Self Fulfilling Synchronicity

Sometimes you can influence synchronicity, but that isn’t necessarily a positive thing, as in the case of how Monday night became connected to my thoughts from the past couple of days. First I pick up a guy on the East side of town who’s going to Denny’s on Market. On the drive there the conversation leads to me having retired from the post office and he asks me if I worked at the one in Salem.

“That’s the one I retired from,” I told him.

“Did you know Bill Layman?” He asked.

Not only did I know Bill Layman, but I just bought a used car from a guy named Bill Layman, who I didn’t ask if he was related to the one at the post office. Then after that he told me a joke.

A destitute man went to a church and asked for help. The pastor listened to his story and then said that he could help him financially, but that he could also help him spiritually. Then the minister asked if the man had ever been baptized, to which the man replied that he had not.

“I normally baptize in the river behind the church,” the pastor said, “would you like to be baptized now?”

The man nervously said okay, and they proceeded to step into the river, where the pastor ducked the man in the water and baptized him. When he raised the man up he asked him, “did you see Jesus?”

“No,” the man answered.

Then the pastor put the man under water a second time and when he raised him out of the water he asked him again, “did you see Jesus?”

For a second time the man answered, “no!”

So the minister put the man under water for a third time, holding him under a little longer. This time when he raised the man back up and asked, “did you see Jesus?”

The man answered, “no!” Are you sure that this was the last place that you saw him?”

I found out that my passenger had been a minister of music in a number of churches, including Nazarene, Assembly of God and Foursquare, but did not currently attend church. I shared a brief summary of my story with him and dropped him off a little after 9:00 PM.

Around Midnight, I got a call to pick up Roger at the emergency room. When Roger got in the cab, he was wearing a hospital nightshirt, and reeked like a homeless person who hasn’t taken a shower for a couple of weeks. When I asked his destination, he told me that he was sleeping between some buildings near Fred Meyers on Market and Lancaster, so I told Dotty, the dispatcher that I would get her the address when we arrived. As I drove Roger, he told me that he just got divorced and didn’t have any place to live, which wasn’t that bad, except for when he got drunk. He said that he had a credit card and might as well use it. At that point we were about half way there, and I knew that I would not get paid.

Rather than running the credit card over the radio, I drove him to the Chase ATM at Fred Meyers and told him to get cash. After a couple of tries, the ATM printed out a slip that said that he had a zero balance in his account. So I told him that the ride was over, and told Dottie that I had a no money for $11.50, as I remembered that my last blog entry was about this subject.

The night had been slow, when at 2:30 AM, I got a call for Denny’s on Market, to pick up the former minister of music that I dropped off earlier. On the way to his house he told me another joke.

A man buys a horse from a minister, and asks if there is anything that he needs to know about the animal. The pastor tells the man, that the horse follows two commands. “When you say ‘praise the Lord,’ the horse will immediately run full speed. When you say ‘amen,’ the steed will immediately stop. After the man purchases the horse he begin riding it all over the open range. Every time that he said, ‘praise the Lord,’ the horse began running, and when he said ‘amen,’ it came to a stop. The man was happy with the horse’s performance and one day when the horse was galloping at full throttle the man realized that they were approaching a precipice that plunged thousands of feet into a canyon.”

“’Whoa!’ The man said, but the horse kept galloping at full speed. ‘Stop!’ The man screamed, but the horse kept charging ahead. After he exhausted every command he could think of he prayed and asked God to forgive him all his sins and ended the prayer with ‘amen!’ When the horse immediately stopped at the lip of a precipice, to the man’s relief, he emotionally exclaimed, ‘praise the Lord!’”

All in all it was a slow night with a couple of good prescription runs, but tips were in the toilet, setting a record low with only $7.00 for the night. I booked $177.00, but #3 barely broke $100.00, so by comparison I did okay.