I don’t know if this happens to everyone, but throughout my life I have things that keep cropping up again and again. Not all of them are welcome. Birthdays are a good example. Every year on the same day I have a birthday! There was a time when I looked forward to them, but now I am more or less ambivalent as to whether they come or not. I am sure that in the not too distant future I will just say “No thanks”.
I have also had an awful lot of friends named Ken. It could be a coincidence, but all of the TV cop shows are suspicious about coincidences. In grade three there were five of us in class. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have a Ken-friend. Throughout grade school there was Ken Davis. Then in high school and after there was Ken Robison until his untimely death. I worked with a guy name of Ken for a few years but was never very close. I suspect that he was a bookmark in my life because I didn’t know his last name and as I said he was a work friend. Now and for the past twenty or twenty five years I have had Ken Brown as a friend. We met through our children and found that we had work and enough other things in common that kept us together till now. We are both retired and share a love of complaining about life and coffee. I suppose that if I outlive Ken, another Ken will show up. Do you think this is all leading to the realization that I will never be fulfilled until I become my own best friend? Then who would buy coffee every other day? I still have some growth I suppose.
For a couple of years while I was still delivering mail there was this broken toothbrush that seemed to show up on a regular basis. I remember the first time that I saw this white and blue toothbrush, I thought why would there be a toothbrush in the road? Maybe, someone was brushing their teeth in their car and the toothbrush broke and they tossed it out of the window. Were they driving at the time? Perhaps a stakeout by the police or a private eye? Who brushes their teeth while in a car? I will never know. I do know that every day I would see this toothbrush lying at the side of the road. That isn’t odd, the odd part is that it would move up and down the street and after a few months it would move onto another street. Yeah, I know, weird! Winter came and I didn’t see the toothbrush for several months, but come the springtime it reappeared on a different street. I was sure that when the street cleaners came by it would be gone for good. It turned up a couple of days later. You know, this might have unnerved me except for the fact that even though I couldn’t get rid of it, no matter what, it is really just a broken toothbrush. What could it do to me? To this day I keep my eyes to the gutter because I know it will show up again…
There is this colour that keeps cropping up in my life as well. It looks sort of like if someone mixed yellowy, orange diarrea, brown paint and chocolate. I like brown. Louise likes to let me have my way sometimes and we select brown together. Not a dark brown, but a nice light and airy brown that doesn’t look like yellowy, orange diarrea, brown paint and chocolate at all. I would guess that over the years we have bought ten or more gallons of this colour. We end up giving it to the fire station to dispose of. I try to stay away from fire stations because I have this feeling that they don’t get rid of all of the paint, but use some to spruce up the games room or God forbid the kitchen.
So, if you ever meet a fireman by the name of Ken that has horrible teeth, then I guess you know who to blame.
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