Matters Of Probability

I'm not one who believes that there is an old man looking down on us from the sky and judging our every thought and action. I don't believe in magical trinkets, sacred sites, or holy scriptures. I'm definitely not one to pay for a palm reading or a tarot session.

I do believe in scientific method, observation and hypothesis, and rigorous testing. I believe that altruism and biophilia are wonderful evolutionary gifts that should be revered more than holy wars and televangelism, and I believe that it's possible that life is, somehow, the Universe trying to understand itself.

Now, having said that, I am also really intrigued by the idea of coincidence. I know that most "coincidences" are just matters of probability, but I do seem to have an unusually high incidence of these matters of probability. Possibly lots of us have unusually high incidences of coincidence, which, of course, would make coincidence not unusual at all. Still with me?

Carl Jung, one of the most brilliant thinkers of the early twentieth century, explored ideas of "collective unconscious" and "synchronicity." He posited that coincidences that are not causal in nature, are actually a sort of manifestation of an underlying framework of collective unconscious human experience and thought. I wonder a lot about this.

Let me just share a few odd, but true, stories of coincidence in my fairly recent experience...

* I've shared my personal adoption story here at the Lair. But there are a few really strange details that I haven't shared. Back in 2000, when I decided that I really wanted to know something about my biological parents, I began my search by using a name search website. I knew my biological parents' names, and I decided that it would be easier to find my father, because my mother's last name might well have changed due to marriage. I input my father's name, and the website generated 14 possible matches all with different addresses. I composed a letter, and sent a letter to each of the 14 addresses. A few days later, I received a call from a woman who told me that she had received my letter, because her father had the same name. She assured me that her father was not the man that I was looking for, but that, coincidentally, she was employed by the Children's and Family Services office in Pittsburgh, and that her job was to help adoptees find their birth parents. And she proceeded to help me find my biological father, who has the same name as hers. Let me just point out that the last name is Kress...not exactly Smith or Jones.

* To add to that coincidence...that wonderful lady lives and works in Pittsburgh, which is the city that I grew up in - though I was living in Miami Beach at the time. My biological father lives in Washington State.

* But the adoption story coincidences don't stop there. When my biological father was contacted, and informed that I wanted to speak with him, he refused to have any contact with me. I wrote to him, and never received a response. So, the agency then assigned someone to find my biological mother. A few months later, I received a call from the agency in Pittsburgh, letting me know that they had found her, and that she wanted to talk to me. We spoke, and I found out that she lived in St. Pete Beach, less than 5 hours from me in Miami Beach. And, she went on to tell me how she actually grew up in Miami Beach, in a house about a mile from where I was living. When I finally met her, she showed me pictures of me when I was 2 years old in Miami Beach...and I thought that I had never been to Miami Beach before I moved there when I was 23. It seems that she and my father were married, and living in Pittsburgh, when I was born. They took several extended trips, with me, to visit her parents in Miami Beach. When I was 2 years old, they got divorced and she moved back home, to Miami Beach, and left me with my father. He took me to a babysitter, and just never came back. So, I grew up in Pittsburgh, with an adoptive family - but I ended up moving to her hometown and was living there when I met her.

* Last September, Tony and I had a fantastic time on a trip to Italy. We started off the journey with a few wonderful days in Rome. On our third day, I stopped at a very small internet shop on a small side street near our hotel, to check e-mails. There was just one other person in the shop, and I couldn't help but to notice how much he looked like a guy that I knew back in Miami. As he gathered his things, and walked towards the door, I couldn't help but to ask if he was possibly from Miami...and of course, he was. We talked for a bit, and wondered together what the chances were of running into someone that you know in another country, thousands of miles away, in a tiny internet shop, at 8 in the morning. Coincidentally, we ran into him again the next day int he train station.

* So, back to Pittsburgh for the background of this story. I actually grew up in the south suburbs of Pittsburgh. Our high school had about 1,000 students, and my grade had less than 250. Not very big. In 1992, I moved to San Francisco. In 1994, I moved to Miami, and just this past April, I moved to Atlanta. Shortly after moving here, Tony and I started going to the Unitarian-Universalist Church, just to check it out, and possibly meet some like-minded folks. On our third visits, at the end of the service, I noticed a woman in a red shirt walking ahead. I turned to Tony, and said, "See that woman in the red shirt? I think I went to high school with her!" Of course, he looked at me like I was insane, but I darted off to get a closer look. I walked up beside her, and asked if her name was Laurel. Now, of couse, you know it was, and we fumbled around for the right words to say to address the weirdness of the situation. I think it needs to be pointed out that the Unitarian-Universalist Church here in Atlanta is not an 8,000 member mega-church. It's a small congregation, and there couldn't have been much more than 100 people there. It's also probably interesting to point out that she and her family live about 30 minutes north of the church, and Tony and I live about 20 minutes southeast. It's probably also interesting to point out that Laurel's husband is from Albany, New York and went to school in Syracuse....and Tony is from Syracuse, and went to school in Albany. AND...two weeks later, Tony and I ran in to Laurel at Piedmont Park. Did I mention that there are over five and a half MILLION people in the Atlanta Metro Region?

