What Are the Chances of That Happening?

Life is full of irony everywhere you look

I had been drawn into that movie, compelled to keep watching, it was that good. I even got up three times, intending to stop watching; go get my coffee at the grocery store and come home and write but the movie pulled me down, like a magnet. I finally pulled myself away, grabbed my wallet and got in my car to drive over. This American Life was on my radio and Ira was interviewing a psychologist about how branding makes us buy. I supposed they had already compared it to being hypnotized and I must have missed that part of the interview, so I kept listening, even after I pulled into my parking spot at the grocery store, to see if I was right. I was allowing the story to hypnotize me, to a certain degree, I guess. Then there was a pause, like they often do in the radio program called, This American Life, so I chose that moment to turn off the engine, turn off the program and go into the story. I mean, the store.

A man with a purposeful long stride was walking to the same entrance I was headed toward. There are two kinds of doorways into this store. I was going to go into the entrance with the turning door, the kind that turns and turns like a merry-go-round, like many hotels have. There’s no draft of cold air for the people sitting inside if you come in through that door. I’m considerate when I want to be.

But the man with the purposeful long stride was walking toward the other door. The regular door, that, when held open on a cold, snowy day like today, blasts a draft toward the people sitting inside the grocery store cafe. I just knew he was going to be a gentleman and hold the door open for me. And even though I kind of slowed down my pace so we wouldn’t meet at exactly the same moment in time, he timed his pace to be there. I even had my hands on the turning door but because he was already holding open the other door, I could not be rude and so I went through his door, smiling at him and thanking him. I think I was still saying “what a gentleman” when I went down.

The floor was as slick as a sheet of ice. It was soaking wet from people tracking in the snow from the unusual late spring storm on this Mother’s Day holiday and it was so slick that I fell. I could feel myself falling. I could see my right hand going out in front of me to prevent me from falling on my face. The rest of me landed on my knees. All my weight was born on the right side of my body.

“Are you all right? Are you all right?” Said the polite man who had witnessed my fall. I looked around quickly and saw people in line at the coffee counter glance over, smiling and chuckling at me on all fours — a classic slip-on-the-banana-peel moment — and I quickly got up. I barely looked back at the man. I smiled, too, wanting to laugh at myself, like it felt like everyone else was. Most of them probably were not laughing. I only imagined it that way because I was so embarrased.

I was a little shook up. After all, I’m not a spring chicken anymore. But I refuse to call myself an old lady. Let’s just say, I’m at that age that if I fall, things will be shaken up and then quickly tighten up in soreness. I could already feel my hand hurting and the right side of my neck tightening up as I walked over to the deli, away from the cafe area. I turned around to look at the floor and saw that just as you walk in, there was melted snow there on bare linoleum and then there was one of those safety rugs. Well, it wasn’t very safe if it wasn’t positioned correctly. If only the rug had been placed more carefully for my feet to walk on to it, rather than the slick wet floor, I would not have fallen.

Then I looked at the floor in front of the turning door. The door I was going to come through, had the man not been there to gallantly hold the other door open. The rug in front of the turning door was placed right there for your first step to land on it.

How ironic, I thought.

If only I had come through that door like I always do on a cold day so as to be considerate of the people sitting in the cafe. If only I had not been so nice and the man with the long stride had not been so nice, I would not have fallen.

If only I had stopped listening to Ira on This American Life a little sooner, I would have gone through the merry-go-round door, well ahead of the nice man, and I would not have fallen. Or if I had been patient enough to listen to more of This American Life instead of turning it off during the artful pause, none of this would have happened. In fact, I wouldn’t have written this and you would not be reading this now (if you’re still reading it).

This kind of thing is not supposed to happen on Mother’s Day. It’s a small occurrence, compared to what’s currently happening to a lot of people right now. I have no right to complain. Right before I left to go get my coffee, I had just read in the Sunday newspaper about a man who was killed the other night while crossing a highway. And he had just moved to our city two months ago. My son had just come home from spending the weekend with a friend of his who happened to be one of the first people to find that man on the side the road that night, after he had been hit and run over by a driver who didn’t choose to stop and help him. When my son’s friend had found the man, he was dying or already dead. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

I had no right to complain, compared to the dead man. But in my life, when things don’t go as planned, I seek to find out why, so it won’t happen again. I guess that’s the controller in me, always trying to make sure life goes smoothly. No conflict. No sadness. Certainly, no pain.

