes and hand sanitizer.

All the teachers at the Middle School I taught at knew I was a pack rat and one day a kid split his pants and the school counselor came to me and said 'Mr. Thehogdog, would you happen to have a pair of sweats or gym pants in your truck'. YEP.

So the the kid spent the rest of the day in a pair of nylon pants I had behind my seat. He is lucky because if he didnt fit he would have spent the rest of the day in a white disposable 'coverall' I had in case I had car trouble in nice clothes.

Icing on the cake: It was a student I really liked who was super helpful to other kids and teachers, so it was nice to do something nice for him.

I also carried a 'Swiss Army' brand soft side briefcase (yard sale find) STUFFED and it had a few of each size of battery.

One day Phil Niekro and 2 Braves players were there for an assembly and Phil's mic battery was dying so I SPRINTED upstairs to my classroom, grabbed a 9 volt from my bag, then basically rolled across the panel and switched out his battery and got back to the PA avoiding getting on TV News cameras.

Injuring my dominant hand... as a kid I had an irrational fear of having it chopped off. I spent all of grade 6 teaching myself to write and do things with my left hand. I made a conscious effort to remain as ambidextrous as possible. As an adult I broke a few fingers on my dominant hand... but it wasn’t a big issue because I could do most things equally with my left hand. Anticlimactic, but it was useful lol

When my wife and I were getting married and looking for a place for the ceremony, we found this beautiful but quite remote garden. We were signing the contract for the event and I kept thinking that it was quite remote, so I asked: "how much time does it take for the ambulance to get here?"

I became the laughing stock of both families. My (then future) mother in law, who was present at the meeting, literally fell down from the chair laughing. The wedding organizer remembered it for weeks, telling about it to everyone we met. My dad, ended every sentence with "...but maybe you need an ambulance for that". My wife was making siren noises, when I was saying something we disagreed on. Every family dinner all the aunts and uncles were "checking" if the ambulance was present. You name it. The entire package.

Still I couldn't get rid of this weird feeling. It would have taken over an hour for the ambulance to get to the garden. After a few weeks I ended up paying a private ambulance to be present at the wedding.

Fast forward to the ceremony. As my wife literally walks down the aisle, at the back of the garden I see two Paramedics running with a stretcher and my dad squeezing my hand whispering: "that's not of your goddn business, let them to take care of it. "

What happened was that one of our older guests got a heart attack and almost died at the ceremony. Was saved by the private ambulance.

Ever since then, when my wife tells me that I'm overthinking, I just do the siren noise.

My boyfriend who has zero history of seizures narrowly escaped dying from one because my overthinking led me to break into his house when he didn’t answer the phone.

My overthinking had begun a few nights prior. He mentioned that he bit his tongue in his sleep and woke up with a bloody pillow and sore mouth- but he had no memory of it happening. That for some reason led my overthinking brain to question ‘Wow, did he have a seizure and not realize it?’ He has zero history of seizures, and we had been together multiple years (didn’t live together but spent nights together) and I had never seen a hint of a seizure. But for some reason, this stuck in my mind.

Fast forward two days. We usually don’t hang out in the morning because he likes to sleep in late, but on this day we had an appointment to go see a specific dog at the shelter I was thinking of adopting.

He wouldn’t answer the phone that morning. I called multiple times before I went to his place, but he never picked up. I started getting a bad feeling but quelled the ‘He’s having a seizure’ thought, because that was clearly SO unlikely, meanwhile making an action plan for that very scenario.

I got to his house and he wouldn’t answer, so in a completely NOT ME crazy girlfriend move, I climbed over his fence. Luckily his door was unlocked.

I found him unconscious and unresponsive, lying on his back with the sticky remnants of foam all around his mouth.

I jumped into action- I rolled him on his side to help curb aspiration, put a pillow under his shoulder to keep him in that position, and called the ambulance.

Had I not hopped the fence to get in- had I not driven over when he didn’t pick up the phone- had we not had plans to meet up hours earlier than we usually did- he would have been dead by lunch. His kidneys were already shutting down by the time he reached the ER.

If he had never mentioned biting his tongue in his sleep, I don’t think I would have been overthinking at all. No crazy worries about seizures would have pushed me to go over and find him.

