Too Mental, Alas, Poor Yorick, Too Mental.
co·in·ci·dence n.
1. The state or fact of occupying the same relative position or area in space.
2. A sequence of events that although accidental seems to have been planned or arranged.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language
Is Ginger the Cure for the Common Cold?
Not too long ago I was experiencing a run in a series of coincidences, such strange synchronicities that I began to scratch my head and wonder what it all meant. I mean, is there a reason when several things collide in front of your face and they seem to be arranged (the strange things, not your face, I assume that is arranged already)?
I was reading a very odd book, Charles R. Pellegrino's "Ghosts of Vesuvius: A New Look at the Last Days of Pompeii, How Towers Fall, and Other Strange Connections" -- it is a very good book, but anyone would say also very odd (making links and connections between the 9/11 terror attacks, the exploration of the submerged Titanic, the history of the world and time, various major explosions including volcanoes and meteorite impacts and atomic bombs, plus Marilyn Monroe in a rain of ash). But while I'd be reading it on my break at work I'd hear people in the next cube over talking about something that my eyes were reading at that moment (granted, what they were saying was in different context, but they'd be using almost the exact same words as my eyes were reading). Or while checking my website statistics and viewing the current server list for visits to my pages, my wife called and told me that I got a strange letter from an insurance company, and just as she told me the name of the company my eyes moved on the screen to that exact name listed as one of the server visits to my website (the question is, why in the world did she call me while I was checking that page, at precisely that moment? why did my ears hear while my eyes saw the exact same insurance company name).
Now during this string of bizarre coincidences I was fretting to find some answer to my predilection for picking up rhino viruses -- IS there any real defense against the common cold? It has been my bane since birth, when at the age of about a year, after ten colds in a row I developed pneumonia, and nearly died. Since then every cold in the neighborhood has expressed a desire to make friends with me (and they love to camp out in my schnozzle, and they are good enough to practice BYOM -- that would be Bring Your Own Mucous), and nothing has ever seemed to work in defending against these fans and groupies.
About the same day that my wife had called, sparking that insurance coincidence, as I was logging off my computer my eye fell on a Yahoo headline just before my computer went black. The Yahoo News headline asked the question: "Is ginger the cure for the common cold?"
I didn't think much about it, but as I drove home I kept wondering about it. I mean my mind played a few games, such as the fact that I always preferred Ginger to Mary Anne, and other Gilligan's Island type of goofball thoughts, but chiefly I wondered, hmmm, IS ginger the cure for the common cold? As I had been trying various products (Airborne, Vitamin C overloading, Echinacea, apple cider vinegar, Emergen-C, all of which were good, they worked for various things and in slightly different ways, but nothing helped my cold condition). Plus, I had that tell-tale tickle in my nose, always a sign that a cold was in place, at work, digging in, and about to launch the complete rhinovirus terrorist attack.
At home I started my usual tea, green tea with honey and lemon and a bag of cranberry tea -- which never did anything for fighting a cold, but at least made me feel a tad better in that I was TRYing (notice how when you at least TRY, it seems to make some satisfaction in the losing-battle zone). But as I made my tea I wondered if we even had any ginger, as we're not into spices all that big time, generally just cinnamon, nutmeg, and, and, do we even have any other spices...?
When I opened the cupboard door above the stove there sitting out in front of all the other spices was a brand new, never-been opened bottle of ginger. It was literally standing two steps in front of all its dusty counterpart spices. The spice sergeant had called for a volunteer and Ginger bravely stood forth. I took the bottle down and looked it over. I had certainly never purchased the spice, and neither had my wife (as I do all the shopping).
It was weird, this sensation, after all these other remarkable coincidences squished into a one-week period, here I was holding a bottle of ginger (that appeared from pretty much nowhere) after catching a brief Yahoo headline about ginger being the cure for the common cold. And we had certainly never purchased this bottle. Where in the world had it come from?
I was already primed on the idea of COINCIDENCE. I was already spending some brain power on wondering exactly what it was, why it happened, was it just random, or something deeper, something more eerie and weird and unbelievable?
Then I wondered, if it really could be the cure for the common cold, how in the world did you treat yourself with it? I briefly, and humorously pictured myself snorting some like snuff, putting out a couple of lines and sniffing it up with a straw like a bad old episode of Viami Mice (although I don't think they were snorting ginger). So I opened the bottle, cracked the seal (it had certainly never been used, this mysterious bottle of ginger) and dumped some into my tea. In the process I accidentally got some ginger on my fingertips, and again imagined sniffing some of it, and it was about at that moment that I got an itch on the end of my nose and without even thinking reached up to scratch my nose.
