Strange But Weird!

I carry around in my head the memory of three inexplicable things that happened to me. I've never committed them to fiction because they're coincidences, and it's hard to get away with coincidences in fiction. I've never written poems about them because that's just dumb. I've only shared them with friends when we've sat around exchanging The Strangest, Weirdest Things That Ever Happened To Me stories. Although it's not a competition, one of the following stories has never failed to win my friends' award for the Strangest and Weirdest. (See if you can guess which story.) For this post, it would help if you were sitting around a campfire in the middle of a thick woods with your iPad and some marshmallows. But since you're not, wait for nightfall, turn out all the lights (well, you'll need at least one), and prepare yourself for the unspeakable horror of . . .

Strange But Weird!

Coincidence #1:

I was staying at a bed and breakfast once in 1995, and on the first evening I went downstairs to the parlor to read a book I was in the middle of. I remember it was Possession, by A.S. Byatt, and it had been a bestseller a few years before. Important note: It was not a big bestseller now. So I'm sitting in an easy chair, reading and sipping hot tea, when a woman who was also staying at the B&B comes in and sits down across from me. She opens a book and begins reading, too. At one point she lifts the book as she reaches over for a pillow, and I say, “Wow, we're reading the same book.” (See this blog from two entries ago concerning how I love interrupting readers.) She agrees that that was really something. Then she leaves the room, but only temporarily – her book remains spreadeagled on the loveseat she has been occupying.

I'm switching back to past tense now because this is so horrifying that I need to distance myself temporally to keep from hyperventilating. Anyway, in her absence, I got curious and walked over to the loveseat and lifted the book. It was open to the same two pages as mine. I sat back down right away, but when she returned, guilt overtook me and I confessed my indiscretion. “That is so amazing,” she said, at least as amazed as I was. Then she laughed and said (here it comes), “OK, so which paragraph, smart guy?” When I told her where I had left off, her mouth opened and she looked for a moment as if she didn't care what flew into it.

Then a strange thing happened (less strange, still weird). We just stopped talking. After another minute or two, she got up to go upstairs. She said goodnight, but it was almost to herself, as if she didn't want a reply. It was a vacation, of course, so I was out during most of the day, but from that evening until I checked out two days later, I didn't see her again. In a way, I was relieved. I think neither of us wanted to risk being freaked out a second time..

Strange but weird!

Coincidence #2 (longer this time):

Go back with me further now, all the way to 1973. I was in the Navy, stationed at a naval air station in Pensacola, at that time a small, sleepy city in the Deep South. (It's still in the Deep South.) My enlisted friends and I woke up bored, worked bored, and went to bed bored. The Navy was just part of it; mainly it was Pensacola itself, because we could never find anything interesting to do and we missed home. One E-4 was so desperate he submitted a transfer request for Iceland. (It was denied.) On Saturdays, I often rode the duty van downtown to the USO center, a big room about the size of a hotel lobby with one pool table and two magazines. It was boring there, too, so I usually wandered up and down Palafox Street, the main drag, as if something might ever change.

One Saturday morning that spring, I had just stepped out of a storefront diner when I noticed there weren't any cars around. I looked right and there wasn't any traffic. I looked left and there wasn't any traffic there, either; just two little girls walking down the street dressed as carrots. I was so surprised by the sheer idea of something unusual happening in Pensacola that at first I didn't notice the two little boys coming around the corner behind them, dressed as broccoli. Now I looked around me and saw that people were slowly gathering at the curb, some of them opening their folding chairs and sipping bottles of water. Oh, did I mention it gets hot in the Florida panhandle during springtime? It was around 10:00 and I was already sweating.

After about twelve pair of children walked by in their vegetative states, I heard a drumbeat. Soon a band appeared at the same corner, turning in the same direction down Palafox. It was a parade for sure now, and the spectators had increased in front of me. Not many, but more than if there were no parade. I remained against the diner wall. Not only was there shade, but I was so shy back then that I didn't dare step forward and have some old seafarer who recognized my regulation haircut start reminiscing about his own bygone enlistment days (sort of like I'm doing right now).

About midpoint in the parade, after a few more bands had come and gone, two majorettes approached with a banner announcing that the next band represented Hammonton High School from Hammonton, New Jersey. I forget what song they were playing, but it was livelier than the rest, so I perked up.

