Hair-Raising Event - What Are the Chances?

I can't make this stuff up.

I spent the night on the couch again, simply because I was too lazy to "get up and go to bed," a phrase my mom always used when she woke me on the couch at night while we both watched TV.

Anyway, it was 6 a.m. and I had just finished watching an episode of Law & Order. I got up to make coffee and feed the cat.

As I passed the kitchen counter, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, the new Amazon Kindle that I just received yesterday. It was sitting at the opposite end of the counter where I left it last night to charge the battery.

Eager to play with it, I picked it up and brought it over to the couch with me. I was reading the Getting Started info onscreen and wondering whether I should print out the online guide.

In the meantime, another TV show was starting, and, judging from the way it began, I thought it was another episode of Law & Order, so I didn't change the channel.

Turns out the show, called "Angel," is about vampire slayers--they even reference Buffy in it--so it must be a spin-off of her hit series.

The subject matter is not my cup of tea, but my interest in it had already been piqued by its premise: a psychotic woman breaks out of an insane asylum, and goes on a mission to find the man that kidnapped and tortured her as a child.

Yeah, I know, not exactly wholesome entertainment, but it was too early to change channels to the more "wholesome" and intellectual news that's served up daily on the Today Show. :-)

So, I sat there on the couch, going back and forth between watching Angel, and playing w/ the Kindle during the commercials.

At one point, the protagonist was explaining to the victim that she was mistakenly torturing the wrong person, and then he identified the culprit that she should have been after.

Get this.

The man's name was Walter Kindle.

I almost dropped the Kindle in my hand.

What are the chances...

... of holding an Amazon Kindle in my hand at the exact moment a TV character utters the name Walter Kindle, on a show that I happened upon by accident?

Coincidence? I think not.

If the guys in Vegas could calculate those odds, I'd be interested in seeing them.

Really, this kind of "strange science" stuff has been happening to me steadily over the past ten years or so.

I have never believed in the supernatural, but every time something like this happens, I get a sudden outburst of goose bumps. If I could see the back of my neck, the hairs would be standing straight up.

I immediately called my friend Diane. Not only does she appreciate this kind of stuff, she's also heard me drone on about the many other weird coincidences in the past, like the recurring sighting of the three number sequence that just happens to be my birthday month and date, or the driving by a billboard and hearing a word uttered on the radio that just happens to be the same word I am looking at on the sign. (And, no, it's never a common word that could easily be explained by statistics.)

Diane was as incredulous as I was, and advised me to buy a daily lotto ticket today with the three-number sequence of my birthday.

I don't play the numbers, but it's times like these that I figure my odds of winning might be better than those of the average person.

Maybe I should purcxhase the ticket while I'm driving by a sign and listening to the radio, but that would be sort of difficult unless the lotto seller is willing to meet me outside as I pass by, and throw the lotto ticket through an open window of the car.

Wish me luck!