Pop Goes the Weasel
I think we’ve all experienced times when people seem to randomly act in sync. In fact, it’s so common we try to make sense of it by blaming the stars or— “Oh my gosh! Is everyone on the road insane today??!!!” ---or the full moon or something. You’d think if the stars were going to align to influence us lowly humans, they’d at least align toward some important outcome. But this doesn’t seem to be the case.
At work for example, I meet with all kinds of students. Quite often I have days where I would swear the students got together beforehand to make plans to mess with my mind. I’ve had days where every student mentions how much they love history and days where everybody hates history. One day everyone showed me pictures of their new dog (that was fun), and a day where everyone had been to Australia, I even had one day where all of my appointments happened to be named Jasmine and another where everyone I met wanted to work on a cruise ship.
But the weirdest case of synchronicity I’ve experienced, happened at home one random Saturday, when I woke up and realized that the junk shelves in the garage could not be tolerated for one more minute, even though it had been years since I’d noticed them at all. As my poor husband knows, the impulse for me to clean anything is very rare. But this strange urge would not be denied. I cleaned like a woman possessed (which I probably was, I’m just not sure by what). Among all the old tools and mystery chargers I found a nice little bag. And in the bag were…drum roll, you’ll never guess…two real weasel heads.
Mercifully, these were not things the cat had brought in. My mother must have been the culprit here. She was one of the few furriers in Utah. Completely politically incorrect I know, but living in East Germany during WWII she didn’t have any choice of profession and was lucky to have been able to learn a trade at all, so no judging! She always had scraps of real animal pelts around, so among other useless skills, I can tell if a fur coat is mink, beaver, otter, rabbit, lynx, chinchilla etc. Anyway, back in the day, some women accessorized their fancy dresses with fur capes which still had the feet and heads of the animals attached (don’t ask, I’ve never understood). It’s just possible that if I happened to be around while Mom was puttering in her sewing room and if she happened to come across a weasel head, she may have offered it to me. But since I would have emphatically said “NO” it still doesn’t explain why I had two.
It’s a mystery, but here’s the weird part; on that same Saturday, the same rare cleaning spirit also seized my daughter’s brain. I’d been nagging her for ages to clear out some of the stuff in her room. Again, the urge was so strong that she was forced to drop all her plans and drive up from Salt Lake to tackle the job. I continued working in the garage, while she went crazy cleaning downstairs. This left my husband Dave, to wonder just what kind of mushrooms we’d both had for breakfast? After a few hours Catherine yelled up the stairs, “Hey Mom! Look what I found! What are these?” holding, you guessed it, another two weasel heads.
What in the world? Even for my house, the odds of coming across four weasel heads in one day are extremely slim. What would fate, the universe or God have me learn from this? I don’t know, but if it’s to encourage me to clean other parts of the house the universe has failed. I don’t want to know what else might be around.
At work for example, I meet with all kinds of students. Quite often I have days where I would swear the students got together beforehand to make plans to mess with my mind. I’ve had days where every student mentions how much they love history and days where everybody hates history. One day everyone showed me pictures of their new dog (that was fun), and a day where everyone had been to Australia, I even had one day where all of my appointments happened to be named Jasmine and another where everyone I met wanted to work on a cruise ship.
But the weirdest case of synchronicity I’ve experienced, happened at home one random Saturday, when I woke up and realized that the junk shelves in the garage could not be tolerated for one more minute, even though it had been years since I’d noticed them at all. As my poor husband knows, the impulse for me to clean anything is very rare. But this strange urge would not be denied. I cleaned like a woman possessed (which I probably was, I’m just not sure by what). Among all the old tools and mystery chargers I found a nice little bag. And in the bag were…drum roll, you’ll never guess…two real weasel heads.
Mercifully, these were not things the cat had brought in. My mother must have been the culprit here. She was one of the few furriers in Utah. Completely politically incorrect I know, but living in East Germany during WWII she didn’t have any choice of profession and was lucky to have been able to learn a trade at all, so no judging! She always had scraps of real animal pelts around, so among other useless skills, I can tell if a fur coat is mink, beaver, otter, rabbit, lynx, chinchilla etc. Anyway, back in the day, some women accessorized their fancy dresses with fur capes which still had the feet and heads of the animals attached (don’t ask, I’ve never understood). It’s just possible that if I happened to be around while Mom was puttering in her sewing room and if she happened to come across a weasel head, she may have offered it to me. But since I would have emphatically said “NO” it still doesn’t explain why I had two.
It’s a mystery, but here’s the weird part; on that same Saturday, the same rare cleaning spirit also seized my daughter’s brain. I’d been nagging her for ages to clear out some of the stuff in her room. Again, the urge was so strong that she was forced to drop all her plans and drive up from Salt Lake to tackle the job. I continued working in the garage, while she went crazy cleaning downstairs. This left my husband Dave, to wonder just what kind of mushrooms we’d both had for breakfast? After a few hours Catherine yelled up the stairs, “Hey Mom! Look what I found! What are these?” holding, you guessed it, another two weasel heads.
What in the world? Even for my house, the odds of coming across four weasel heads in one day are extremely slim. What would fate, the universe or God have me learn from this? I don’t know, but if it’s to encourage me to clean other parts of the house the universe has failed. I don’t want to know what else might be around.