Opening: Sometimes, I can't help but marvel at and be amused by the string of coincidences life throws our way. As an educated and (I like to think) fairly logical person, I know that coincidences are just random convergences of events. However, when they involve rather odd things, well, it does give one pause.
Exhibit A: Some weeks ago, a friend at work mentioned during lunch that her brother got married at a llama farm in Ohio. Since the bride's family also owned a llama farm, my friend chanced to visit two llama farms in one day. Most of us at the table hadn't even known there were llama farms in the US, so this information struck us as unusual and entertaining. In fact, it spurred a laugh-inducing conversation about llamas, alpacas, and the Amish. (Don't see the connection? Well, llamas and alpacas are both camelids, and llama farms and Amish communities apparently both exist in Ohio.)
"But the Amish can't use the llamas."
"Why not? They're not electric."
People who overheard our conversation probably thought we were crazy, but we enjoyed laughing ourselves silly. The merriment served as much-needed stress relief. Lunchtime and the bizarre conversation over, we returned to our respective desks. But, suddenly, llamas and alpacas seemed to pop up everywhere. We found out that another friend, who just moved to California this year, got married at the same llama farm in Ohio. (It is apparently a popular wedding location due to its picturesque setting.) A llama appeared in a cartoon video that yet another friend was watching at her cubicle (probably at the very same moment that we were having our llama-themed conversation). A few days later, at a girls-night-out dinner, a third friend insisted she had seen some "I love alpacas" commercials on TV. Before she sent us the link to prove she wasn't joking, I did some online searching of my own and came across I [heart] llamas buttons, T-shirts, and other paraphernalia. I had no idea camelids were so fashionable.
Exhibit B: I listen to NPR on my short commute to and from work. I tend to eschew TV news, I don't subscribe to any papers, and I don't actively visit news websites, so my weekday news diet pretty much consists of whatever I hear while I'm in the car. One night, while driving home, I heard a sound bite from Bush's visit to Cuba. He concluded his speech with "Viva Cuba libre!" Given his history of malapropisms, my immediate thought was, it would've been really funny if he had said, "Viva Chupacabra!" Now, I'd never even heard of a chupacabra until a couple of years ago, when a coworker wrote something about it as a joke on the lunchroom bulletin board. Why that thought popped into my head was a mystery, but I had a good internal chuckle over it. (For those of you unfamiliar with the chupacabra, it is a mythical creature known for drinking the blood of livestock, vampire style. Its name literally means "goat sucker.") Well, guess what came up as a lunchtime conversation topic on Friday? Chupacabras! A friend relayed the news about a Texas woman who claimed she captured the beast (or at least its corpse). Skeptics say it's some kind of fox, wolf, or dog, and samples from the creature were sent out for DNA testing.
Closing: As coincidences go, I realize that these are not the most eerie or outrageous. Still, llamas and chupacabras are not your everyday conversation topics, so I found their recurrences uncanny and amusing. Maybe next week, I'll hear that alleged chupacabras have turned their bloodthirsty attention to llamas in Ohio.
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3 comments:
I just adore the directions our lunchtime conversations take - usually leading us to some fun post-lunch research.
Follow up to exhibit A: I have an Alpaca finger puppet (a gift from a friend who visited Peru) that my husband used as my focal point during labor last year.
Follow up to exhibit B: The chupacabra remains turned out to be a coyote, though they are doing additional testing to figure out why they were hairless.
I agree that these types of recurrences are bizarre but have come to believe that they are probably just a glitch in the Matrix. :o)
Talk about synchronicity - Last week I read a story about a woman who gave up a career in Washington D.C. to go live with her love on a llama farm in rural Maryland. Who knew that the collective unconscious would be focusing on camelids!
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