When you’re involved in something that you have no hope of completely understanding, I think it’s natural to look at every little mysterious coincidence and occurance, with the thought that it could be part of your experience, and may shed some light onto the big picture.
Such is the case of a conversation I had today with my friend Jeff, an avid runner, who came by earlier today when I was in my garage, door open, clearing some junk out of the cabinets. As he is often able to do, he got within a few feet of me before I realized it. Jeff is about 5′8″ and weighs maybe 130 pounds, soaking wet. He’s a good guy.
“Hey buddy!” he said, slightly startling me. Actually, I think he enjoys the hell out of being so light on his feet people often don’t hear him coming.
I tried not to flinch “Hey Jeff. What’s up?”
“I had the weirdest friggin’ experience this morning,” except he didn’t use the word “friggin.”
“Yea?” I answered. You don’t know weird, my friend, I thought. “What happened?”
“Were you out picking up your paper at about 5 o’clock?” He asked.
“Today? Nope.” I had slept in until almost 7:30. I usually woke up about 6am, but had stayed up late last night and so layed in a bit this morning. We’d allowed Sam to stay up a little later than normal too, so she wasn’t up that early.
“Well, I swear to friggin’ GOD that I saw you standing in your driveway with your paper when I was running by here. I said ‘hi’ to you, and you turn around and friggin’ disappeared! He was laughing as he said it, but had a funny look in his eye.
I tried to give him my I’m listening to you and seriously considering what you’re saying look and slowly nodded. “Really? I was in bed. 5 AM? Definitely in bed.”
“Maybe somebody stealing your paper,” he ventured, still looking at me.
I nodded more vigorously this time “We didn’t get a paper this morning. Maybe you caught someone stealing it.”
“Man, if I could disappear like that, I wouldn’t friggin’ waste it on stealing newspapers…” He shrugged. “Sometimes the dark plays tricks on your eyes, I guess.”
“I guess,” I answered. Jeff seemed pretty sure it was me, and my gut told me it was.
But from when?
