Coincidences, Cookies, Kids and the Duck That Won The Lottery

Tonight, foot loose and fancy free in Hollywood, I wandered over to the Farmer's Market for dinner, after which I was planning on going to see Thor at The Grove theaters. Yes, I know - hardly living "la vida loca", but my reputation as a bad boy is a bit... overstated.

Anyway, after I finished dinner and walked up to the theater, I took a look at the massive crowds inside at the ticket lines, and decided to give it a pass. Instead, I headed into the Barnes & Noble next door to read a few graphic novels, and browse a few other sections.

I spent about twenty minutes reading through Superman: New Krypton, Vol. 3 (quite good!), and then walked down a couple of aisles to the New Age section, where I leafed through a few books, including Nick Redfern's new book The Real Men in Black, and Mark Pilkington's Mirage Men, because I wanted to have another look at the section he wrote about my friend, Walter Bosley.

After about another twenty minutes, I decided to head back to Greg's to catch the end of the Dodger's game. As I was headed to the escalator down to the main floor, I noticed the Philosophy section, and walked over to see if they had a copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, because I lost my old copy about a year ago, and I've been meaning to pick up a new one ever since.

I found the book, flipped through it for a minute or two, and decided to buy it the next time I was in the store. As I was about to place it back on the shelf, a scream from the next aisle over startled me - three young teens in the Manga section were laughing and carrying on as they browsed some vampire books. I gave them a bit of a stern look, because I can't abide anyone who makes a ruckus in a public place, and then I turned back to the Philosophy shelves. Due to the distraction, however, my gaze focused not on the shelf where I found Meditations, but the one above it, where a particular book caught my attention - The Duck That Won The Lottery, by British philosopher  Julian Baggini.

Now, as regular readers are aware, for years I have traveled with a stuffed duck named Zorgrot, who is sort of my company's mascot. This trip to Los Angeles is no different. Unfortunately, I've been so busy since I got here last week that I had forgotten to take Zorgy out of my knapsack until this afternoon. Just before I left for the Farmer's Market, I had taken a few photos of Zorgrot and "Kitty", the cat that I'm looking after while they're in Europe.

I thought it was a cute little coincidence that I had finally pulled Zorgy out earlier in the evening and now my attention had been drawn to a book with "duck" in the title, so I placed Meditations back on the shelf, and picked up The Duck That Won The Lottery. I opened it at random, to the first page of chapter 55 - "Chance wouldn't be a fine thing: The no coincidence presumption".

"Okay," I thought to myself, "what are the odds?"

Given the series of coincidences that I've experienced on this trip, I decided to try a little experiment. I closed the book, and put it back on the shelf. I wanted to see if this copy of the book was somehow predisposed to open at the beginning of chapter 55. I picked it up and opened it at random a dozen times, and not once did it come close to the beginning of chapter 55.

Three kids distracted me just long enough so that I would notice The Duck That Won The Lottery, which I opened at random to the chapter on coincidences, just that one time.

I put the book back on the shelf, and walked out of the store, thinking, "well, that was a weird."

On the way home, I decided to pop into Canter's Deli on Fairfax Avenue to pick up some cookies for a snack later in the evening. I ordered six chocolate chip cookies, and four little squares of some sort (they're tasty, but I'm not quite sure what they are). Now, at Canter's, the cookies aren't priced individually but by weight, so the clerk weighed them, and then rang them in. He turned to me and said: "that'll be three fifty five, sir."

Weird had just gotten weirder.

The antics of three kids had led me to notice a book with "duck" in the cover, which I then opened to chapter 55, about coincidences.

$3.55 for cookies, based on weight. If the clerk had picked a couple of different cookies for me, the price would have been different. It had to be those cookies.

I pulled out a five dollar bill, gave it to the clerk, and then asked him for a receipt, because I wanted a reminder of this coincidence, and because I wasn't sure anyone would believe me. Heck, I'm not sure I believe this run of coincidences.

3 kids.

Chapter 55, about coincidences.

$3.55.

Now it's getting really weird.

Paul Kimball

The LA Weirdness Continues...

The run of coincidental weirdness continues on my West coast trip with what was the strangest experience yet (see here and here for previous instances)...

I got up this morning, and decided that I would catch the bus and head out past Westwood to visit the Getty Center, which is perhaps my favourite place in Los Angeles. The afternoon was a wonderful mix of art and reflection on the grounds, about as close as you can get to a Walden moment in Los Angeles, and then I caught the bus and headed back to Hollywood. By the time I got back to Greg's apartment, it was 6:00 pm, and I was really hungry, having eaten only a package of M & M's up until that point. I decided to head over to the Farmer's Market to grab dinner and catch some Thursday night live jazz. I grabbed a book to read - at first I picked a collection of John Shirley short stories, but at the last second I switched it, and took another book, which I had been meaning to read. More on that in a bit.

