Life is full of some of the most magical coincidences. There are plenty of people out there that don’t believe in such things and plenty of people who just don’t care. However, there are events so fantastic that the only other explanation besides coincidence is that someone up there has the best sense of humor. I’d put my money on a little of both.
I myself believe that coincidences are some form of divine tomfoolery simply because it’s funnier. In fact, I can recall a story where my mother experienced such an incredible coincidence that to an outside party she appeared to have some form of deity on her side.
Several years ago when I was a tyke and lived in this house the first time (long story) we lived in an era of constant church badgering. What I mean by this is at least once a week a couple of sensibly dressed men would ring our doorbell and ask us if we would like to hear about the lord.
Being a generally pleasant woman my mom would usually politely tell them she was already a Christian and thank them for their time. They were lucky she always got to the door before I did because even as a child I was quite devious and would’ve much rather terrified them beyond belief (or so my tiny mind thought).
See, I don’t even know if that’s physically possible, but I wanted to do it and my mom never let me. Not only that, but she actually managed to thwart my plans of ever doing it in the future. How this happened was either coincidence, divine intervention, magic or a combination of the three.
Again, several years ago, it was extremely stormy outside and I was forced to play inside to avoid all of the horrendous things that might happen to me if I were to leave the house. We were all piddling around trying to avoid the rainy-day-blahs when the doorbell rang and everyone in the house stared at the door in disbelief. There was thunder loud enough to shake the house and people were outside?! My mom slowly opened the door.
Standing there with umbrellas instead of bibles was a pair of sensibly dressed men wanting to talk to us about the lord. You’d think severe thunderstorms would be enough to keep the church goers indoors but apparently they weren’t as sensibly minded as they were dressed.
My mom just stared at them for a moment before she unleashed a very loud piece of southern mother wisdom.
For those of you who have never been yelled at by a woman with a thick, southern accent try to imagine being yelled at by your mom but multiplied by a thousand. For some reason southern accents seem to have the “Yes, ma’am, I’m sorry, ma’am, it won’t happen again, ma’am” effect. I’ve seen grown men cower in fear of an angry, southern woman.
Her words wormed their way into the sensibly dressed men’s heads, most likely because they were both about 18 and imagined being yelled at by their own southern mothers. Both of them responded with mumbled versions of, “Yes, ma’am, I’m sorry, ma’am, it won’t happen again, ma’am” before turning around and walking towards the road.
My mom walked over to the large window I was sitting next to so she could watch them leave and just as the sensibly dressed men reached the end of our driveway an enormous bolt of lightening struck the middle of our cul-de-sac about 10 feet away from the umbrella wielding church-folk. They jumped into the air about ten feet and ran down the road as fast as possible. My mom was speechless.
As you can see, the above event is a perfect example of how a coincidence can be perceived in many different ways. The sensibly dressed men probably ran down that road screaming about how some crazy, bayou witch had cast a lightening spell on them and the only way they survived was because they were preaching the good word whereas my mom and I saw that as the greatest coincidence that ever happened. Ever.
Since then, I have never even seen sensibly dressed men in our neighborhood let alone on my porch. The peace is nice, but I’m still pretty pissed off that my mom stole my future chances of scaring these men with my delinquent tactics. Then again, it’s not like you can top summoning lightening.
