Monthly Archives: May 2014

Debunking the Odd

Odds

I read an article by a statistician that explained your odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are approximately 1 in 175,000,000. Such numbers are hard to comprehend, so the author gave a quick scenario. Say you laid dollar bills end to end, starting in Washington, DC, going south to Disneyworld, going west to Disneyland, north to Portland, Oregon, back east to Portland, Maine, and finally home to DC. Despite over 8,000 miles of dollar bills, you would still have enough dollar bills left over to do the whole loop again.  One of these dollar bills is randomly marked as the “winner.” You have one chance to find it. Ready? Go!

At one point while living in Virginia, I shared a house with three female roommates but had my own separate basement apartment. (There are perks to not fearing spiders.) A tiny, Dixie cup-sized glass of ginger ale sat on the floor next to the bed from the night before. As I undressed for bed, I emptied my pockets, tossing my small flip phone on to the bed. In some magical trick shot that would have caused the Globetrotters to beam with pride, the phone took a bad bounce on my mattress, flew up in the air, and splashed down antenna first into the world’s smallest glass of Canada Dry. Can you hear me now?

In an attempt to liven up a boring summer home from college, a few friends and I went to a Philadelphia Phillies game. Inherent to any sporting event, the camera panned the stands and broadcasted the surprised reactions of fans on the Jumbotron. The focus landed on a group of four college girls, three of whom were quite attractive. The fourth girl – not so much. Just as I made a joke about her outfit to my friends, the camera moved down a row of seats, and suddenly my friends and I were on the big screen, with the four girls in the background. There was an awkward silence as the gears turned. “YOU INSENSITIVE PRICK!” began a tirade of well-deserved scoldings that were no match for my apologies. Out of 43,000 seats, the camera chose our row.

A group of childhood friends came to stay with me for the weekend. I was wading into the waters of online dating, which at the time, was pretty new. Curious, one of my friends made a profile for himself. As he published the profile to view his matches, he slammed my laptop shut and launched it across the couch. Unsure of what had happened, we opened the laptop. Out of tens of thousands of options, the Match.com algorithms had selected a picture of his number one romantic match – his sister!

An Ethiopian restaurant opened in my neighborhood, across the street from one of my favorite bars in Arlington, Virginia. Seated on the outdoor patio, a person in our group referenced the new restaurant and asked, “I wonder what they serve?” In a joking, off-color reply, I simply retorted, “Dirty water?” From the neighboring table, a woman stood up and pointed at me. “HOW DARE YOU!” she yelled. From her lecture that ensued I recall two salient points: First, she couldn’t take a joke, and second, she was visiting DC as part of a clean water initiative. B-e-a-utiful.

My Editing 304 class in undergrad met in a computer lab in which workstations outlined the perimeter of the room. We sat on comfy, swivel office chairs that could recline pretty far back. Chatting with my classmates, my back to the door, I leaned back in my chair to stretch. At the exact same time, our professor walked through the door, I swiveled my chair, and as I completed my stretch in an upward motion, my hand shot right up the inside of her thigh and under her skirt. She squealed. I shrieked. It was a moment of perfectly awkward timing, as it took a solid fifteen minutes for my classmates to regain their composure (and probably twice as long for the blush to fade from our faces). I had goosed my professor.

Most of these situations I couldn’t create again if I tried (or without being featured on To Catch a Predator). They are simply examples of being in the right place at the right time for given events to occur. That said, I’ve amassed a lifetime of stories of apparently random happenings and awkward situations that seem to follow me wherever I go. And they just keep coming. It is tempting to search for meaning in them, but for now, I just appreciate their entertainment value. If you have a good story, feel free to post it in the comments section. Odds are, you’ve got a one-in-a-million story, too.

When Life Hands You Carp

Flooding

Today, I am sitting at a patio table outside of a Cosi. As I am taunted by the blinking cursor on a blank page, a gust of wind carried a shred of paper across my table. I started to crumple it up and then realized it was a discarded fortune cookie message that read, “Get to the point and keep it clear and simple.”  (Also, “gooseberry” in Chinese is “mi hou tao” and my lucky numbers are 10, 53, 51, 54, 15, 36. If you win the Powerball, I expect a cut. Extra points if you find a way to weave “gooseberry” into your winner’s press conference.)

While today is sunny and pleasant, the past few days in Philadelphia have been anything but lovely. A large, slow-moving weather system dumped five to six inches of rain on the area in just two days. Although it should seem obvious, a city built along a river doesn’t fare so well under that much precipitation.

Since moving to Philly, I have worked part-time for a small medical office in the heart of Manayunk. The practice is owned by two of the most genuine, caring, and empathetic people I have ever met and these characteristics visibly carry over to their patients and employees each day. They truly live to help and heal.

On Wednesday night, one of the docs left me a frantic voicemail. The river behind the office was only a foot from the back door. A small team of us rushed into the office, stacked everything we could off of the floor, and boarded, sealed, and sandbagged the doors. While inside the office, the river crested its banks and the water began to seep under the doors. In under three hours, the water on Main Street rose from an inch to waist-deep. Luckily, we had to wade only a few hundred yards through the cold, sewage-smelling water (Yay, Leptospirosis!) to reach higher and dryer ground. Just an hour later, the few remaining cars parked nearby were completely submerged.

Despite the preparation efforts, the river won. The office filled up with over three feet of water, and everything that had been stacked began to float and fall into the water below. As the river receded, the office drained and amongst the outside debris, carp were swimming around in the remaining pools of water. Aside from the fish, which were returned to the river, the building interior and its contents were completely destroyed. Although many of the neighboring businesses and houses suffered a similar fate, fortunately there were no injuries.

While loss of property is a headache, it is admittedly not a big deal, as flood insurance will foot the bill. But the ripples of just one event will certainly travel. Patients relying on the expertise and specialized skills of the practice will be put on hold as the docs search for a temporary space and make necessary house calls. And the employees who depend on the practice for their livelihood will be without income for a month or two. As this is just one example, it is hard to comprehend the gravity of the situation when disasters happen on a much larger scale.

As I initially laughed that the fortune cookie message was just a snide commentary on my writing style, I flashed back to the past few days and realized one clear and simple point: life can change at the drop of a hat (or at many drops of rain). One minute, we were drinking a beer and watching the Flyers. The next minute we were ass-deep in moving water.

The beauty (or tragedy) is in how sudden and drastic change is handled. Do you bitch and whine about your misfortune? Or do you recognize your stuff is replaceable and start rescuing stranded fish from puddles? I guess that is up to you.

Fortune Cookie car in front of FRH manayunk text vw manayunk inside