The Mother of All Coincidences - May, 2009

On Friday, May 13, on my daily walk to the drug store (daily for the exercise – about a one mile round trip), I was picking up the two prescriptions that I had called in. The technician (as I think they are called) said I had three. I looked them over. One was for a medicine I had never heard of from an unfamiliar doctor. The pharmacist checked on it – it had been for a O'Dell – with my same birth date. The name was so similar (I am Denis O'Bell) and the birth date the same (year as well as birthday) that a mistake had been made.

When I got home, I looked him up in the phone book – and there he was – Daniel O'Dell. Less than a mile from where I lived. That night, I got curious and looked him up on and internet service – and indeed there he was again – and indeed with the same birth date. A couple auto accidents, but not his fault apparently. But, on aliases, there was a Roxanne O'Dell listed.

Now, in my crises in 1996 and 2005, one of my delusions was that I was being mixed up with someone with the same name. I also had ideas about computer fraud being committed because records were joined in a relational database, on a key that matched, (but which should not have) because the database was normalized wrong. Multiple payments were generated incorrectly, but the person involved could not tell, because the zip code was wrong, so the person would never receive the notice of the payment in the mail.