Yesterday I took the family to Boston Pizza to celebrate my eldest daughter’s birthday. My younger daughter who puts salt on everything informs us half way through her steak sandwich that she thinks that the salt shaker actually contains sugar. I sprinkled some on my hand and sure enough it was. I informed the server merely to draw it to her intention, and my daughter who was full anyway declined a second steak sandwich that was offered. Couldn’t have been that big a deal, but she was given a voucher for a future meal.
So this morning, in order to prepare my coffee I had to refill our 1 liter sugar cannister from the 5 kg bag. After that I thirstily drew a big sip of coffee only to spew it out in the fortunately nearby sink. You guessed it. I didn’t read the label on the bag of salt.
Now how weird is that. In my 54 years I’ve never had an experience in mistaking salt for sugar or sugar for salt, yet in the space of 12 hours I experienced it twice.
We keep sugar in a sugar shaker, like the diners have. We keep salt in a dish, to make getting a pinch of salt easy.
I had some friends over a few weeks ago, and I offered them coffee. One of them fixed herself a cup, took a sip, made a horrible face, and said, “Ugh, disgusting!” I was about to get really insulted that she would say that about my coffee, when she explained that she had put salt in instead of sugar.
After pondering this I have arrived at a theory. I believe this is an example of a subset of axissymmetrical similitude within Murphy’s Law. That is, two events that share a symmetry in composition and temporality as well as a similarity in object with a negative outcome. It, of course, falls under a broad classification as synchronicity.
I also call this my “When shit happens there, shit happens here.” theory. I arrived at this theory through a recent personal experience that mirrors yours. Well, not exactly… but I believe it shares a morphic field skeletally. My chosen name for this theory is much more literal than it appears. Let me explain…
I was at the local pub on a really busy Saturday night with my nephew. A sudden “urge” grabbed me from deep within my bowels and I headed for the bathroom. …you know, one of those “Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now!” moments. I got to the bathroom and wouldn’t you know it, shit was all over the toilet and toilet seat from some previous explosive asshole. I puckered! I knew I couldn’t go here…I.just.couldn’t.bring myself. The women’s bathroom was occupied and the matter was coming to a (turtle)head.
Now, I live about 5 minutes drive from the pub. I made my decision and headed for home. Without too much detail, I made it to my street and had a catastrophic containment failure. I saw no need to hurry after that and drove home resigned in hot, squishy, shame.
…Hence, when shit happens there, shit happens here.
When I was a teen, we were expecting company to come over. My mother was slicing cheese to put out and arranging it on a plate. I saw one thick slice left on the counter. Thinking it the heel of the block of cheese she had been slicing (because it’s tough to hold and slice the last inch of a block) I said “I’ll take care of that for you.” and took a bite out of it.
It was butter. … Bleack!
She had taken it out of the fridge to soften and it happened to be the same color as the cheese she was slicing. She was also baking fresh bread and was planning on offering it to the company with butter.
Two days later, I was going to fry something up (eggs maybe?), put the frying pan on the stove, opened the fridge and took out a small serving plate holding the remains of the butter (a different stick from the one I bit into) that had been put out for the company two days before, took off the plastic wrap covering it, and used the spatula to flick it onto the frying pan. It wasn’t until a minute later, as I was pouring my drink, that I noticed the ‘butter’ wasn’t melting properly. It should have been entirely liquid by then, instead only the very bottom was runny. … It was the left over of the cheese!
… So I found the real butter in the fridge, added it to the pan along with the eggs and scrambled myself some cheesy eggs. Yum!
I worked in a Mexican restaurant as a teen and one day I had the job of making chips. You cut the six inch round corn tortillas into six parts and then, when you have a ton of those, you deep fry them and then give them a little salt and dump them in the container. (a large trash can)
I ran out of salt and went to the stock room to refill the salt can. About an hour later someone passed by and stuck her finger into the grease sludge to take a taste of the salt. It was sugar and I made almost a full can of sweet chips.
I managed to cover it up and never got into trouble over that one.
…and a few years later Zebra went on to become head of product R&D for the Taco Bell Corporation, rising to the top levels on the success of his brilliant and delicious invention: The Cinnamon Crispa!!!
