Perfect Timing: A Rooftop, a Remote, and a Remarkable Coincidence

Around 2008, I was watching West Side Story on TCM. The scene was the one with singing and dancing on a rooftop. I couldn’t recall one of the actress’s names and became completely fixated on remembering it—so much so that I lost track of the movie.

I decided to look away for a moment, hoping the name would surface on its own. I flipped over to the TV magazine program Sunday Morning.

At the exact moment I changed the channel, the announcer said, “Next on Sunday Morning… Rita Moreno”—the very actress whose name had escaped me. As the announcer spoke, a clip flashed on the screen showing the exact same rooftop scene I’d been watching seconds earlier. Within five seconds, the show went to commercial.

Had I tuned in one second sooner, I would have missed the preview entirely. Had I switched five seconds later, I would have missed the name reveal. Somehow, fate (or something like it) skipped the usual memory-assist process and got straight to the point!

Professor David Spiegelhalter of Oxford once said, “The amazing thing is not that these things occur, it’s that we notice them.” But how could anyone not notice this?

What fascinates me most is that two distinct coincidences occurred at once:

1. Both program moments—the rooftop scene and the Rita Moreno preview—happened simultaneously, with no apparent coordination or intent.

2. My own actions—switching channels at that exact instant—were completely spontaneous.

The odds of all that aligning feel almost mathematical in their impossibility. Of the two, it’s the second—the timing—that still leaves me amazed.