Why did this happen to me? I kept asking myself: why, why, why? I need my right hand to type with, to program with, to write with, to doodle with, to cook with, to open doors with. I make my living with my right hand. I couldn’t afford for my hand or anything else on the right side of my body to be in pain.

I started connecting the dots to see if I could come up with the pattern and therefore, solve the problem. The problem being that it seemed orchestrated. Like it was meant to happen. The man with the long, purposeful stride indeed had a purpose and it was to be there at that moment in time to hold that door open for me so I could walk onto a slick floor and fall down and hurt myself. It was as though he had waited for his stage cue, his purpose for his stride, when I showed up. But of course, it was just “coincidence.”

My hand was throbbing and my neck was stiffening up so I thought I had better report this to the store manager, just in case I started to feel worse. Just so there’s a record of it.

I’m not one to rock boats. Growing up, I was a child with alcoholic parents and therefore, as an adult, avoided confrontation and tried to make life as smooth as possible. Adding to this painful stew, my dad died when I was thirteen and my mother made the decision to move my little sisters and I to another state. I was the new girl and started high school that fall. I found myself walking from one class to another, just trying to get through the days. I went into a deep depression, and tried to control whatever I could in order to bring order to my life. I tried to set a new pattern in my life, a new routine that I could control and not let anymore pain come into.

So now, as an adult, whatever I can control, I will. I’m not obnoxious about it. In fact, I can usually recognize when something is out of my control and no matter how hard I could attempt at controlling the situation, I recognize when it would not be worth the fight, so I let it go. This has become somewhat of a coping skill in life for me, actually.

That’s what I did immediately after getting up: I starting coping. I walked past the “wet floor” sign and found a young lady employee and informed her that I had just fallen and it was really slick over there by the door. “Oh no, are you okay?” She said, with enough concern in her voice that I could tell she was genuinely hoping I was not hurt. I told her “Yeah, I think I’m okay.” She said she would call for a mop-up right away.

I walked away, still a bit shook up that I had fallen. I couldn’t focus right away. I walked from one aisle of food to another, trying not to cry. I was embarrassed and mad, physically hurting and emotionally hurt, asking God (in my head): Why? Why did this happen?

It’s better to report it than not, I thought, so I found the head guy in charge. He was directing customers with full carts to cashiers with short lines, way over on the other side of the store. He saw me approaching and smiled but was answering a cashier’s question at the same time. I looked for his name tag and said “Steven?” We had seen each other lots of times before, as this grocery store is very near our house. This was the first time I had ever called him by his name. “How are you?” he asked with a smile.

“I just fell over there at the entrance by the deli. I thought I’d better report it.”

His face went flat and he asked if I was okay. I told him my hand hurt and my neck was feeling stiff because I had fallen with my weight on this side of my body. He immediately turned away from me, without saying anything and walked over to the nearest cashier station and picked up the phone and called someone.

“I’ve called someone and we’ll have you fill out a report…. there he is.”

“Okay.” I said and turned to see the man with the long, purposeful stride walking toward us. He walked up to Steven, who told him I had fallen and the man said, “yes, I know. I saw it happen.”

He turned to me and said “That’s why I asked you if you were okay.”

“You work here?” I asked, incredulous.

“Yes.”

“Well, at the time, I was very embarrassed and just wanted to get up and forget about it,” I told him. I was thinking that I wished he had never opened the door in the first place. Here he was making me feel bad. After all, this is no way to spend Mother’s Day. But maybe I was being too sensitive.

“Let’s go over to the counter and I’ll take your information.”

I followed him over to the customer service counter and he grabbed a blank piece of paper and asked me for my name. I told him my name and spelled it out for him as he wrote it down in his neat handwriting.

“Your address?”

I gave him my address and told him, we live nearby and come here a lot.

I expected him to smile and say “Oh?” But he was in manager mode. I guess he was just being very careful to get the facts and not say anything that could be used against him. I used to be a restaurant manager in the 80's and was trained to never apologize if a customer complained about chipping a tooth while chewing the food or slipping and falling on the property because an apology could be argued in court as an admission of guilt. That’s why I wasn’t really insulted that he never apologized that this happened to me.