I won't bore with more stories, but I do have these types of "coincidence" more often than seems possible. Of course, it could be that I just don't understand the probability of the simultaneous occurances, and I feel some need to place a deeper meaning on, what are essentially, non-meaningful events.

Tell me...do you have similar stories of coincidence? How do you see synchroncities?

The Nuts And Bolts Of It

A short while back, Mr. Hof was inspired by Mr. Sideways to raise the blogger challenge flag and the following gauntlet was thrown:

You did not have perfect parents (none of us do/did). They set your sights 'off' on a few things. Blog out one of the sights you now, as an adult, realize your parents set wrong.


After much deliberation, some hesitation and a threat from A* , I have accepted the challenge.


The first thing I can remember is the excitement of seeing a school of little fish swimming along the shore. It’s hazy, but I remember throwing my little pink sand bucket in the water, and the fish scattered and disappeared. Linda went into the surf and got my bucket back. I threw it into the surf again. I also remember lots of talk about “the motel.” Somehow, in my three year old mind, I surmised that a motel must be an animal. I can still remember my confusion over what a motel must look like. We entered a room and I immediately began searching for a motel. I looked everywhere – even under the bed. They asked me what I was looking for, and I told them that I was looking for the motel. I remember a huge burst of laughter. I was three and we were on vacation in Panama City. It was the vacation that was always referred to as “the trip we took to Florida right after we got you.”

Four years ago, a series of coincidences and a little determination led me to Madeira Beach on the West Coast of Florida to meet my biological mother for the first time since I was two years old. All those years of wondering came crashing upon me in a literal split second when she opened the door. The first few minutes of our new relationship were a frenzied Polaroid snapshot series of muddled emotion. I was thoroughly stunned by the surrealism of the moment. For whatever reason, I hadn’t expected it to be so, um, heavy.

I saw baby and toddler pictures of myself for the first time. I saw pictures of my father and my grandparents for the first time. I learned that my ancestors were Jewish, German and Irish. I was told that my abandonment, at two years old, was really just a bit of a mix-up – a mistake. My parents met in Pittsburgh, fell in love, got married and had me. Apparently, when I was two, they decided that they had made a mistake and got divorced. My mother and my maternal grandparents always spent summers in Pittsburgh and winters in Miami Beach (yeah, kind of weird that I ended up back in Miami Beach, huh?). My mother chose to leave me with my father and move back home to Florida. One day, my father made the decision not to pick me up from the babysitter – ever. The babysitter, Peggy, never called the authorities and just sort of gave me to her daughter, Mary Jane, in what she thought would be a temporary foster situation. At this point, I’m told, I stopped speaking and spent much of my day hiding in closets and under furniture. Mary Jane became concerned when, after a few months, her two-year-old daughter, Kathy, began to mimic my behaviors. She asked her cousins, Ruth and Edward, if they would be able to provide a foster home. In the driveway, they made the decision to take me in. A few weeks later, we were vacationing in the Redneck Riviera, and Linda, who is 13 years older than me, became my sister and saved my little pink sand bucket from floating out to sea.

I grew up calling Ruth and Edward mom and dad. I have no recollection of life before them, and they never hid what they knew of my story. When I was entering middle school, it was discovered that I had no social security number or birth certificate, and, as a remedy, just before my twelfth birthday I was legally adopted. My new parents were well into their fifties, and not particularly nurturing personalities. Edward was a miserable alcoholic, who beat the fuck out of me regularly. I would often “forget” my gym uniform for school so I could keep the welts on my legs hidden. Ruth was the kind of person who was never happy unless she was complaining about something. My sister Linda has a heart of gold and I love her as much as any little brother can love a big sister, but she got married and moved out when I was just six and I was left to fend for myself. As a kid, I spent most of my time alone in the woods behind the house. I mapped out the entire forest, watched a litter of foxes grow, and listened for fleeting scarlet tanagers and raucous blue jays. I developed an intense relationship with Nature that still comforts me to my core.

By fourteen I was escaping to my friend Erik’s house as much as possible. His parents were divorced and his dad let us do pretty much whatever we wanted. We were complete delinquents, and as Erik’s sidekick, I felt a part of something for the first time ever. We shoplifted cassette tapes, U2 posters and Jams® shorts (it was 1984, what do you want?) and sold them at school for money for cigarettes and pot. By graduation, I was living in my car – a Ford Pinto no less, and having the time of my life.

It’s difficult to pinpoint a sight that my parents set wrong. Fuck, it’s difficult for me to define parents. My sights weren’t set wrong. They weren’t even presented to me. As a result of my childhood, I have a deep, vertigo-inducing well of anger and shame. The sides are so steep that I can’t really look into it for fear of falling in. Fortunately, I am also equipped with a bottomless supply of empathy and compassion.

The unusual circumstances of my personal history have always placed me firmly in the enchanted position of outsider looking in, and that’s not always a bad thing. It’s an amazing feeling to be able to accept full responsibility for every accomplishment in life. If I don’t do another fucking thing, but sit on the couch and watch Brady Bunch re-runs for the rest of my life, I’ve beaten the odds. And that’s kinda cool.

I’m still trying to make sense of it all, but I’m getting there. I’ll be in Pittsburgh in two weeks visiting Ruth and Linda and my beautiful eight-year-old niece, Nicole.