The first morning, on National Public Radio, there was a news item led off by a snippet from Star Trek about the Vulcan mind meld and something about Spock and the other person being connected. I didn't catch all of this, as this is what first got my attention. The story itself was about some experiment in which one guy was in front of a video game and another – in a completely different location – was to press a key to send a missile to destroy a spaceship when the first guy thought about it. The second guy pressed the key and the spaceship was destroyed. End of story, apparently. No repeating it to see if it was anything more than coincidence. No swapping places to see if it still worked the other way around.
I didn’t take this as my “gift” from the Universe. It was just a cool story, but one that left me wanting more. I need to know more about the experiment to know if this really, truly proved that our minds really, truly are connected. But think of the implications for people who are paralyzed! Could they think about moving something and have it happen? Telekinesis may be real? (And believe me, I spent a large part of my childhood trying to move things with my mind, to no avail. If I had one super power, that’s the one I wanted. That or invisibility, and I think I have achieved that – just witness all the cars that don’t stop for me while I am at a crosswalk.)
Then at work, I took a client grocery shopping. That’s part of my job, doing the grocery shopping and ensuring they have nutritious things to eat (not that they all eat the nutritious things I buy – my influence goes only so far). After we were done, “Sue*” got into my car as I put the cart into the little “house” provided for it. I thought I saw “Jennifer” pull up in the spot next to the cart house. Jennifer is a former supervisor and doesn’t live in that city. Why she would be there on a Saturday morning, I had no idea. I went to my car and backed out. Then I saw a woman carrying her son past my car. I looked at her, she looked at me. It was Jennifer – wasn’t it? I rolled the passenger window down and we chatted a few minutes. And Jennifer chatted with Sue, as Jennifer had run the house Sue lives in a few years ago.
This encounter may have been coincidence or it may have been my gift from the Universe. While it was not outside the realm of possibility to run into Jennifer at any given time, why would it be on a Saturday morning? But the best – and oddest – part (I think, anyway) was that I had seen "Sara" the day before, a woman who had had a baby around the same time Jennifer did. I mentioned this to Sara and said that I had seen Jennifer briefly a few months previously, but had never met her son. So … odd that I would suddenly, less than 24 hours later, run into Jennifer (figuratively, at least - I did not hit her with my car) and meet her son.
So … maybe that was my gift, but I wanted to keep looking. That seemed too easy. So later on in the day, while at the group home, the smoke detector suddenly sounded. I looked up and saw smoke – only it really wasn’t smoke - I had dirty glasses. The alarm stopped soon after it started, but I stood on a chair and sounded it again until everyone got out of the house. I needed to do a fire drill before the middle of the month, and this was going to count. It was on my to-do list, if not on my mind at the time. I think the Force was just helping me out by reminding me of this fact. Or the batteries were dying in one or more of the smoke detectors. After determining that the house was not, in fact, on fire, and after everyone was safely back inside, I went around the house and counted all the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors so I could purchase batteries for them all.
My conclusion was that I didn’t get any “clear signs” that couldn’t be written off as coincidence, but I did experience two coincidences (or three, if you count the radio show) that did seem just a little more than chance. Cool things happened, but cool things happen all the time. I don’t know if that day was any more special than any other. Or maybe I’m a hard sell.
*I run a group home for adults with developmental disabilities. I like my clients to have names to personalize my stories, but I can’t use their real names for lots of reason. Therefore, I will use common names for my clients and change key aspects of their identities for the sake of a good story. Likewise, I’ll change the names of colleagues and friends – to ensure privacy and avoid any possible embarrassment. Friends: if you read this and want to out yourselves, be my guest!
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