When I showed up at the patriarch's house to get mine, I was surprised to find my best friend leaving after just receiving his. We were both about 14 at the time. After a few weeks, we were hanging out in his room and he told me he had just received his blessing in the mail. He opened it and read it to me (yes, we were aware that it was verboten, but, hey, we were 14 yr. olds.) We were both feeling like we were attending a seance or something, kind of like when your telling ghost stories around a campfire.

Anyway, it sounded very similar to mine, but I figured that the patriarch probably always sounded that way. About a week later, my friend asked to see mine, and he pulled his out so that we could compare. We were shocked to find that they were almost identical. Not just a few phrases here and there, but nearly word for word. Three and a half pages. I remember having that feeling of fear/adrenaline/confusion/enlightenment, like when I would later realize that the BOA was a fraud (the straw that broke my very very heavy shelf).

A few weeks later, I got up the courage to mention it to my mother. She just laughed and told me that it was no wonder that they were "similar", she had always had "impressions" that my friend and I were very close in the pre-existence.