He continued to ask me a couple of more questions.

“Birth date?”

I told him and he seemed surprised at the year of my birth because he repeated it like he couldn’t believe I was that old. I took that as a compliment.

“Are you in any pain?”

“Yes, my hand hurts…” I pointed to the exact part of my hand that hurt. “And the right side of my neck is stiffening up.”

“Do you think you’ll go to the doctor?”

“I don’t know.” I really didn’t know. I would have to wait and see how I felt tomorrow. And I told him that.

“Well, if you do go, we ask that you bring us your paperwork from the doctor. We do this with all slip-and-falls.”

So this happens a lot, I wanted to ask him, but I did not ask him. I just mumbled “okay” and I thanked him. I don’t know why I thanked him. Just habit, I guess.

He carefully folded up the paper. I asked him what HIS name was.

“Christopher.”

“So, you work here?” I asked him, still marveling at the irony of the whole situation. “Yes, I’m the assistant manager of this store.”

“I’ve never seen you before and I come here a lot.”

“I hide out well,” he said, with a slight curve of his lips, not quite smiling but leaning toward a smile.

I laughed.

Then he came out from behind the counter and stepped in front of me, heading toward the way we had both come in. He turned his head around and looked at my shoes, like he was making a mental note of them.

It wasn’t my shoes that were guilty here, I thought. I guess I could technically blame it all on climate change. It was the storm that wasn’t supposed to happen at this time of year, which made the linoleum floor turn into a puddle. I had no idea the puddle was there because I wasn’t looking down, instead, I was politely telling the store’s assistant manager what a gentleman he was as he held the door open to what has now turned out to be a Mother’s Day memory for me.

I’ve always found it fascinating that strangers are sometimes brought together for no apparent reason. But I wonder: is there, indeed, a reason for us to be brought together into the same space at an exact moment but we’re too neanderthalic to realize it?

This happens at road intersections a lot. The kind of intersections that don’t have steady traffic. Like the one up the street from your house. It’s quiet for several minutes, then when you pull up to the stop sign in your car, all of these other cars appear from both directions. Sometimes pedestrians appear there, too. But why didn’t any of them appear there a minute or two before? Why did EVERYONE make their way there to that spot at that exact moment? My theory is that we’re all supposed to stop and get out of our vehicles and find out how we can help each other.

But maybe we’re not supposed to do that. Maybe if we did do that, then it would be worse. Like what happened to me today when the stranger with the purposeful stride helped me and actually ended up hurting me. Not on purpose.

The movie? Yeah, the movie. I bet you’re wondering what movie it was that I was compelled to watch and had to pull myself away to go get that coffee. It was a movie I had watched once before. Maybe that’s why I wanted to keep watching, because I knew what was going to happen next.

No, it wasn’t “Crash.” That would have been TOO ironic and unbelievable.

It’s called “Devil.” M. Night Shamalyan. The plot is about a group of strangers, brought together for no apparent reason, trapped in a stuck elevator. I won’t say anymore, in case you haven’t seen it yet. I’m no spoiler. But just knowing that much of the plot gives you some insight as to why I wrote this story. Right?

It’s the only way to bring meaning into the universe. Some people say that’s why religions were created — for people to bring meaning into their lives. Otherwise, without meaning, then we are just random beings, without purpose, without reason. People can’t live and die without a reason.

If that had not happened to me today, I would not have written this story.

I could talk more about my past and try to figure out how different my life would have been had my father not died. But all I will say about that is this: I would never have written this story had he lived because after his death, I thankfully found an expression for my grief and it was through writing that I began to heal.

If he had not died, you would never have read this, even if it had still happened to me. I would not have been compelled to search for a meaning.

You would never have been exposed to my point of view.

And, maybe, you’re thinking, you would not have wasted time reading this. But maybe some of you are thinking that it was worth your time.

I will never know. Unless you leave a comment. Connect another dot for me.

Was this meant to happen? If so, why? Why did it happen?

I was going to wait to publish this but decided not to, after I read Winnie Lim’s philosophy about publishing her Medium. So, here it is. The first and only draft, written during the late afternoon and evening of the day it happened, be it as it may be.