I’m sure we’ve all had them. I call them “Plate of Shrimp” moments, after the scene in the movie “Repo Man” where one of the characters is philosophizing about the “lattice of coincidence” that surrounds us. (“You’ll be thinking about a plate of shrimp, then someone will say ‘Plate’, or ‘Shrimp’, or ‘Plate of Shrimp’.”) So what kind of weird coincidences have you experienced?
I had one last night. It was the night of baseball’s All-Star Game. It was also the tenth anniversary of the day my dad died. While the game was starting, I was sitting there thinking about my dad, who spent much of his life traveling as a sales rep. When I was a kid, during the summer he would take the family along on one of his business trips as a little mini-vacation, and it always seemed to be during the week of the All-Star Game. So I have these memories of the whole family sitting in a hotel room at the Holiday Inn in Louisville KY eating a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and watching the All-Star Game. And as I’m thinking about this, a KFC commercial comes on! (The one where the family is passing the bucket of chicken around the table and the little kid is saying “Don’t take the drumstick!”) That was kinda weird…