Reader Contribution - Reaching deep and finding the "will"

Background - Kelly wrote: OMG!!  That is so funny!  I absolutely love, love, love hearing these “Strange Cases Of Uncanny Timing”.  I’ve actually been having one myself lately.  It’s sort of a morbid topic but now it’s just nagging at me.  Listen to this…

On my way down to the beach with the kids, I was all alone in the front of the car.  The boys were in the back seats and were, as usual, all “plugged-in” so the car was nice and quiet.  It gave my mind a chance to wander and I quickly became lost in my thoughts.   I was thinking, sadly enough, about dying because of a horrible accident we had just passed on the highway.  I started thinking about the fact that my husband and I hadn’t done our wills yet and that, if tragedy struck, it would be an extra burden, in addition to the grief my parents would face, as they tried to put things together for my kids.  The thought eventually faded away as we arrived in Williamsburg, got unpacked for our visit and headed into the kitchen for dinner. 

S.C.O.U.T.  -  Shortly into the normal dinner conversation, my dad takes a detour and ironically brings up the subject regarding the necessity of getting a will done for me and my husband in case tragedy strikes.  It was totally out of the blue, and stopped me dead in my tracks as he had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA that I had been thinking about it only three hours earlier!  It was weird!!

We headed down to the beach house the next day and then, as if I was getting a sign from above, I open the paper that morning and find that they have dedicated an entire section to making a will and estate planning!!!  Finally, as if to make this EVEN weirder, I hit the beach that afternoon and not one, but TWO of the magazines I was reading had articles on making a will, selecting an executor, guardians, living wills, etc.  It sent chills up and down my spine!!  Needless to say, as soon as I get home I will be finding a lawyer to get this done!

We agree with you Kelly… WEIRD!!  And for anyone who doubts it, go to the store and count the number of articles you find while flipping through the magazines and newspapers that discuss appointing an executor and constructing a will.  I bet you can’t find more than one or two.  Was Kelly attracting these pieces of information, including somehow cosmically tapping her dad to broach the subject?  Or, was she having some sort of mini-premonition that these things were going to be crossing her path and subconsciously knew it was going to really bug her that she hadn’t written a will yet?  OR, as always, were they nothing more than just a chilling coincidence?  Personally, it makes me think there’s a lot going on around us that we can’t see with our eyes.

July 26, 2010 - It's a "Dirty Job", but someone's got to do it

Background – I was walking with two friends at the beach and began to tell them the story of another friend’s father who had bought a house right on the beach.  He sold the structure and had a company come pick it up and move it two blocks away; he just wanted the beach front property and planned on building his own house.   It had been a big story at the time and the news even came to watch them load up the old house, and without breaking so much as a floor board, move it around the corner!  The other moms and I wondered at how in the world they were able to do that.  None of us had the slightest idea and therefore the conversation was a short one.   I continued to wonder though, how they could do that without the house breaking completely apart.

S.C.O.U.T. - 4:00 that afternoon the kids came in from the beach and we all plopped down in front of the TV to cool off before dinner.  The first show to come on was “Dirty Jobs” starring Mike Rowe.  I felt that old familiar tingle creep down my spine as they announced that the second segment of the show would profile a company whose specialty is… moving entire houses from one place to another, without breaking so much as a floor board!!   It took about 15 minutes for the show to answer all the question’s I’d had that morning about the subject.  Simply uncanny, both how you can move an entire house without breaking a single floor board, and the fact that I had asked the question and gotten my answer within hours.

My goofy dog Scout is super mad at me.   He could care less about how to move an entire house because he now realizes that we were at the beach the entire time he was in the kennel.  He finds that completely unacceptable and refuses to forgive us for not taking him along.

July 22, 2010 - Mystery editor revealed

Background - I had coffee with my friend this morning and was telling her about the college student who is reading a piece of my writing and helping me edit it.  I know this girl’s mother but have never met the girl herself.  She is doing an internship for a publisher in New York and I just e-mailed her the piece of writing that she agreed to help me with.  I told my friend that it was a little weird not knowing what she looks like when she is reading something so very personal to me.

S.C.O.U.T. - After coffee I crossed the parking lot and headed up towards the grocery store to pick up a few items for dinner.  I was just about to cross the street when a car crossed the road in front of me and I noticed that it was the mother of the girl reading my writing.  Sitting next to her was a young girl who I assumed to be one of her daughters.  I rushed home and e-mailed the girl immediately to see if it had been her in the car with her mother.  She wrote back that she was home for the weekend and it had, in fact, been her!  I was stunned to find that I now knew what she looks like, and only moments after telling my friend that I felt a little weird about that very thing.  The timing of this S.C.O.U.T. shook me to the core.  I had no idea she was home for the weekend and thinking about the narrow window of time required for me to see her driving by was mind boggling.  Almost anything could have happened to make me miss that split second sighting.  It still gives me a tingle to this day.

My goofy dog Scout is unimpressed with my boggling and just wants to know what new and delicious treat I bought him at the store.  Typical. 

What's in a name?