Turns out to be a weird brain disease that’s bizarrely endemic to New Mexico kind of- cerebral cavernous malformations .

Several days later, after we got home from the hospital, I got a call from a friend who said the dog, against all odds, was still at the shelter- as in the very dog we were supposed to be seeing that day. I had given up hope on getting her, pushed it out of my priorities while he was hospitalized- but they had forgotten to take down my 24 Hour Hold sign on her cage, so no one inquired about her.

She’s now our miracle dog and is the sweetest animal I’ve ever owned. My boyfriend wouldn’t be alive today if we hadn’t made an appointment to meet her.

I was once driving on the highway behind a car with a couple of kayaks strapped to the roof. My anxious brain kept saying “what if they fall off the car, final-destination style?”

I tried to convince myself that it was an irrational fear, but the anxiety got the better of me and I decided to change lanes and make some distance.

About 30 seconds later, cue kayaks: they both slip off the roof and go rolling around the highway. Luckily no one was hurt, but man that did not help my anxiety at all.

Was at one of those trampoline parks with my kid when I look over and see several of the workers attending to an elderly lady sitting on the floor. Turns out she'd taken a shot to the forehead somehow and was bleeding profusely.

They were trying to help with paper towels. Well I'd taken a free local Stop the Bleed class "just in case" and since then have kept supplies in my truck.

Asked if they needed some gauze and a bandage, went and got it, and brought it back. I told the guy, "Now if one piece of gauze fills up -" He interrupted, "Take it off and put on a new one." I said, "No! You put another one overtop that one, but leave the bottom one there." He said, "Well, you know more than I do. Come over and help." We were able to get her patched up.

I found a nickel-sized lump on my fifteen month old daughter’s temple, freaked out, obsessed over it, researched it exhaustively, and concluded it was a dermoid cyst that had worn through the skull. I was told by a pediatrician that it was a bone bruise that would fix itself over the course of three to six months, no imaging was needed, and I shouldn’t make an appointment at the children’s hospital because it would resolve on its own.

I got an X-ray done anyway and the radiologist confirmed every one of my suspicions, but the pediatrician still said to wait and see because that’s what you do with dermoid cysts and it was definitely not through the skull despite what the radiologist said. Made an appointment at the hospital anyway, and the surgeon swore up and down that although it was a dermoid cyst as I’d suspected, it would not be through the skull since in all his years of practice it never had been.

Well guess what? It WAS through the skull, and it was pressing on the membrane between the skull and the brain, a hair’s breadth from breaking the membrane or pressing on the brain. A couple more weeks of waiting and my daughter could have had seizures, a brain infection, lasting damage. I overthought it and now she’s a happy, healthy three year old.

Not me overthinking but one time when my girlfriend and I were going to the gym she packed me two spare shirts. I made a joke that it was unnecessary to bring two as it’s not like I was gonna explosively st myself or something and ruin the spare shirt and need a second spare, we laughed it off but brought two anyway.

After changing from my sweat soaked shirt to a spare upon walking home a bird sts all down me, ruining the shirt I was wearing. I was so thankful she had brought an additional spare, so I now do not question the quantity of what she decides to bring anywhere.

In college, on occasion upperclassmen would randomly steal the underclassmen towels from the shower stalls and then lock their room doors so they had to go to the RA butt naked. I had the idea to stash a towel in the drop ceiling tiles for just that event. Maybe a week later I became the victim of a towel snatching. However, the upperclassmen were very unhappy to see me strut out with a nice clean towel from my ceiling stash.

This guy made a very smart choice. Hopefully, these upperclassmen got bored of playing these awful pranks on the other guys.

I always keep an unopened deck of cards in my backpack. You never can tell when some Hold 'Em may be needed to pass the time.

But when I was at a business conference the bigwig who was presenting to us was having to wing it with a few things because his luggage had been lost, and he didn't have all of his materials. He had the PowerPoint deck, but he didn't have his props.

He started going into explaining how he'd be able to demonstrate this statistical principle he was describing, only he didn't have the unopened deck of cards he needed.

Voila! I was able to produce a shrink-wrapped deck of cards.