The gist of it is, I got ginger on my nose, and breathed some in. Uh-oh. That didn't seem to feel too good, snorting ginger, even as infinitesimal a portion as I had just sniffed (inadvertently). It was kind of tingly. And so I thought, well, why not, I am sort of going along with all these coincidences anyway, so I dusted some ginger on the back of my hand and snorted it up each nostril.
YOUCH! That really burned. On different levels. Ginger is rather, um, HOT (not like pepper, but pretty peppy, patently pertinent, pugnacious too, don't ever forget pugnacious).
The burning sensation passed fairly quickly, and it kind of smelled good. In fact, I kind of enjoyed the sensation.
Is ginger the cure for the common cold?
I wondered.
The next morning, I didn't have a cold, nary a sign nor symptom. This in itself is bizarre, because when I get those first inklings, nothing in the past has ever halted the charging rhino.
Of course, maybe I never had a cold, just a suspiciously itchy nose. Maybe the coincidences were merely coincidences. Perhaps the ginger up my nose and in my tea meant absolutely nothing. It was reasonably possible that my mother-in-law had brought along the fresh bottle of unopened ginger and then just never got around to opening it for whatever she was cooking at our house, and had forgotten to take it home. All of this counter-speculation is reasonably possible, possibly even probable.
Maybe.
But then again, I haven't hit you with the biggest coincidence as yet. The big cap on the pyramid.
My far-wandering son that I haven't seen in years, or talked to in years, sent me an e-mail over the MySpace system, and he asked me about something. Guess what it was? Not ginger, if that was your first guess. But what is the name of this page? What I have I been talking about that the mystery of ginger just sort of plonked down into, without apparent rhyme or reason?
COINCIDENCE.
My son told me he was having all kinds of coincidences, including my very own streetlamp phenomenon that I had been experiencing from about the age of 21 or so, and my son was 21, and it had just started happening to him. Plus he was having this pesky thing going on where he would look at the clock and it would be 11:11, or his last phone call had lasted 11 minutes and 11 seconds.
I had been experiencing something along those lines all my adult life, where I would wake up looking at the clock, and it would say 1:11, and it would strike me as peculiar, in my sleep-befuddled state, all those ones standing there like that, and I'd drift off to sleep and a moment later I would look at clock and guess what it would say?
2:22.
Um, that would be twenty-two minutes after two o'clock in the morning. 2:22. And I'd stare at the numbers (222), making positive that I was indeed awake. And what in the world did that MEAN? To wake up and look at the clock and have it say 1:11, and the very next time I look at it the clock reads 2:22. This part will sound suspicious to you, but it is true, I would fall asleep and wake to the clock reading...
3:33.
I'm not making this up or yanking your proverbial chain, and I'm certainly nowhere near any of your legs. The clock said 3:33. This after it first said 1:11 and then 2:22. Why is this is so remarkable?
Maybe it is not remarkable. But to me, it's purty dern weirdo.
Another reason this is so remarkable is that this phenomenon has happened to me on several occasions, sometimes fantastically at regular intervals. When I woke and saw the 3:33 I thought it was funny, in some cosmic way, and I actually laughed and fell back asleep. My last thought as I fell asleep was that "Thank God I can't wake up and have the clock read 6:66."
(Of course, a dim part of my noodle did the equation: 2x333 IS 666, as well as the fact the 3x222=666. But that was just my interior joke, it has nothing to do with coincidence, at least I hope. And, uh, um, uh-huh, NO, I am not the antichrist, nor am I into numerology.)
This whole thing cannot happen. Well, at least not in any rationally possible way. Diggeth?
But the biggest coincidence in my couple of weeks of coincidence was that my long-lost son contacted me to tell me that a whole bunch of coincidences were happening to him, had been happening to him for the last couple of weeks. How big a coincidence is that? A coincidence (he and I having the same thing happen, at the same time) all about coincidences (he contacted me specifically about COINCIDENCES). So the concept of "coincidence" was the biggest coincidence yet.
What does it mean? I don't know, other than I have begun to employ ginger whenever I feel something coming on, both in my tea and up my nose (and I don't recommend YOU attempt the ginger snorting, as I'm built a little more hardy than most people), but I would highly recommend adding it to your tea (and possibly gingerbread boys at Christmas time happened because those wise mothers through the years recognized the fact that ginger aids in fighting the common cold, and other flu-like illnesses, and that these illnesses occur mostly in the cold months of November-January, with Christmas plunked down right in the middle of the meanwhile).
Who knows, Rose? What's up your nose?
All Stories © 2009 Douglas Christian Larsen
