A Dog-Gone Coincidence

(It’s a nice summer day so my best friend and I are in a park having a picnic. A few metres from us sits a small family with a clear foreign background. The child, a little girl, seems very curious and adventurous and comes to us at some point. She doesn’t speak Finnish at all but after getting an okay nod from her parents, we give her a piece from our pastries and she seems happy with it. After a few minutes she notices a person walking their dog to go by and starts going towards them, not listening to her parents calling her back. She’s clearly too young to understand this, but I can see that the dog is clearly uncomfortable and the owner is trying to steer away before the girl runs too close. My guess would be the dog didn’t like strangers and could bite if it felt threatened. The girl is too far away for her parents to react on time so my friend and I stand up and my friend hurries to pick up the girl before she reaches the dog. The parents come to us and while only the father speaks any Finnish at all, they both are clearly thankful and ask to take a quick picture of us together as a memory. At this point rainfall forces everyone to part ways. Fast forward five months and I’m with my friend in the area where her boyfriend used to live because in his opinion the best pizza in town is served there and he misses it so my friend thought she’d surprise him with one. We order, sit down to wait, and once the man behind the counter delivers the pizza:)

Man: *to my friend in slightly clumsy Finnish* “I have seen you, haven’t I, miss?”

Friend: “Oh, I don’t know. I used to come here every now and again when my boyfriend lived here, but…”

Man: “No, no. It was close to the stadium. You met my daughter.”

Friend: *confused*

Man: *turns to me* “You were there, too, weren’t you?”

Me: *at this point I finally connect the dots and realise why the man had indeed looked familiar* “Oh. Oh! Last summer in the park?”

Man: *smiles widely*

Friend: *the realisation dawns and she absolutely starts beaming*

(We stayed a few minutes to chat and ask how his daughter was doing before we had to leave to catch a bus. He hugged both of us with a heartfelt smile and we promised to come back again. The sheer amount of random luck of that encounter made us laugh, but at the same time it left us smiling for the rest of the day. Even though that pizza place is almost on the other side of town, we definitely plan on going back there soon.)