The band was halfway past me so that I was directly parallel to a row of French horn players. The girl playing on the end closest to me broke rank, walked right toward me, stumbled over the curb, and landed hard on her behind. There was a gap between onlookers, so no one was right there to catch her. Her French horn clattered onto the asphalt, and just before she fell back in a dead faint, she unstrapped her tall fuzzy hat so that it hit the sidewalk and rolled to within three feet of me.

I froze. By this time, helpful locals were sitting her up, wiping her with kerchiefs, and offering her water as she came to. A middle-aged woman walked up to me, bent down, and retrieved the errant hat. I was mortified and walked quickly down and stopped a couple of storefronts away. What had happened? I had always considered myself a kind person. I looked for any opportunity to help people in distress. Now here was a girl in distress and I couldn't form a single thought in my head.

Two women eventually lifted her up by the arms and began walking her slowly toward the corner as the third woman followed with the hat in her hands. As they passed me, the girl looked up just for a second and our eyes met. There it was. She knew. I was the world's worst human ever, and she nailed me with one glance.

I rode the duty van back to the base and sulked in the barracks all afternoon.

At evening chow, a friend joined me at my table, and I related my tale of woe.

“I sure wish I could see her again and apologize. Maybe I'll write to the high school.”

“But you can see her again.”

He explained that today marked the annual Fiesta of Five Flags in Pensacola. The morning parade was just a warm-up. The big parade would take place in a couple of hours.

I told him that I was going to catch the duty van back into town and hope her band would be back in the parade. It made sense – why would a school send its marching band from New Jersey to Florida just to follow a bunch of vegetables? Then I would keep up alongside it to the end of the parade route, where I would seek her out and try to make amends.

So. Back in the van. Back downtown. A huge crowd now, people everywhere, and the honorary “king” and “queen” of the Fiesta on the balcony of the San Marcos Hotel, overlooking the festivities. Palafox was a four-lane street divided by a sloping grassy median. I climbed to the top and planted myself right about opposite of where I had been that morning. No reason for that; it's where I happened to stop.

The parade went on for well over an hour, and I was beginning to think that maybe a school in New Jersey really would send its band all the way to Pensacola just to participate in the lesser of two events.

Then I had a sinking feeling – if she was so unwell that morning, maybe the band would show up but she wouldn't. Didn't that make sense? I knew I shouldn't have come back. What was I thinking? Just another dumb idea in my dumb life. But my fear was relieved. There was the familiar Hammonton banner coming down the street. I took a few steps forward to get a better look. Yes, there she was, back with the other French horn players, only now on the other end of the row, my side again. I can't explain the change; I wish I could. But there she was.

And there she was, nearly parallel with me when – as God is my witness – she broke rank once more, walked to the foot of the median, and collapsed.

This time I acted quickly. Two women were already helping her sit up and removing the fuzzy hat. I told them I would go get some water. I eased my way between bands to the sidewalk, and the same waitress in the same diner where I'd eaten breakfast gave me a sloshing paper cup, which I gave to one of the women when I returned.

They got her to her feet and gently led her along the median and away from me. I wasn't a spiritual person then, but I felt as if she had been some sort of angel. All I wanted was to apologize, and here she went and gave me the chance to fully redeem myself. I was going to stay for the rest of the parade, but who cared now? I was happy, and I wasn't bored.

Strange but really weird!

Coincidence #3 (mercifully shorter than #2):

I mentioned in a previous post that I had come in second in an essay contest when I was a high school senior. I won a trip to D.C. to see the sights and eat Navy bean soup lunch with my congressman. I saw everything I wanted to – the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Capitol building, and the White House (where you can still get a guided tour like I did, but these days there are tight restrictions).

That was in June of 1971. OK, now flash forward to the summer of 1972. I'm stationed at the same naval air station in the same town as previously mentioned. One of my friends is the same guy you also met in #2. One Saturday night, we're in his room in the barracks, doing what many enlisteds do sooner or later  – drink beer and share family photos. Sharing our homesickness, as it were.  He pulls out some pictures his mom took while on business in Washington, D.C., the year before. "Look at this one," he said.  "Looks like you, doesn't it?"

It was me. I was passing in front of her camera outside the Capitol. Same face, same glasses, same uncoordinated outfit, everything. As the Great Criswell told viewers watching Plan 9 from Outer Space, "Can you prove it didn't happen?" (OK, bad example. He was talking about graverobbing space aliens. But you see what I'm driving at.)

Strange but holy-crap weird and absolutely true!


Feel free to use the reply window at the bottom of this post and share your own amazing coincidences with me. I eat this stuff up with a spoon.