Holy Triple Miracle Thursday!

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I am involved in miraculous incidents on a frequent basis. Whether or not I cause these miracles is something the hagiographers will certainly debate for many years after I shuffle off this mortal coil. But for now, I'm sure that we can all agree that I am blessed, sacred, and luminous.

Today was especially magical. I bore witness to three miracles in a matter of three hours. And the miracles ascended in magnitude and beatific brightness.

Miracle #1

A lovely young lady was presenting a lovely Rupi Kaur poem in Creative Writing class for our daily "Show and Tell."

I asked her how she had stumbled upon this and she told a quick story about how her friend recommended it to her, while they were writing a song for Biology class.

"A song for Biology class?" I said. "Like about the Golgi apparatus or something?"

"Yes," she said.

"Yes, you were writing a song about the Golgi apparatus?"

"Yes, about the Golgi apparatus."

Weird. A minor miracle. I could have said flagella. But I was just getting started.

Miracle #2

Moments later, after the class commended me on my miraculous clairvoyance, I lost my shit. I was looking down at my computer monitor, and I noticed something. I started yelling.  I was joyous and shocked and angry all at once.

One of my students said it looked like I had seen a ghost. In essence, I had. The ghost of a long-dead lock.

A red and silver lock that had inexplicably disappeared months ago. A lock that was so lost I had given up looking for it. A lock that eluded a search party of twenty philosophy students. A lock that denied the laws of existence and perception.

The lock was in front of my face the entire time! Like the purloined letter. Just sitting there, under my computer monitor, looking like something vaguely electronic. It was too obvious too notice.

I ranted and raved to my class about mental blind spots and schema and schotoma and how hard it is to find the mustard in the fridge, even though it's right in front of your face. And most of these were new students, who did not have me when I lost the lock (there were a few kids remaining from that semester class-- and they really understood the context of my insanity . . . the rest of the kids must have thought I was delirious).

Once I had fully processed the miraculous recovery of the lock-- and my cognition-- then I went forth and spread the good word throughout the school. I told teachers and I told students. The event was blessed.

But I spaketh to soon.

Miracle #3

Two periods after I found the lock, a girl from the previous semester ran up to me in the hall. A girl who had witnessed the loss of the lock, and took part in the search for the lock.

"Did you see the lock!"

"Yes!" I said, but just as I was about to explain the miracle, Tyra confounded it.

"I found it down the hall by the stairs. I found it!"

"YOU put it on my computer?"

"Yup."

"Tyra! Why didn't you leave a note? I almost lost my mind. I thought I had gone crazy-- that the lock was sitting there in front of my face for two months. My class thinks I'm insane! I thought I was insane! When you find a lost lock, you leave a note!"

Tyra apologized for neglecting to leave a note (she didn't have time) and once I recovered my wits, I thanked her profusely for finding the lock.

This is where she found it:

At the bottom of the stairs, a good fifteen yards from my classroom door. What kind of crazy miraculous adventures did that lock have for the past two months? More importantly: why have I been chosen to witness and testify to so many myriad miracles?

This event has also provided tomorrow's Creative Writing lesson: describe the epic journey of this lock. Alexander Pope would dig the pun. As would the deepwater monster of Scotland.

Pool Anxiety?

My friend and colleague Kevin recently exhibited what I believe is a new mental disorder-- and not only did I identify this disorder, but I also figured out how to cure it; I'm calling the malady "pool anxiety" but the neurosis does not center around swimming in pools, it is an obsession with pool maintenance, so much maintenance that someone suffering from "pool anxiety" doesn't even find time to swim in his pool, because he is so consumed with maintaining the water clarity, the algal blooms, the filter system, and the chemical constituency and Ph of the water-- Kevin even claims that he possesses a strange pool precognition, a watery clairvoyance . . . he will point out a "cloudy" section of water to his wife, and she won't see anything wrong with the water, but then the next day that particular patch of water will be obviously cloudy, even to a layman . . . so he is somehow hyper-sensitive to these events; I am hoping my new disorder (which actually plagues people other than Kevin, he opened the floodgates on this topic) will make it into the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) someday, along with my simple cure: fill in your pool and join a swim club (I don't think the college kids who test the water chemistry at my pool have any anxiety at all).

Nostradavus (If You Are A Member of My Wife's Book Club, Do Not Read This!)

Using my magnificent powers of clairvoyance and divination, I am going to make a stunningly useless prediction: in the near future, my wife's book club will select Cheryl Strayed's memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail as their book of the month . . . Karen Long called it a "tougher, more feral" version of Eat, Pray Love and it's already got a long request queue at the library . . . I am planning on reading this book-- if I ever finish Cryptonomicon-- but I will in no way recommend it to any members of her book club (and hopefully they won't read this sentence) so that we can see if my prophetic acumen is accurate.

My Son Wisely Keeps His Mouth Shut

My six year old son Alex expressed his skepticism over the clairvoyance of Punxsutawny Phil, and he also expressed his disdain for his first grade classmates who believed in Phil's meteorological predictions, but he told me that he didn't say anything derogatory to those classmates about their irrational beliefs . . . and I told him that was a wise decision.

Some Predictions

My clairvoyance is well documented, so pay close attention to my Predictions for 2011: jeans will get even tighter, the accordion will NOT make a comeback,  the debate over how much a corporate entity can tranche a synthetic collateral debt obligation will bore people, Americans will forget about soccer until the next world cup, Leonardo DiCaprio will not make a screwball comedy, many people will go on diets, and I will eat more tacos.

Bonus: Daryl Bem Owes My Fraternity A Citation!

If you are interested in scientific studies on clairvoyance and a stunning revelation on the true origins of the "genius" Daryl Bem's supposedly seminal paranormal experimentation, head over to my post at Gheorghe: The Blog.