Timing Part 2: The Kind of Weird Part

When I got to Kroger yesterday everything went more smoothly than it ever does. I got all of my stuff and got back out it probably five minutes. When I reached the ridiculous intersection between Kroger and the road back toward my house, I glanced at my phone and noticed the voicemail icon, despite not having heard my phone ring and the fact that there was no missed call message on the screen. I decided I would check it when I got to a place with less traffic. Well, the light turned red just as I got to it, so I decided to go ahead and check the message while I was waiting. It was my mom saying that she had thought of something she needed from Kroger. This would mean I would have to wait through the light, find a place to turn around, sit through the light going the other direction and then fight the traffic to get back into the parking lot. That felt okay though, for some reason.

As I'm coming out of the store, for the second time, I happen to be getting into my car at the same time as the person parked next to me. This turned out to be a guy I had a class with in college. He said that it was ironic that we ran into each other because he and his wife had just gone vegan. I ended up talking to the two of them about it for a good while. I know this probably seems like a small thing, but it makes me feel so much better about the world every time I find out about someone who has gone vegan, especially someone from around here. I started thinking about every thing that happened to put me in that exact spot at that exact time, and it just sort of felt like this interaction needed to happen. On the way back, I started thinking how ridiculous that sounded. Like "Right.... The universe as a whole decided that I needed to talk to people about veganism today. That seems totally plausible. "  

Now normally, I take the back roads, but for some reason I decided, at the last second, to get on the interstate. I kept watching the cars around me, and there was just something strange about the way they were moving, it felt choreographed. A bunch of them would move into the left lane at the same time, then move back into the right lane but staying in the same order. Then two huge Mac trucks paced each other for a good five minutes holding up everyone in both lanes, but no one seemed upset by it. I wasn't upset by it either, and I normally would be.

Taking the interstate meant that I would be going near the game store where I buy used DVDs all the time, so I decided to stop and see what they had. I ended up being the only person in the place. The guy working there was trying to fix some gaming system that someone had brought in. He said to me "I'll give you 15% off if I can get this thing to work." I laughed and said "That sounds good." I stayed for quite a while. When I went to check out, I asked him if he'd had any luck with the gaming system. He looked at the screen and said "No, we're stuck at 99%" (Whatever that means.) Then just as he was ringing up my sale, he glanced at the screen again and said "Wait, it's doing something! That was perfect timing!" and gave me 15% off. Perfect timing is something that just doesn't happen to me. I know it's stupid, but it just kind of felt like The Powers That Be were going "Yeah, we did all this on purpose." You know, like maybe I was exactly where I ought to be.