A Weird Thing
This is edited and excerpted from an essay I wrote called Lying Ghost Girl, one anecdote of many weird things that I’ve experienced. I really want to hear your weird things that happened. Click the Contact button to send me your story.
By BetsyG
My boys (I think “my boys” can have a meaning in modern slang, but in this case I mean two of my sons, Matthew and Alex) and I were bringing the stray cat we were adopting to the veterinarian for the first time. Before the vet visit, we believed that the cat was a girl, so we had tentatively named it Athena, to go with our lizard, Atalanta (both names are from Greek mythology). At the vet’s office, though, we found out that the cat was male; a new name was needed.
We batted around names in the car ride home. For reasons unknown, the name Boris came into my head, but I didn’t say it out loud because I thought my son Matthew would think it was stupid. He had a classmate named Boris who he didn’t particularly like and I figured he would reject the name for that reason, and also because it was so completely random. Why Boris? Instead, I offered up Hercules, to keep with the Greek mythology theme. Matthew rejected this and any other name I suggested. Alex came up with names of planets, a subject he was studying in school. None of the suggestions satisfied all of us. We seemed to be at an impasse.
Then Matthew said, “How about Boris?”
Boris the cat
The cynics to whom I have relayed this story (oh, and by the way, I am as cynical as they come) have said that whatever stimulus triggered the thought process that caused me to come up with the name Boris must have affected Matthew the same way. As I write this, that theory seems laughable, because even if that is the explanation, isn’t that in itself a bit of magic? It seems just as unlikely that two brains would react in so similar a manner that they would produce the name Boris within a minute of each other as if there had been a psychic experience.
If there was no psychic connection, whereby I thought the word Boris and Matthew said the unusual name at almost the same time, then it might be worth thinking about whether our genetic connection caused an identical series of events in our brains with the same result. Of my three children, the one who seems to have the most obvious connection to my DNA, at least outwardly, is Matthew. For example, he and I sunburn while my two other sons tan. We each have a notable freckle on our ankle. I’ve found myself staring at Matthew’s foot, thinking I am looking at my own. (If only he would let me take a picture of his foot so you could see). We also each have a prominent birthmark on our inner right thigh (as far as photos go, this is a no-go for both of us) and a smile-shaped notch on our right ear. (“Matthew, I’d like take a picture of your ear for my blog.” Somehow I don’t see that going over with my 16-year-old.)
These markings seem to be symbols of our connection. Could similarities in our DNA cause our brains to react similarly to the same stimulus? Or could common DNA make us more likely to operate on a similar wavelength and have a psychic experience?
I don’t know. Maybe some things are just beyond reason.
January 15th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I’ve been using the same pair of swim goggles for about 20 years. This morning I decided that I need new ones because the lenses have become too cloudy over the last few years. But being at the pool, I put them on for a swim. Fifteen minutes later they broke, irreparably. Spooky?
My first thought was that the goggles somehow knew I was done with them, so they were done with me. Am I anthropomorphizing or just silly for thinking the goggles were holding it together just for me?
Despite having the thought, I don’t really believe any of that for a moment. I think it is just a coincidence. Our brains are hard-wired to look for patterns, even when none exist. And we forget the 99.999% of the time each day when we don’t experience weird coincidences.
Do I think it likely that you have a particular bond with Mathew? Yes, based on genetics and on shared experiences and on overlapping world view since you have been his biggest teacher. But I don’t see much evidence of that in the Boris coincidence.
I think of myself as a romantic, but you’d never know if from this comment, would you?
I did think this post would elicit lots of stories from your readers but I don’t see them. 
January 15th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
They could still be coming.
Way to kill my buzz, though. In the larger essay, I acknowledge coincidence. Little coincidences happen all the time. But there are a few things for me that go beyond coincidence because they are so weird.
In your case, the fact that you noticed how bad your goggles were on the day they gave out…I would call that astute on your part. It’s hard to have a psychic experience with an inanimate object. It’s hard to even argue that there might have been one.
But it’s weird, nonetheless. Some people have shrugged about the Boris story and some people have seen the magnitude of how weird that is as I do.
But I am saving up the weirdest, weirdest story for another day.
January 15th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I can’t wait!
January 15th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Betsy:
In my experience, what happened with your son, is in fact, quite common. I’ve had the same experience quite often – enough to discount it as a coincidence. The common factor, though, is that it only happens with people that I share a relationship with – co-workers, family members, etc. A common instance occurs while I’m working late, pretty focused on what I’m doing, when my thoughts will suddenly, and unexpectedly, shift to thinking about my daughter, and within a few seconds, my cell phone rings. It’s her, asking a question about homework, or when i will arrive home… So, it appears to happen over distances, as well. When my last (maternal) grandparent passed, with whom I was quite close in my youth, I sensed that something had happened with her immediately after the phone rang, with my mother delivering the news. I’m no mystic, and I harbor a skeptical regard of anything that smacks of supernatural communications, but I can’t explain what, or how, this type of ‘over the ether’ communication happens. For me, it happens much the same way that your experience did, and such occurrences have increased in frequency over time, but I doubt that it’s purely biological or physiological. Maybe a vestigial talent that aided self-preservation during our early evolution, that has faded, drowned out by the clamor of television, cell phones, and the Internet…
Regards,
PJ
January 15th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Thanks for your comment. What you describe happens to me all the time; I’m thinking of someone and then the phone rings and it’s them. But I can use logic to explain why that might have happened. For example, I was thinking of someone I would not ordinarily think about in the supermarket and five minutes later I saw her. It seemed really crazy at the time, but it occurred to me I had to have seen her out of the corner of my eye, and that’s why I was thinking of her.
Personally, I found the Boris episode downright freaky, because coming out with a name as random as Boris is not a common occurence, whereas getting a phone call from your daughter or running into an acquaintance in the supermarket is.
The Boris thing, I don’t have any explanation for—I’m not saying it’s psychic—I’m just saying I think it was a notch weirder than most coincidences.
I’ll give you a weirder one (no, not the really really weird one). I was telling my then boyfriend about my aunt, showing him which paintings in the living room she had painted and telling him how much I admired her and how important she was to me. The phone rang; it was my mother telling me that an elderly female cousin had died, and my boyfriend thought it was my aunt. He couldn’t understand why I was taking it so well. I laughed and said, “You thought that was about my aunt? I would have been a blubbering idiot if that had been my aunt!”
Two weeks later, my aunt went to the ER with a distressing symptom, and the next day learned she had terminal cancer. (True to my prediction, I was a blubbering idiot.) She died four months later.
Of course it’s just a coincidence…But I would say it’s a much less likely coincidence than others.
January 24th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Here’s a very weird experience me and my niece shared when my mom was very ill.
She had taken ill in February and passed in April. During that time, I would wake up around 4 to 4:30 am, a lot. I can’t quite say it was every day, but it was enough to bring attention to the time of day it was and, needless to say, annoying. Granted, I was stressed about my mom being sick, work, and daily life all at once, so, of course my sleep would be affected. However, over the course of those months, I mentioned my sleeping habits to my niece in conversation, and she said she had been waking up at the same time, almost every morning. Of course, we stared at each other, got goose bumps, and tried not to analyze it too much.
The connection we would come to make of it was that my mom passed away at about 4:30 am on April 7.
March 27th, 2009 at 5:42 am
[...] kids), all good stuff. Oh, and I’ll be fretting about my kitty, who’s disappeared. (See A Weird Thing for a story about said kitty, who I really hope will be [...]