Last night we had a huge H1N1 clinic that was open to the entire public where we worked to vaccinate almost 2000 people. The Greeley Tribune as well as Denver Channel 4 News covered the story. When I came in to work today, a couple of people said, “I saw you on TV last night.” I thought I’d better check it out. Sure enough, a little ways through the clip I am standing there with my yellow vest smiling and greeting people. You can check it out here. Just click on the video to the side of the story.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been on the news. About two years ago I was involved in helping to create an ordinance that eventually eliminated free tobacco from being given away in the city of Greeley. It was a great accomplishment, but a very stressful time in my life. I have finally been able to get a copy of the video for you all to see. I had to record it off the computer, but I think it turned out ok. What do you think?
What was even weirder about last night was that the Greeley Tribune reporter was one of the very last people to go through the line and get vaccinated himself. We had already started cleaning things up and so I just walked him back to a vaccination station. As we were walking back he asked me if I had ever taught a sociology class at UNC. I said, yes, during my graduate program. He said he was a former student of mine! I was like, wow, what a small world. After he got his vaccine, I asked him how he was doing and how he liked working at the Tribune. We chatted for a while but I still couldn’t remember his name, so I asked him. Colin Lindenmayer. Man that names sounds familiar, I thought. Then it rang a bell in my head. The chicken article! Of course. He had been the reporter on the chicken article. We had talked on the phone, but because I had changed my name after getting married to Britton, he hadn’t recognized my new last name.
A series of strange events like this keep happening to Britton and me lately. I am taking them as good omens. You never know who you have touched and the impact you made on them. And that they make on you. Maybe it is a simple glance, a word, or even just a tidbit of information you picked up on the nightly news. 🙂 Whatever it is, sometimes I really feel that we are truly all connected.
Is it synchronicity if just a few days before I finished reading “Hypnotizing Maria” a book by Richard Bach? Or that Britton and I found out that we had a renter at the very moment we pushed play to watch the Pixar movie “Up” a movie that summarizes how we feel about life in so many ways, not to mention is a throw back to our first date watching “Toy Story 2”?
Life is strange. Sometimes I don’t think I would believe it if you told me it was real and it feels like a dream I need to interpret to make sense out of it. But dreams are always in metaphors that only you can understand. Maybe that’s how life is. A series of stories and challenges that teach you lessons in unexpected ways. Or maybe not. All I know is that it is weird in a cool way. Or as the saying goes, “What’s the difference between fiction and reality? Fiction needs to make sense.”