Of Coincidence and Memories by Konnie Enos

 

I’m sure most people have heard stories of people looking through old pictures and finding out that at some point in their past they’d crossed paths with someone they’d met much more recently. Recently I was reading some of these types of stories and it got me thinking.

I remember when we were about fourteen and Jacki’s then-boyfriend came around and talked about crashing a birthday party for some girls he did not know. The friend that told him about it did not know them.

Somehow, I was talked into going with them. (Bonnie may have gone too.)

The birthday girls were in fact twins and the party was in their large front yard. And yes, no one kicked us out though after a while I had to use the bathroom. Someone tracked down one of the hosts for me and got me permission to go inside and use the bathroom, but I was told to come straight back out.

I hurried in, did my business, and went to dash back out but was stopped by a display of family pictures. One in particular. I stayed long enough that one of the hosts came in to find me. I asked her if she knew who was in the one picture or where it was taken.

She told me where she and her twin sister were in the picture and what she knew of the others in the picture, then mentioned she was told one of her cousins took it and she thought the two youngest girls were his kids.

They were.

I remember Dad taking the picture in Grandma’s living room.

Yep. We unknowingly crashed the birthday party for Dad’s cousins.

Well, all this got me thinking about the Bicentennial.

Why?

Because it was chock full of these weird crossed-path incidents.

First, there was the young man (eighteen to be exact) who was in the color guard leading the parade in our hometown that day. Not only was Bonnie also marching in that parade, but it wasn’t the first, or last time our paths would cross his. And apparently, the first time was while we were still in our Mom’s belly. The second was just two years previously when Bonnie declared she would never have anything to do with any man who felt that way about boys playing with dolls, even if those dolls were meant for boys. (Our brother had some action figures similar to G.I. Joes', but closer to what Barbies are.)

The next time Bonnie crossed paths with him they ended up dating and then happily married.

But the eeriness of the events from that one parade doesn’t end there.

To this day I can still remember a small group of people riding and prancing their ponies around the street as they passed where I stood watching the parade. One of those ladies came right up to me and I’ve never forgotten what that young cowgirl looked like.

Fast forward almost thirty years and I’m in Nevada and I just moved into my house. When we attend the new ward (congregation) I spot a lady who for some reason immediately had me flashing back to that cowgirl even though she was not so much as wearing a cowboy hat. Yet, every single time I saw her, I flashed back to that cowgirl.

I did ask her if our paths had crossed somewhere but we had never so much as lived in the same city.

A few years later I was talking to her and she brought up the Bicentennial and mentioned her uncle roping her into riding with them in that parade as a last-minute replacement for someone else. I asked what city it was that she’d ridden in the parade for.

You guessed it!

Pocatello, Idaho.

That’s right, I flashback to that cowgirl because she WAS that cowgirl.

And reading those stories has me wondering if someday we’ll come across an old picture of mine or Jerry’s that somehow has the other one of us in the background long before we met and got married.

I mean, I know we both lived in the Salt Lake City area when we were toddlers/preschool age so it makes me wonder. Of course, that’s the only time we even lived in the same state until we met and eventually married in our late twenties.

Now I’m writing a story where the hero and heroine have their paths cross several times in their lives before the story starts. What is even funnier, while others find the earliest connection in their lives, I don’t think they ever do.

Have you ever written characters that have any of these “our paths have crossed before” moments?

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.