A
truly staggering coincidence
by
Robert LaFrance
I know that life is full of
coincidences, but sometimes they are a little beyond coincidence.
Take, for example, the remarkable
coincidence of the charge against Liberal candidate Andrew Harvey being made
public, not only during his election campaign in our riding, but one day too
late for the party to put in another candidate if they wanted to. Remarkable.
In case it hasn’t been clear from
media reports – and it hasn’t - Andrew Harvey will still be running for the
Liberals.
While I am temporarily on this
subject, I should point out that both “major” parties (as they call themselves)
have and will encourage such ‘coincidences’. There ain’t no angels in politics.
From the wildly entertaining subject
of politics, I move on to the extremely annoying subject of the common cold.
Some people capitalize the words Common Cold, but I am not here to praise
Caesar, but to bury him.
As of Tuesday, Sept. 2, I had not
had a cold for six or eight months. I was beginning to think that I had found
the answer to avoiding that particular malady. Whatever that answer was, I
didn’t know, but I assumed I was just one of the lucky ones – invincible.
Then came Tuesday, Sept. 2. You will
have seen some of the old photos of men driving spikes as they built the
railroads – keep that in mind, because that’s what happened to me. I was that
spike and the cold was the hammer.
“A hot toddy is what you need,” said
my friend Flug, so we looked on the Internet for a good recipe. The one that
sounded best to me was the one that combined 3.5 tablespoons of brandy, the
same amount of water, a half teaspoon of honey, all heated and stirred
together.
I mixed them all up and left the cup
on the counter. Meanwhile, the phone rang and a few seconds later Flug came in.
Seeing the cup, decided there wasn’t nearly enough brandy. He added a dollop
(4.36 ounces) more.
My phone call over, I strode to the
hot toddy cup. “I wonder if 3.5 ounces is enough?” I asked myself, and you know
the answer to that question.
Long story shorter, within ten
minutes I was snoring in my favourite chair while the TV quietly played some
old-time country music, my favourite. My wife came in and tried to awaken me,
but as she shook me I slud (yes, I said ‘slud’ just like Dizzy Dean) onto the
floor. She told me this afterward, when I awoke with an even worse cold and
headache.
“While you were on the phone, I saw
your hot toddy on the counter,” she said to my aching head, “and added a dollop
of brandy because it looked a little weak.” Apparently I drank a gallon of
brandy from that one 12-ounce glass. That ain’t no dollop.
*****************************
Have you ever known anyone who
didn’t get colds and who never was sick? Ever? I have such a relative. He is,
by popular demand, about to emigrate to New Zealand, and if there were anywhere
farther away I would pay his train fare.
Cousin Eldred LaFrance, a former
resident of Victoria County, is one of those chaps who visit people a lot, and
in his wake people get sick – not of him, because he’s likeable and
entertaining – but he is a Carrier.
After extensive medical lab tests,
the professionals have ascertained that Eldred carries on and around him the
germs and viruses for everything from sickle cell anemia to ulcers to syphilis
to The Common Cold. The government wanted to execute him and carefully put the
remains in a vat of hydrochloric acid, but instead bought him an isolated kiwi
farm in New Zealand. You can’t say Stephen Harper isn’t decisive.
*****************************
On Monday afternoon, after I had
finished working and slaving for the day, I took a lawn chair out to my apple
orchard and sat there in the shade while I read an Agatha Christie novel. I
heard – and even felt – a thump and looked down to see that an apple had fallen
almost at my feet.
It just goes to show you how
important timing is. Comedians Don Rickles and Bob Hope used to say that timing
wasn’t just important, it was everything, and that was proven once again.
A few centuries earlier, if that
apple had fallen onto my head, I might have been the one who discovered gravity
and Sir Isaac Newton would have been just a bum, a university lecturer who
bored all his acquaintances with his foolishness about inertia and stuff like
that.
On the other hand, I should point
out that the apple that fell at my feet was an Alexander and it was huge. If
that had whacked me on the noggin I would have still been staggering around
that orchard.
-end-
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