Background – I had been journaling and collecting S.C.O.U.T.’s (strange cases of uncanny timing) for over nine months when I decided I needed a few synonyms for the word “coincidence”.  I was using the word so much that at times my writing was sounding redundant and choppy.  I looked up “coincidence” on Thesaurus.com and read the word bank for synonyms.  One of the synonyms was “circumstance”, and when you scrolled down farther, the word “circumstance” had its own synonym suggestions.  This is the entry I saw:

Main Entry:  circumstance 

Part of Speech:  noun 

Definition:  situation, condition 

Synonyms:  * Moira, accident, action, adjunct, affair, article, case, cause, * coincidence, concern, contingency, crisis, destiny, detail, doom, element, episode, event, exigency, fact, factor, fate, feature, fortuity, go, happening, happenstance, incident, intervention, item, juncture, kismet…etc., etc.

*The first synonym is “Moira” and the ninth synonym is “coincidence”.

S.C.O.U.T.  -  My middle name is Moira.  It didn’t escape me that the words “destiny”, “fate” and “kismet” (the word of Turkish origin for fate or destiny) were also in this word bank.  I’m not exaggerating when I say you could have blown me over with a feather.  Truth be told, this freaked me out a little.  I have the distinct feeling that I’m being walked down a garden path and have no choice but to follow.

July 19, 2010 - Mixed signals

Background - I had to avoid Rte. 7 because the traffic was at a complete stand-still.  I decided to take a detour that would take me far off my intended path and quickly got annoyed at myself at the length I would have now have to travel.  Perhaps it would have just been better to just sit in the traffic for a few minutes.  I had already started down the path of this detour and decided to soothe my irritated nerves by telling myself that I had subconsciously chosen this way in order to avoid a car accident.  Had I gone the other way perhaps that would have been the result. 

S.C.O.U.T. – I had barely finished with this little mind trick to justify my actions, when a car pulled erratically out into the intersection I was about to pass through and came to a stop right in front of me.  I could see the driver and quickly realized he wasn’t paying any attention to the road, he was talking with the passenger sitting next to him.  I instinctively slammed on the brakes and laid about five feet of tire rubber before coming to a stop, only inches from the side of this man’s car.   It was truly the closest I have come to having a serious car accident in all my thirty years of driving.

This incident left me wondering how I could have been thinking about avoiding a serious car accident and then seconds later nearly having my very first one in all my years of driving.  Did I attract the near car accident by just thinking about “car accident”, or did I perhaps avoid it because I was focused on “avoiding a car accident”?  Or as usual, there’s always the possibility that this was just a cosmic coincidence and has no meaning whatsoever.  

My goofy dog Scout is still a bit shaken by this near miss and therefore tells me to just keep my eyes on the road, and to STOP thinking about car accidents altogether.

Reader contribution - Brother, can you spare a dime?

Background – My son Jake has been more than a little skeptical about this phenomenon and refused to let me in on any of the strange coincidences happening to him that may be called a S.C.O.U.T…… until today!

Jake walked into one of his classes and another student was pointing to a dime on the floor.  There was a quick exchange about who would snatch up the little gift.  Jake took one look at the dime and remarked “It’s just a dime.  A dime won’t buy you anything in this world.  I don’t want it, you can have it”.  The girls sitting behind him happily accepted the gift and snickered at Jake “Now I’m a dime richer than you Jake!”  It was a brief, light hearted exchange that Jake didn’t think another thing about until that afternoon.

S.C.O.U.T.   -  In P.E. that afternoon another friend of Jake’s was drinking a Sobe flavored water and remarked to Jake how delicious it was and how Jake HAD to try one.  Jake laughed, agreed and then reminded the kid that he owed him a few dollars and it was time to pay up so he could go get that Sobe water!  The kid dug in his pocket and dropped a dollar bill and all the change he had into Jake’s hand as payment. 

Jake arrived at the soda machine, checked the price of the Sobe water and then looked into his hand to see how much money his friend had given him.  Sitting under the $1 bill, Jake had a dime and a nickel.  The price of the Sobe water was $1.25.  Jake felt the tingle creep down his spine as he was now finding out just how valuable a dime can be.  He counted over 25 students before he could find one that would lend him a dime so he could get his Sobe water; grinning and shaking his head all the while about the undeniable S.C.O.U.T. that he would now finally have to share with his mother!!

My goofy dog Scout loves his Jake and is growling at me to leave him alone.  Sorry buddy, no can do!!!

Reader contribution - The grim reaper gives Sujatha a nod

Background - Sujatha had just read my blog entry “The wonderful Mr. Drozd” and found herself thinking about funeral S.C.O.U.T.s and how truly strange they can be.  She headed off to coffee with an old friend as she rolled these thoughts around in her head.  At coffee, Sujatha’s friend brings up a man that they both know.  He is a close friend of hers and a longtime acquaintance of Sujatha’s.  They proceed to have a short conversation about this man and about a funny comment he made that had tickled her friend pink!  It was a normal run of the mill conversation and Sujatha didn’t think much about it… until the next morning.

S.C.O.U.T.  – The next morning Sujatha receives an unexpected text from her coffee companion.  It was a stunned announcement that the man they had been so casually talking about only yesterday (the first time they had spoken of him in a great while) had passed away last night.  Sujatha immediately connected her thoughts from the previous day about the strange nature of funeral S.C.O.U.T.s to the fact that she experienced one that very same day… a coincidence inside a coincidence so to speak!  Sujatha and I have since decided that this was no coincidence, and in that case, the implications are staggering.

My goofy dog Scout grudgingly admits that funeral S.C.O.U.T.s are the strangest.  He is also fully aware of the implications and says that someday he’ll let me in on the cosmic truth about death, but right now he needs to take his nap.  Sigh.