I was just about to type that there is nobody I personally know who is as much of a skeptic as I am, but now, I'm beginning to doubt myself.
I'm skeptical about my skepticism.
I've always scoffed at the superstitious: questioned the sanity of the paranoid, (even when I experience personal symptoms of "Karenoia") and generally believed that everything is random and coincidental.
The exception has always been the number "417" since that's the day my Dad died in 1989, on April 17th.
I won't stay in a hotel room with that number, or fly on that day.
In fact, when I woke up for a potty break in the "wee" hours of the morning today, I hesitated to ask Alexa for the time, fearing she'd answer just as she did.
"It's 4:17 AM" she said, and I knew then I wasn't going to fall back to sleep easily.
This stuff isn't supposed to happen to a cynic like me..I don't look for hidden meanings anywhere, but I thought that Alexa's timekeeping was a tad.. foreboding.
I'm a cynic.
A proud cynic.
I'd never go to a psychic reading, unless I saw a flyer somewhere advertising their fee as $4.17.
That might pique my interest.
One time, a tiny twig blew in the driveway and landed between the two numbers of my street address, "47" and the twig took on the shape of a "one" and I was convinced this was a sign.
And that I slapped myself silly for thinking that.
Today, I was scrolling through my phone for comfort, as I often do, and I'm rewatching dozens of clips from "Friends" which appeared inexplicably, and I actually thought the following: "Chandler Bing is by far the most lovable in this ensemble...so glad his portrayer kicked his drug habit and cheated... an early death."
I mentioned Ben Stiller just yesterday, because I posted the audio of my time as a contestant on "The $20,000 Pyramid" and young Ben sat next to my brother in the audience, as his mom was my celebrity partner.
(I don't know why I was calling it the "ten" thousand dollar prize..it was twenty, and I came very close to winning it, save for the mental lapses of certain "people.")
Ben Stiller appears on "Entertainment Tonight" after not being seen for what seemed like years to me.
Coincidence?
OK..maybe I'm grasping at straws here, trying to make a twig on my driveway and a celebrity appearance on an entertainment news show and the death of the most charismatic" friend" a "thing"...but..WTF??
Today, Jim and I listened to Part II of my appearance on the show. Rick Hurst tells Dick Clark that he's about to star in a new comedy set in Steubenville, Ohio.
His celebrity opponent, Anne Meara, quips that it should take place in HER hometown in Ohio, not Steubenville.
Dick Clark asks me what I planned to do with my winnings thus far, which was all of four hundred dollars, and I nervously(and jerkily) say, "I'm going to travel around the whole world!"
You cannot travel around the whole world on a four hundred dollar budget.
But you know what you can do with four hundred dollars?
You can go to a singles' resort, ten and a half years after this taping, almost to the DAY...and the skeptic in you has already given up on men, but you meet the one you're going to MARRY, and he's from OHIO, and...thirty four years later, he's been traveling around the ...WHOLE WORLD.. with you.
Don't worry..my nasty, cynical self will return, probably before this day is over. Probably before this post is over.
A twig will be just a twig, the crack in the driveway is not a crack that'll break my late mother's back.
But guess what we saw at the movie theater tonight, mostly because absolutely nothing else was playing?
We saw a documentary called "After Death" and while it didn't exactly turn me into a true BELIEVER, it did make me think there might be more to life than meets the eye.
Thank goodness we didn't see the 4:17 show.
And I wonder if I could have described the word "detective" to Rick Hurst smartly, by saying something like "Dick Tracy" . if .I would have made my third trip to the winners' circle.
Because my opponent didn't exactly knock it out of the park...
Also, I "doubt" anyone is still reading this long rant, but I'll thank you if you are.
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