That's why my friend
Dave always says whenever I say, "What are the chances of that?" to some
event the odds of which were quite against. And, in fact, more times than
seems statistically probably in one person's life, I've witnessed some
unbelievably bizarre things happen.
It's worth noting that no matter how bizarre and outrageous these events
seem to be, I really can't say "the chances are astronomical," because
since they all really happened, the chance is obviously 100%. But the ODDS
of them happening EVER AGAIN... pretty damn close to impossible, I'll
wager!
Bizarre Basketball
 Dave and I were out to his uncle's camp one summer. The camp
was deep in the woods on a lake in Maine. We were shooting baskets on the
packed dirt driveway, and a shot rebounded off the rim and went bouncing
away into the woods. I chased it, and when I turned around, I realized the
basket was not only a good seventy feet away, but almost totally obscured
by the trees. Figuring, "What the heck," I pulled my arm back, intending
to launch the ball through the foliage and toward the basket. Dave,
watching me from the driveway, called out, "You'll never make it."
I'm always up for a challenge, anyway, so I
hauled off with everything I had and let the ball go like a discus
thrower. It was evident, however, the moment the ball left my hand that
there was not nearly enough momentum to even come close to the basket.
Never minding that, the ball's trajectory was straight up through the
countless branches and heavy foliage--certainly to be easily deflected.
It wasn't. The ball whipped and whapped
through the leaves and cleared the woods line at the driveway area--but by
then it was already on its way down and, as mentioned, was falling twenty
feet short of the basket. But, I kid
you not, the ball bounced once on the uneven dirt, and swished through the
basket--nothing but net. Dave cried
out, "I DON'T believe it!" And I barely did either, and if there hadn't
been a witness, nobody else would have, either.
Bottle Tossing
 I seem to be surrounded by strange,
statistically improbable events concerning plastic soda bottles.
 Bottle Tossing #1:
My then-girlfriend and I were in our living room at our apartment.
She had just polished off what was left of a two liter bottle of Pepsi. She'd screwed the cap on and was holding it by the cap. She angled it
over her shoulder and threw it, end over end, toward the open bedroom
door, intending to scare the cats.
Instead, the tumbling bottle fell slightly short of bouncing off the door
but landed with a sudden THUD just out of sight. It just hit and stopped
dead, evident since it didn't bounce into the bedroom, and for a moment we
couldn't figure out what had happened. When we investigated, we couldn't
believe it. The cap end of the bottle
had landed under the open bedroom door, where there was barely enough room
for it to fit. There it was, cap under the door, sticking about 45 degrees
up in the air--stopped dead in the midst of a tumbling throw. The photo to
the right was snapped after it happened, in a very dark room with a
crappy web cam. But at least you see it.
Bottle Tossing #2:
A week or so after the first incident, I tried the same
thing--throwing a two liter bottle, intending to ricochet off the bedroom
door and into the bedroom, this time to scare the ex-girlfriend, who was
in there. It tumbled through the air just as before, hit the door, bounced
off, and landed right side up in the corner created by the wall and the
entertainment center—and
stopped dead. Didn't bounce or even fall over. From crazy tumbling and
ricocheting to stopping dead, upright, in the corner as if it had been
placed there. This was out of range of the web cam... I'd wished I'd had a
digital camera then, but all it looked like was a bottle standing in a
corner.
Bottle Tossing #3:
But this is the strangest of all the bottle tossings. At a
different apartment, the ex-girlfriend and I were watching TV. She was on the couch
and had a 20 ounce Dr. Pepper bottle with the cap on. Once again trying to
scare the cats, she threw the bottle across the
room. It went end over end, spinning. It bounced on the carpeted floor and into a
plastic storage tote; bounced off that; landed on its side on the floor
and bounced up once more. And landed
completely upside-down, standing balanced precariously on the carpet, on
its cap. The most bizarre part was
its final movements. As it bounced off its side on the floor and tipped
upright, it was slowing down--it looked for all the world like an
invisible hand was simply tipping it up and standing it on its head. But
nobody was near it, and the thing landed on its cap.