My boss was also in the same presentation, and he was also impressed that I just happened to have a deck of cards on me, so that's nice, too.

I am an amateur clarinetist. I've played in the local orchestra and the like. My son was in the high school band (also played clarinet). Prior to a football game, at the warmup area, he called me as I was about to head to the game, saying that someone in his section had a problem with their instrument, so did I have a loaner?

Now the thing about being a clarinet player is that everyone you know calls you every time they see a cheap plastic clarinet for sale at a garage sale or the like. So over the years (especially when my son was in jr. and sr. high) when I saw one of these for $50 or $100 I grabbed it. Didn't happen every day, but at the peak of my collection I had a couple of beater plastic clarinets in addition to the pretty good wooden one my son played (and lord knows I wouldn't trust anyone with my good clarinets in Bb and A I used in the orchestra).

So I grabbed BOTH of these plastic jobs, which actually played okay, and brought them. I pulled the one I thought was the better of the two out of the car and gave it to my son's friend. Meanwhile, he says "hey another person ran into a problem..." and I got the second clarinet out of the car.

"How many clarinets do you HAVE?" was my son's question.

It was a proud moment.

As a bartender, I bring to work sugar cubes for champagne cocktails, extra bandaids, Tylenol, an Ah-So wine opener for crumbling corks, duct tape, a sewing kit with extra buttons, extra staples, a Guinness spoon, silver Sharpie, extra shoelaces...I think that's all the unusual stuff. Within a month at a new job I've usually handed something to somebody in need and become a (very) minor legend.

Oh yeah, I also had a box of N-95 masks in my earthquake kit (cuz inhaling concrete dust while digging people out would be bad) so when the pandemic hit I donated half to frontline healthcare and kept the rest to rotate.

I am basically blind without my glasses, and I’ve always taken a backup pair of glasses when I travel. It went untouched for years, taking up valuable space in my luggage. Lo and behold, one trip to Montreal a few years ago I just woke up one morning to find my glasses broken - no idea how it happened. And I finally got a chance to break out my backup pair 😎

When I was 11, I always kept approximately 12 to 15 of some combination of pens, pencils, and markers in my pant pocket. Just liked having options and never knew what i was going to need to write on! Sometimes got some side eye from other kids though.

CUT TO

At a weekend camp with a bunch of kids, I’m participating in a sort of scavenger hunt race thing. At one point our teams hits this task where everyone has to draw or write something (don’t really remember). But there’s only two pens, about ten people per team, and another team just showed up.

With one pen assigned to each team, it’s going slow… until… YOU GET A PEN! YOU GET A PEN! EVERYBODY GETS A PEN!

Our team screams through the task because we can all write simultaneously, while the other team’s left plodding along with their one pen. We eventually win. Who’s weird now?!

I work in child care and was working at a centre that was so so draining. I started applying for new jobs and went on a couple interviews. One time, I had an interview with another daycare and was offered the position. I loved my coworkers and ultimately decided to turn the new position down. However, I had this gut feeling that I couldn’t burn any bridges incase st at my current job hit the fan. So when I turned down the new job, I made up an excuse saying I’d love to take the offer but couldn’t because of xyz reason but would be in the touch sometime in the future.

Lo and behold, a couple of weeks later, st hit the fan at my work. I took a month off and then emailed the job that offered me a position and started 2 weeks later.

When I had a tumor removed a couple years ago I kept the surgical blue vomit bag thing they gave me in my car in case anyone ever got sick while I'm driving.

Last winter I was on a third date, driving on the highway back home with her, and she was feeling like she was going to throw up.... Could not find the blue vomit bag.... Felt dumb telling her where to look when it was in my center console all along. She ended up ralphing in a grocery bag that luckily didn't break.

Overthought and forgot.

I always carried an extra juice box/snacks and an extra set of clothes during highschool because I was always worried that one of the kids in my school with diabetes might get low and need some sugar(for the juice box and snacks ) and I might get dirty or my clothes would get ruined (the extra clothes) well one day the kid in my class with diabetes did need the sugar. As luck would have it, a few days later a girl in my class was having a really bad wardrobe malfunction and couldn't wait for a new shirt so my XXL t-shirt acted as both a shirt/dress for her.