The place was jumping when I got there, and the tables in the area around the stage in the West Patio was packed. I wandered off to another section where my favourite deli is located, and ordered a cheeseburger. Now usually I just get it plain - burger and cheddar cheese, and nothing else - but this time, because there were other options on the cheese, and because I was getting a bit bored with the "same old, same old", I decided to switch it up. I went with Swiss cheese. That's important.

Anyway, the burger was going to take a couple of minutes, so I grabbed a beer from a nearby bar, wandered back to the deli to pick up my burger and fries, and then headed back to the section of the Market where the jazz group was playing to see if I could find a seat there. It was still packed, but there was a table at the back of the area, near an entrance, that wasn't taken, so I moved as quickly as I could through the crowd to get it before anyone else could, which I did. I sat down, pulled the book I had brought with me out of my knapsack, placed it on the table, and then began to eat dinner.

The jazz was good, the food was better, and the beer was the best part of all after a long day of walkabouts and bus rides. As I was eating my dinner, however, an elderly couple approached my table. There were three unused seats, and over the music the woman motioned to them as if to ask whether they were taken or not. I smiled, nodded, and said "they're all yours." She returned the smile, sat down with her husband, and listened to the jazz for a bit as I finished up my food. As the band finished up their set, the man stood up and headed off to get some them some food.

I'm a friendly sort, and I always like talking to people, so I looked over at the woman and asked whether she was from Los Angeles. As soon as she spoke, I knew that she was from further away than I was - her accent was definitely European, although I couldn't quite place it. Turns out she and her husband were from... you guessed it - Switzerland!

I chuckled to myself - these random people who had sat down next to me were from Switzerland, and for the first time in months I had ordered a hamburger with Swiss cheese on it instead of cheddar. Weird.

Then it got weirder.

I asked her what they were doing in the United States, and it turns out that they come here every second year to visit their daughter, and then vacation. "Oh," I said, "that's nice. Where does your daughter live?"

"Dallas," she replied.

I immediately looked at the book on the table in front of me, the one that I had grabbed at the very last minute instead of the one that I had first picked up back at the apartment. It was Final Events by my good friend Nick Redfern, who lives in... Dallas!

Like I said... weird.

Or, as The Fixx would say:

I'm beginning to wonder if I've drifted into an alternate reality, because I'm not making this stuff up!

Paul Kimball

Four hours at O'Hare

Spend four hours at a busy airport like O'Hare in Chicago, as I did yesterday, and you'll understand why the human race isn't ready for "disclosure" of an "advanced alien presence", and won't be for many, many years (probably centuries), at least not on a societal level (the individual level is a different question, and is where we should be looking, but I digress...).

Leaving that aside, however, O'Hare did turn out to be an interesting experience for me in terms of weird coincidences.

First, a bit of back story. Several years ago, I was flying through O'Hare on my way to Cedar Rapids to interview Kevin Randle for Fields of Fear, and due to weather our flight was delayed for 9 hours. Now, anyone who has ever been to O'Hare knows that it's a huge airport, with multiple terminals, and within each terminal multiple concourses. It's an easy place to get lost, and there are all sorts of nooks and crannies. Anyway, as I was walking through the airport, who should I see but one of my best friends, who was studying in Mississippi but was on his way home to England for a visit. He was in a coffee shop. If I hadn't been held over, I would have missed him. If I hadn't taken a look over my shoulder at the coffee shop, I would have missed him. If... if... always "if"...

Let's just say that it was amazing coincidence, particularly in that airport on that day, with people packed in like sardines.

All of which is to let you know that I have a history of coincidences at O'Hare... which brings me to yesterday.

My flight to Los Angeles was through O'Hare, with a 4 hour stopover. Four hours is a lot of time to kill, so I wandered around through several different concourses. I didn't have any idea of which gate my flight to LA would be departing from, because it hadn't been posted yet. After about half an hour of walking around, I grabbed a hamburger from McDonald's and found a seat at gate B6, totally at random. I ate my burger, listened to my MP3 player for half of the Mumford & Sons album, watched a bit of CNN, and then walked over to the departures board to see if my flight had been assigned a gate yet. Indeed, it had - B6!

I smiled to myself as I pondered the odds of me choosing at random, in such a large airport, the exact gate that my flight was going to be assigned to, and then I went back over to the seating area at B6, sat down, and listened to some more music and watched some more CNN. After about an hour, with an hour and a half still to kill, I decided to go and get a copy of the New York Times to help me fill the rest of the time. I went down to the Hudson News by gate B16, bought the paper, and walked out into the hall. Just as I did, an announcement came over the PA - my flight had been relocated to a new gate.

B16, right next to where I was standing at that very moment.

There was only one thing I could do when faced with this second coincidence - I sat down, cued up Golden Earring on my MP3 player, hit play for "The Twilight Zone", and settled down to wait for my flight.

It was, as Arsenio Hall used to say, one of those things that makes a person go "hmm..."

Paul Kimball