A Story from the Bar

In the local pub, the innkeeper kept a record of each man's drinking on a slate with a piece of chalk - one mark for a pint and two marks for a quart. It was called "running up a tab". Unscrupulous innkeepers sometimes added extra marks so customers had to "mind their pints and quarts" or mind their p's and q's. When you paid up, the innkeeper "wiped the slate clean".

Every table was furnished with a "black jack" of ale - a sleeve dipped in black tar or pitch (hence the word for pitcher) for waterproofing. There was a nasty side effect to the pitch treatment on the black jack; the tar contained lead that the alcohol leached into the ale, creating an extremely toxic drink that routinely led to unconsciousness, or in more severe cases, a coma. The victim was dragged into a corner and left until the slate floor had rendered him "stone cold sober".

Since toxic coma could easily be mistaken for death, the body was placed in a coffin in front of the kitchen hearth and a noisy celebration was held to try and wake the victim. If the person had not regained consciousness after a "three-day wake", he was presumed dead and was buried. With the mortality rates soaring thanks to the black plague, church graveyards filled so rapidly that old coffins had to be dug up and the bones stored in urns in the church so the burial space could be reused.

It was found, however, that one out of every 25 exhumed coffins had scratch marks on the inside of the lid, indicating the person had been buried alive. The church was mortified by the revelation, and sent a directive from the highest level that a rope should be tied around the wrist of each corpse and the end attached to a bell on the gravestone. If the person should regain consciousness and begin to struggle, the bell would ring. Men were hired to sit in the graveyard to listen for the bell. With superstition rampant, few were eager for the nightly "Graveyard Shift".

It is said that hundreds of lives "were saved by the bell", and townspeople were often disconcerted to meet someone on the street that looked identical to a person they had buried only a few days earlier. They said he must surely bee a "dead ringer".

Wind

I am not sure what it was like when you woke up this morning, but at my house the wind blowing like... well, it was blowing pretty hard. When I was walking out to my car the wind was blowing leaves off the trees and blowing the leaves on the ground up into the air. I was thinking, "Wind is cool."

The wind is an interesting thing. It is not something that we can see, but we know it is there. We can feel it. We can see the effects of it. I do not think we ever doubt the existence of the wind but, how do you prove to someone that it exists?

You do not have to, you just know that it is there.

All we are, is dust in the wind, dude. -Ted Logan

Coincidence?

I read somewhere, once that when you become a Christian, you start to realize how much God has been at work in your life. I think what they were getting at was that the things you took to be luck before maybe are not just some random events that happen to take place in an order and time that was just right for you to end up doing something at the exact time that it needed to be done.

Is it coincidence that I happen to go to a college in a town where I will work with someone that will end up moving to Florida, somewhere I had never been before? That I will feel lead to go there to visit and end up moving there myself? That I would change jobs and happen to meet the girl I would end up marrying?

Maybe. But, I think not.

It is easier to attribute positive things to a 'Higher Power', but what about things that are not all that good for you? Recent negative events have also made me take a look at how God is working in my life. I have a POC Truck. It provides me with forward movement, but not much mort than that.

My truck decided not too long ago that it would prefer it if I were dead. So, it decided that it would leak exhaust into the cab. Just to note, I do not believe that adamant objects, i.e. my truck, have a conscience. I am just suggesting that if my truck did have the ability to make decisions, I would deduce that it had made the decision to relieve me of this world.

Anyway, my truck is broke. This leads me to the conclusion that I need to shell out money on another vehicle. So, I decide to buy another car. Then, I go have my truck looked at and it only cost me $45 to get it "fixed". By this time I had already told someone that I wanted to buy their car. So, I am the future owner of two cars. Sort of unnecessarily, but not completely.

So, now I have to pay for this second car. This means I have to take money from somewhere else to pay for it. So, instead of paying down debt, I use that money to buy a car. I was not completely happy with this situation. This puts me off track on the pay off debt buy a house plan.

So, then I find out that my friend's car decided it did not want to move voluntarily anymore. Again, cars can't decide anything, but they would if they could. Viola, I have two cars and he needs one. Perfect.

Then, I find out yesterday that I am getting a bonus from work. It just some happens that the bonus is about the some as what I paid for the second car.

All this is to say that I think it is some statistical impossibility for al the things previously mentioned to occur and for me to come out of the last month: Owning two cars, having a friend in need of a car, all the while not really changing anything in my finances.

Coincidence? Maybe. But, I think not.

My Pic