Coincidence Thread

Nola told me about the dead partner’s mail coincidental occurrence and that she wanted to do an entire post on coincidence. “Isn’t that freaky?” or something to that effect, she said.

I told her my take on it: It happens all the time, too often for it to really mean anything. At least twice a week someone says something on TV and then I’ll surf to another (I’m an awful channel surfer. Any lull in the action or the hint of commercial break, I’m moving on) and low and behold, the same topic on a completely unrelated show on an unrelated channel.

“Plate o’ shrimp.” I said.
“What?”
“Have you seen Repo Man ?”
“No.”
“Forget it.”

I was thinking about a scene from one of my favorite ’80s movies, which I thought pretty well summed-up the “coincidence mystery” in life.

We moved on, talking about the milkshake scene in There Will Be Blood and I told her about the YouTube video mash-up of the “I drink your milkshake” scene and the stupid Kellis pop-tune Milkshake. Nola’s never heard of Milkshake (or Repo Man either–coincidence? Hmmmm.)

Ten minutes after this conversation I get home, turn on the TV, it’s Family Guy, and Peter Griffin is doing—what?—the Milkshake song. I fire off an email to Nola, letting her know this, and reiterate as follows: Coincidences happen too often to have any meaning.

Unless they have meaning. To you.

(Which brings up a freaky coincidental movie reference to Katie’s favorite movie, No Country for Old Men , where sociopath-killer guy tells mild-mannered everyman, “Don’t put it in your pocket. It’s your lucky quarter. … it’ll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. Which it is.”)

Otherwise, it’s just “plate o’ shrimp” from Repo Man:

A lot o’ people don’t realize what’s really going on. They view life as a bunch o’ unconnected incidents ‘n things. They don’t realize that there’s this, like, lattice o’ coincidence that lays on top o’ everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you’re thinkin’ about a plate o’ shrimp. Suddenly someone’ll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o’ shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin’ for one, either. It’s all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.