This incident took place in the summer of 1984, in a high school classroom in Kansas. This story falls into the "bizarre coincidences" category.
My friend and a couple classmates were working on a group art project and chatting while setting things up. One of the guys, a particularly animated, interesting, and "class clown" type of fellow, was telling us this story about how he had caught a fly in his hand that morning in his history class: the teacher had been trying to swat a particularly bothersome fly unsuccessfully, so this guy made the claim he was really good at catching flies with his hands and offered to catch the fly.
The history teacher was, of course, skeptical, assuming the kid was horsing around as usual, but indulged him and dared him to catch this fly.
As the kid was telling us this story, it had turned into a full-blown improvisational skit: he was acting it out, was using props, and it even included a very good impersonation of the history teacher.
By this time, he had the attention of everyone in the classroom, including the art teacher. As the kid gets to the point of catching the fly, he enacts a ridiculously exaggerated Elmer Fudd-like hunting and stalking routine that began with an army roll on the floor. It was obvious it was all a joke and meant to be silly, despite his initial insistence that he had really caught the fly, and a concurrence by another student who had been in the class and witnessed it.
Anyway, as the kid came to the part of finally reaching and grabbing the fly in his skit, he reflexively screamed and freaked out -- he had actually caught a fly! In the skit!
To be fair, there was practically a fly invasion then in this huge old school with no air conditioning, 100% humidity, and tilted-open windows everywhere. But it was clear the kid was not intending to really catch a fly in the skit; he was truly taken aback it was purely coincidental that a fly just happened to buzz into the exact right place when he randomly grabbed at the air.
What are the chances that anyone would catch a fly just grabbing at the air, let alone while reenacting a scene about catching a fly? Whatever the case, it turned out his original claim about being really good at catching flies was correct!
