We were just starting out on a long drive, Los Angeles to San Francisco. My passenger got a call. He reached into his pocket to dig out his phone. He was moving up north to go to school and his mother was on the phone. She told him that he had left behind five pairs of shoes. The only shoes he would have this semester would be the pair on his feet. Just as they were having this conversation I noticed a car ahead of us. The license plate on the car was SHOE FIX. It seemed especially appropriate, as though a random car was notating our conversation, but it wasn’t going to help us fix this particular shoe problem.
We talked a lot on the drive about things we’d have to buy in San Francisco, including a mattress. Every time we talked about mattresses we saw one – strapped to the roof of a car or jigging in the flat bed of a truck. There was even one flopped in the middle of the freeway that we had to swerve around. I had a teacher once who said if you think about yellow Volkswagens then all you’re going to see are yellow Volkswagens. That day we saw that principle in action, only with mattresses. Synchronicity or just a random event or two? What do you think?
