An Education In Coincidence

This one’s on me. For the past year or so, I’ve had five wonderful 10- to 12-year-old boys in my Minecraft classes, good friends who became closer through interacting on their computers. A sixth boy recently joined for the spring term, and I noted that he shared [Uncommon Last Name] with one of the previous students — who has a hyphenated name, but half of it is identical — and both of them listed [Mother’s Not-Too-Common First Name] [Uncommon Last Name] as their emergency contact. Naturally, I figured they were brothers…

…and managed to greatly upset the long-time student by telling him that. Probing further before the next class, I found that one student lived on the east end of the county while the other came from a more western city. You can bet I was extremely apologetic to the student in that next class!

Yes, there are two mothers with the same first and last name, with a son between 10 and 12, whose child has high-functioning mental challenges, who signed him up for the same class at the same time in a town neither of them lives in.