This really would have been a good digital
camera moment!
Card Trick
 In a book I was writing, one character is attempting to do
card tricks on a very perceptive robot who keeps figuring out how the
tricks are done. The character is getting very annoyed at his roguish,
magician reputation being ruined by the robot, and, finally having all
he can stand, he demands the robot think of any card and he will pull it
from the deck. The robot proclaims the Queen of Diamonds, and the
character reaches into the random, shuffled deck and whips out the Queen
of Diamonds for all to see. The robot can't figure out how he did it. As
the character is walking off, a companion character catches up with him
and asks him how he did it, and he responds, "I have absolutely no
idea." Having just written this
scene, I was relating it to my brother Mike, all while shuffling a deck
of cards. I related it pretty much as I did above, and he was getting a
chuckle out of it. So, I said, "Hey, Mike... name a card, and I'll pull
it from the deck!" Suspecting I might have rigged a Queen of Diamonds
somewhere, he announces, "Queen of... HEARTS!" Without looking, I grabbed a
random card and whipped it up to his face, its back facing me.
I could tell immediately from the expression
of shock on his face what the card was. Yes, in fact, I had drawn the
Queen of Hearts out. Now, at first glance, you might say, "Hell, there's
a 1 in 52 chance of grabbing out the right card; that's no so
incredible." True. But consider the chance of drawing the card versus
the chance the other person calling out the same card! Since either
party has a 1 in 52 chance, the chance of one person calling out A
Particular Card and the other person then randomly drawing out A
Particular Card is equal to 1 in (52 x 52)—or 1 in 2,704.
To top off the bizarre odds, this wasn't
some random trick done out of nowhere. I had just WRITTEN that scene,
related it to my brother, and just for grins tried it out. Hard to put a
variable on that, but I'm guessing the chance of it working after
relating a fictional account was far greater than 1 in 2,704.
Coin Toss
 My
brother Mike and I had two tasks we needed to do one
Saturday afternoon: clean the bedroom or mow the lawn. We didn't really
want to do either. I pulled out a quarter and prepared to flip it,
saying, "Heads, we clean the room. Tails, we mow the lawn. If it stands
on end, we goof off the rest of the day." We laughed at this, and I
flipped the coin. It stood on end.
No, really. It landed just right so that its edge was wedged between
some carpet fibers, but there it was, standing on end. Needless to say,
we honored fate and goofed off the rest of the day.
Penny from Heaven
 My
brother Josh was home on leave from the Navy one day, when I
was on the third floor of an office building in downtown Bangor. He and
our brother Adam decided it was lunchtime, and headed down to the pizza
shop, on the street directly beneath my office.
Knowing they would be passing directly beneath
my office window in mere seconds, I thought it would be funny to drop a
penny out and nail him on the head (we're a strange bunch). So I readied
myself until I saw them exit the building to my left and head toward the
pizza shop's door to the right. I knew I had to time this perfectly,
taking into account the acceleration of the penny as I let it go and the
speed at which they would be walking. I judged as best I could and dropped
it. As it turns out, my math was
good, but my aim was off. As the penny dropped and Josh was approaching,
his hands swaying back and forth as they normally do when humans walk, I
realized I hadn't held the penny out far enough—so instead of hitting him
on the head, it was likely to hit the ground directly beside him.
Stranger still was the result. The penny hit
the sidewalk directly next to him with a loud DING! and bounced up to
waist-height. As his moving hand swept forward, it fell INTO HIS PALM.
Still moving, he brought his hand up and gaped in surprise. Not half as
surprised as I was.
The
Greatest Hits of the 70's
 My brother Adam and I were leaving my office one day. Now, at that
time I listened to a station that played "The Greatest Hits of the 70's,"
a fact they announced often. We often repeated it phonetically, bellowing
out, "The Greatest Tits of the 70's," just to be juvenile and stupid
(well, he was juvenile and I was stupid). After all, "greatest" and "hits"
sort of ran phonetically together and it sounded like "greatest
tits."
