"You wanna get nuts? Let's get nuts!" said MICHAEL KEATON to JACK NICHOLSON in the 1989 BATMAN movie, and ADAM WEST said it again in the 2016 BATMAN: The RETURN Of The CAPED CRUSADERS dvd animated film. Guess what? I'm saying it again now. Why? Basically, because some of the subjects I write about are a bit 'nutty', in the sense that nobody else, it seems to me, would ever think of putting digits to keyboard in order to warble on about anything resembling some of the things that so fascinate me from time-to-time.
Case in point: Over 30 years ago, I had a friend who lived in a top floor flat about 5 minutes around the corner from me. He had a three piece suite, but he considered one armchair surplus to requirements, so exchanged it with me (along with some cash) for a video player/recorder I had. The armchair moved into my back room, and I'm sometimes astounded to think that I've now had it for far longer than the family three-piece suite I grew up with for what seems like an eternity in memory.
I had another pal who often sat on that chair when he visited, and last year, he actually bought the flat that the armchair had originally come from. Not from the other guy I knew, as he'd sold it on long before that, but isn't that weird? Pal #2 had gone from sitting on the chair to living in the flat that the chair had come from, without ever thinking of how 'Twilight Zone'-ish the situation is - in my mind anyway. It even took me a while to realise how bizarre a 'coincidence' it happens to be. It's weird how seemingly random events connect up in a way that we would never imagine unless or until they actually happen.
Can you think of a similarly odd situation that's happened to you, or is it just me who reads too much significance into ordinary, everyday, pedestrian events? You can let me know in the comments section. Incidentally, that's a generic armchair in the above pic, as mine is covered in stuff and I can't take a good photo of it at the moment. (I will when I can.)
My thought is that our brains are programmed to look for patterns and meaning, which is often a very good thing, but can lead us to go out on a limb by finding them where there's no rational reason to believe that they exist. For example, your second friend could, presumably, have bought a flat anywhere, but since he was interested in your neighborhood, he bought the one that the chair came from. There again, he could have bought another flat, but, for reasons of his own, he chose that one. Your conclusion is that this must mean something--or at least it might mean something--but, to me, the fact that he bought the flat he did was simply a coincidence. I believe this because I see no reason to believe otherwise. In answer to your question, yes, I've had "odd" things happen, but I don't find in them a meaning or a pattern.
ReplyDeleteWould you be willing to share the address of your other blog?
Actually, I didn't say that it must mean something, what I actually said was that it was a bizarre 'coincidence'. I'd put the word in inverted commas to allow for the possibility of there being 'more things in heaven and earth, Horatio...' than we can actually know. I just found it odd that he went from sitting on a chair that came from that flat, to actually owning the flat the chair came from. However, I did sort of influence him into buying the flat because it suited his needs and he was looking for a flat to buy. The connection to the chair though, didn't occur to me until much later.
DeleteThe blog is called Crivens and has a link to it in my bloglist.
Kid, I had understood that you hadn't made an absolute claim about the experience. I was instead responding to the fact that you left the door open, whereas I would not have left the door open.
DeleteThis is the first time I've been to your blog that I've even seen a blogroll. On my previous visits, your blog never stopped downloading the whole time I was here. Your other blog also, based upon my experience, takes an awfully long time to download, yet not all elements of it are visible to me until it gets through the process.
I find that it's always best to 'leave the door open' when one has a blog, otherwise there'd be little to write about and little for readers to discuss or explore.
DeleteI don't know why you'd have difficulty in accessing my blog, so the only thing I can suggest is clearing your browsers or restarting your computer. That might help.