Behind the Scenes

One of the best things about those experiences commonly referred to as "coincidences" is that they never get old - I continue to marvel at each one that occurs.  My husband and I were out on a date in the city a couple of nights ago.  After parking the car, we strolled over to an Indian restaurant for dinner, then checked out a few shops before walking over to the community theatre to take in a local playwright's show.  Upon opening the program I realized that I had lost my favourite pair of reading glasses, purchased in Italy a few years ago.  Disappointed, I mentally retraced my steps and concluded that I had likely left them on the counter in a drugstore, located a few blocks away.  During intermission, my husband kindly offered to go back and look.  While waiting for him to return, I began chatting with a mother and her young daughter seated beside me ( who were incidentally in the seats assigned to my husband and me since they had not checked their tickets accurately, and we were sitting in theirs).  A few minutes into our conversation, I mentioned what my husband was doing.  The woman looked a little puzzled and asked, "Were they designer ones?"  "Yes, ....... why?" I asked.  "I found a pair lying on the sidewalk about a block away and placed them on the retaining wall by the Seniors Home," she replied.  What?  Really?  Still shaking my head, I hurried out into the rain, and sure enough, there they were, exactly where the woman had described leaving them.  I returned to the theatre astonished, and thanked the woman profusely.  Out of the one hundred and twenty patrons in attendance that night, this mother and daughter were the only two that I spoke to, outside of my husband.  I was still trying to process this "coincidence", when in a matter-of-fact tone, the twelve-year-old girl remarked, "Oh, these kinds of things happen to us all the time."  Indeed.  I smiled, then sat down to enjoy the second half of the play.