When the bean is on overload...

I amaze myself at the amount of useless trivia I have in my head. Sometimes, I'm not even aware that something...some little tidbit of information has wormed it's way in there and it will suddenly come out when I least expect it. Or I will have forgotten something, the name of a movie or a song, and it drives me crazy and then something unusual will happen to suddenly remind me! My brain is a freak.

For instance, last night I had a dream. In the dream there were three people that I had to deal with for various and sundry reasons which are not important to the story. I just had to deal with each one and, strangely, they were all named Courtney B. Vance. Now, in the dream, I was aware of how strange that would be that three separate people would all be named Courtney B. Vance. But even stranger was that, in my dream, I kept getting this strange feeling that I actually knew someone named Courtney B. Vance. When I woke up I was convinced I had heard that name before but, for the life of me, I couldn't remember ever meeting someone with that name. So I did what ever red blooded person does these days - I googled it. And it turns out that I had heard the name Courtney B. Vance before! I had heard on Sunday night when an actor named Courtney B. Vance won a Tony for his work on Broadway. Why that name stuck somewhere deep in my subconscious I'll never know. I have never seen the man act. Never heard of his before watching the Tonys and I wasn't even paying that much attention to the show at the time but  there it was - Courtney B. Vance - so firmly stuck in my bean that no less than three characters in my dream shared his name.

Another weird thing that happened that involved my brain...I was trying to think of the name of a movie that I had seen years ago. It tool place in the Middle Ages and it starred Rutger Hauer, Michelle Pfeiffer and Matthew Broderick. Pfeiffer and Hauer were lovers who were cursed by a jealous priest (who loved Pfeiffer). He turned Rutger Hauer into a wolf by night and Pfeiffer into a hawk by day so they could never lay eyes on one another again as humans as long as the cursed lasted. Matthew Broderick played a thief who ends up helping them lift the curse. Anyway, you can see, I could remember pretty much everything about the movie except the damn title! Then, later on, after I stopped trying to think of it (I didn't google it because I got side tracked and frankly it wasn't all that important), I was watching television. It was a reality show called Dance Moms and the dancers were performing to some music I had never heard before. At the end of the show I watched the credit to see who was playing the music and it was a group called Ladyhawk. And BINGO! That was the name of the movie I was trying to think of earlier! Ladyhawke - with an e on the end. What a coincidence! But so weird too!

Turns out it was all for naught anyway - it's not available for streaming on Netflix. Better luck next time!

Coincidental Happiness

I'm one of those people who never really believed that certain things were meant to happen. Rather, I think that there are a remarkable number of coincidental events at work that make it easy for the less skeptical to fool themselves in thinking that some things are meant to be. Today, however, something happened at work that did give me pause.

Someone who works for the agency I work at came in today to pick up her check and to tell HR that her pregnant condition had now forced her to complete bed rest per her doctor's orders. She then said she felt ill and excused herself to the ladies room. A few seconds later, Pat, an RN whom I supervise, took a seat in the stall beside her. Within a minute, the first woman started moaning and crying out for help. Her babies (twins, as it turned out) had decided not to wait the additional two months the doctor thought they had. Pat ran to the door, called out for someone to call 911 and proceeded to delivery the first baby before the EMT's arrived on the scene. She calmed the woman down, got her to stop pushing and cleared the baby's airway to make sure it was breathing. All of this happened in a matter of minutes. Th e EMT's rushed in and swept the woman to a gurney, checked the baby over (he was fine!) and off they went to the hospital.

Pat, who was as calm as ever while this was happening, fell apart with emotion and adrenaline. She deservedly went home for the rest of the day - with pay.

The reason this episode gave me pause was this - any one of us or any one of the numerous clients we serve in our small haven of Social Services could have been the person who took the stall next to the woman. Yet, it was a registered nurse who rarely, if ever, takes breaks who was there this day. She knew what to do and how to get the woman to calm down and respond appropriately. She knew to clear the baby's airway and wrap it in something clean and warm. She just knew what to do! And because she did, somewhere tonight, there is at least one healthy, albeit early, little baby who has a chance.

If I was the kind of person who believed in fate, this certainly would be one of those things that could make me say "See? It was fate that Pat was there and not someone else." But I know, it was coincidence. A happy coincidence, but coincidence none the less.