7 February 2015

I’m beginning to believe there is a supernatural Conspiracy of Coincidence…a connectedness of random events…one random event influencing another random event. Seemingly disparate things happening in a reasoned way. Let me explain.

I bought an airline ticket to Florida to spend a few days with cousins and escape…well, you know…shiver and glove weather. I also engaged a spot at an off-airport parking lot, since I drive to the airport. Nothing odd, so far.

At that same time, the furnace in the house shut off. But I’m savvy enough to check the glass water gauge, finding the level was low and had turned off the automatic on-off switch. So I turned the water valve, water crept up the gauge and the furnace turned on. Strange, I thought, I’ve never had to do that before. Over the next month I had to fill it several times and began realizing I couldn’t go away, leaving a furnace that would run out of water and, thus, not heat the house.. Visions of burst water pipes danced in my head.

I called my oil supplier and asked for a solution and got a flip, “don’t go away”. I finally got hold of a plumber who looked at the now purring, but ancient, beast and proposed a new automatic, digital water feed. But time was close to my departure date and, indeed, the work was done the day before I was going to leave. Of course, I’d be uncomfortable leaving without vetting the new part to make sure it wouldn’t be rejected by the host furnace, especially with temperatures hovering between teens and twenties. So I postponed my trip for three weeks.

Next day, the day I would have left, I ran to the super market for coffee. It was 8:30 in the morning and 12 degrees. Back to the car with coffee, I clicked the remote key, but the lock wouldn’t open. I put the key in the lock to open it manually. It turned (not frozen), but wouldn’t open. Long story short, I walked a mile back home, got a second car key and called a friend to drive me back to the car. That remote key didn’t work either. But somehow, manually, (without popping the button back up) it opened. Quick as a spark I drove to Honda. They replaced the batteries in both keys and, like magic, both came to life. The furnace, knock wood, and the car keys now function.

Which brings me to the coincidence. If the furnace had not delayed my trip, I would have driven to the airport ready to travel, but with a battery-weak key. At some point the car would have locked…inadvertently at the entrance filling out paperwork or in its parking space or somewhere in between. And a then-dead key would been powerless to open it, start it and move it…a misery, either before my trip or coming back from it. The possibilities for inconvenience in the middle of Queens in winter at rush hour (the time of my return flight) seemed endless.

Don’t tell me the furnace and the car key weren’t somehow connected. There is some kind of “woo-woo” at work here.