Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Chaos theory, gravity or just bad luck?

So I was making toast for Lauren this morning while trying to multitask, reading my emails that came in overnight (from the US usually) and checking sports scores on my blackberry. Toast popped up and with my left hand, the hand holding the blackberry, I tried to grab the toast. I accidentally touched the edge of my finger to the metal top of the toaster that was piping hot (still have a blister to prove it) and pulled my hand back so fast that the blackberry went flying out of my hand. It arced across the room (seemingly in slow motion) and landed smack dab in the middle of a frying pan filled with water, soaking after Rebecca burned last night's dinner. I quickly pulled it out - it hadn't short circuited but was soaking wet. Six hours later, it works but many of the keys still don't work. I am hoping it will just take time to dry, as I bought the blackberry in the US as it is much cheaper there. Last thing I want to do is go spend $500 on a blackberry.

About 30 minutes later, I went to plug my electric razor in and had to go find an adaptor. Adaptor in hand and trying to plug it in the outlet in the cupboard in the bathroom, I dropped the adaptor and it fell in the smallest place in a corner in the cabinet that I could barely reach (with extreme exertion) and don't know if I could have put there if I had tried!

So I got to thinking that things like this happen all the time to me - as if all cosmic events aligned to make these things happen. I mean, what are the chances I burn myself while holding my bberry and it flies across the room and lands in a pan?? (By the way, chances of a burned pan soaking in our house are indeed quite high). Why when I dropped my keys a few years ago did they just happen to find the gap in the elevator I was stepping out of and fall down the shaft? Why, when I am assembling some piece of furniture or IKEA product, when I drop the screw does it fall just out of reach so that I have to set everything down and start over? Or when I set the garden hose down, it always happens to fall on the sprayer handle and squirt me right in the face?

I don't know anything about chaos theory (and don't think it has anything to do with what I am talking about) but this seems an appropriate description of these events. Perhaps its just gravity and I have bad luck. Or, the most likely answer, maybe I just remember the instances where these things happen and the other 99 times out of 100 don't stick in my head. Do these things happen to other people? I am going to start making lists of these impossible things and report back.

2 comments:

  1. For the record, I intentionally burned dinner last night. Burning hot dogs in a frying pan cooks them very quickly and we peel off the sandpaper thick skin before we eat them. No harm, no foul.

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  2. I think it's a function of being uber-busy (like that use of the Deutsch?) You're usually rushing things, which leads to things going a bit wrong, just when you absolutely have no time for hitches. At least that's my excuse for my all-too-frequent fluster-spawned accidents.

    But I must admit, the story about your blackberry sounds like something straight out of a cartoon.

    Hey - I'm going to be in Cleveland Thursday - Saturday. I'll salute the city for you guys!

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