They say coincidence is lucky. I’ve touched on this before after reading the highly recommendable book Beyond Coincidence. I recognize that much of coincidence comes from being open to the idea of it, to being observant and aware of the myriad connections present around you.
Sunday night I pulled out the travel journal I used to record my 1998 trip to Italy and Greece and my 2004 trip to England and France. About a third of the journal, in which I plan to write about our upcoming honeymoon to Costa Rica, is still blank.
I was reading through passages about the 2004 trip that I took with my friend Beckie. I literally laughed out loud while reading about how we bumbled through our London to Paris Eurorail adventure (my favorite line: “Then Beckie started crying.”), how we couldn’t understand any English in England, and how we were proud to be misidentified as German tourists.
I read about the day I was searching for an internet café in London’s Picadilly Circus and passed by a woman whose nose was bleeding profusely, the blood pooling on the sidewalk and splattering onto her sneakers. A man walking past pulled a handkerchief from his pocket (his breast pocket, I’m sure) and handed it to the woman. He stayed for a moment to make sure she was okay, and then proceeded on his way. I made a note that I was very impressed by the kindness of this gesture, because he sure wasn’t going to get his handkerchief back. It was a lovely, British thing to do.
So you see the connection. I always liken the awareness of coincidence to learning about idioms in elementary school. Once you learn what an idiom is, you’re suddenly surrounded by them; your ear is honed to them.
And, to my delight, this is a lovely segue to the other item I wanted to mention. My last post makes note of the fact that the word “accident” is but a tiny shard in my internet Persona image. Lo and behold, the next day the non-internet universe set out to prove that “accident” is a present, though often dormant, component of me.
Friday evening Jesse and I attended an Amos Lee concert at the zoo. We decided to depart toward the end of the encore, along with throngs of generally slow-moving concertgoers. Jesse broke into a jog, weaving through the crowd. I grabbed a free rolled-up zoo poster from a volunteer and we practiced our relay hand-off skills while continuing to run. Let me emphasize that I do not run. But I was running nonetheless.
We came to a set of stairs and we both ran up them, one at a time. Jesse shot up ahead and took the next set of 4 stairs in one big leap. Oooh, I’m going to try that, I thought.
Yeah, my feet didn’t even clear the third step. Instead, they got caught up in the stationary concrete and I went sailing smack down onto black asphalt. Jesse said he’ll never forget the sight of me crumpled on the ground, a look of disappointment on my face rather than pain. What a stupid move, the look probably said. A nice woman nearby asked if I was okay. “Yes,” I replied, in a fed-up, easily misunderstood tone that I now regret.
I hobbled the rest of the way out of the zoo and stopped to check myself over once we got to the MAX platform. I pulled up my pant leg and saw that I scraped up my knee pretty well. An INJURY! Glory be. “I can’t wait to blog this!” I said. I took photos with my cell phone to memorialize the rare and special occasion.
Jesse said I was acting “young and free.” That’s the last time that’ll happen.
Did you say Glory be?
ReplyDeleteLiberally apply hydrogen peroxide, dry, smother with Vaseline and cover.
ReplyDeleteThat's a true blogger...whipping up your pant and snapping a shot later to blog about it...I love it! Great story of how you were trying to keep up with Jesse. Man that looks like it hurts!
ReplyDeleteOh yes, a much-loved pseudo-pious phrase of mine. :)
ReplyDeleteJesse drenched my wound in hydrogen peroxide once we got home and it's healing up nicely. It's technically his fault I crashed, so I accepted his nursing assistance.
The secondary benefit of getting cell phone pictures was my ability to gain sympathy from family members 1500 miles away!
For those simple minded people (like me):
ReplyDeleteid⋅i⋅om /ˈɪdiəm/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [id-ee-uhm] Show IPA
–noun 1. an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements, as kick the bucket or hang one's head, or from the general grammatical rules of a language, as the table round for the round table, and that is not a constituent of a larger expression of like characteristics.
2. a language, dialect, or style of speaking peculiar to a people.
3. a construction or expression of one language whose parts correspond to elements in another language but whose total structure or meaning is not matched in the same way in the second language.
4. the peculiar character or genius of a language.
5. a distinct style or character, in music, art, etc.: the idiom of Bach.