So I turned the key to start the car and after
it did, the radio kicked in right in the middle of their slogan, and all
we heard, really loudly, was, "Tits of the 70's!"
Good timing.
Quest for
Adventure
Several years ago, I began consistently working on a set of
role-playing game rules. Since I had no title for it, I came up with a
tacky working title: "Adventure Quest!" It sort of stuck with all of
us involved. However, nobody outside our circle of playtesters knew the
title, and this was a full year before I put up a Web site and got it out
there.
I met a woman online who lived in the same
town as I did, and during our first conversation we were flirting back and
forth and generally enjoying each other's discussion. Now I hadn't ever
e-chatted with her prior to the half hour before, when we randomly met on
IRC. So during the conversation, the following exchange took place:
<LadyWolf> hmmmm
<Indy-> I aim to change
that.
<LadyWolf> How do you
expect to accomplish that?
* Indy- looks at you.
<Indy-> Well I don't know
for sure. But I'm going to find out.
<LadyWolf> Sounds like
you're embarking on an adventure seeking quest... interesting indeed.
When she said that, it stopped me where
I sat. A good flirtation, interrupted by the seriously odds-against her
coming up with "adventure seeking quest." For a moment, I was convinced I
was talking to one of the playtesters who was messing with me. A few
minutes later, after she elaborated on what seeking adventure meant to
her:
<Indy-> Can I quote you
on that?
<LadyWolf>
Yes, you may.
<Indy-> That will have a
wonderful place in the role-playing game system we are playtesting--which
is called, aptly enough, Adventure Quest!
* `LadyWolf smiles
<LadyWolf>
Well, I'm very flattered, dear. Thank you.
<Indy-> Which is why your
previous "adventure seeking quest" line kinda struck me in the face.
I knew then that with a bizarre occurrence
like that, the odds being truly astronomical, that I had to meet this
woman. We did a few days later on a dinner-and-a-movie date. I shouldn't
have done it. Oh well... the story is worth it.
Ricochet Ridiculousness
  In
my office, we had one of those plastic eyeballs... the kind with the
eyeball encased in a plastic casing, with water in it; it's weighted so
the eye always looks up. Well, we also had a decently-powered pellet
gun... the kind you cock over and over to build up more air pressure.
Eventually, it occurred to Adam and I to shoot the eyeball (as dumb ideas
and testosterone would have it). Honestly, at first we tried smashing it
with a hammer... hard to do; it's tough to begin with and just kept
skittering out whenever we'd hit it.
But a pellet gun... that would be neat! So
we set the eyeball safely beneath a folding metal chair. I had Adam stand
behind me, just in case it happened to ricochet off the eyeball, so I'd
take the pellet instead of him. I took careful aim at the eyeball,
squinting my eyes so I could close them as I fired... just in case. Adam
stood safely behind me, out to my left just enough so he could watch the
utter destruction.
- I fired, and the next split second I
have to describe in slow motion.
- We heard the gun POOSH! as it ejected
the pellet.
- We heard the pellet hit the eyeball
with a CRACK!
- We heard the pellet DING! as it hit
the metal chair somewhere.
- We heard the pellet DING! as it hit
the metal chair somewhere else.
- We heard the pellet DING! as it hit
the metal chair somewhere else yet again.
- We heard a soft SPLAT! I heard it from
behind me. Adam heard it from himself.
- We heard Adam proclaim with sudden
shock, "You SHOT me, you BASTARD!"
To make this clear, the pellet ricocheted
off the eyeball and then ricocheted not once, not twice, but three
times off the metal chair before nailing Adam in the calf of his left leg.
Now, I didn't fire into some enclosed metal box... this was a folding
metal chair. Four legs, cross pieces, metal seat... mostly open spaces.
But somehow, that pellet ricocheted FOUR TIMES... off the eye and then off
the chair in three places... before beelining right past me and into poor
Adam's leg.
It was a really neat flesh wound, though. |
