Yet another tragic tale: Clinton Police Officer Christopher Ryan Morton, responding to a 911 call with other officers, was shot and killed when he and the others went to the “wrong” house. Inside the house James Waters shot at all three, killing Morton and wounding the other two. Responding, a SWAT team found the shooter dead and also charged Tammy Widger with possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver. A dispatcher had sent the police to the wrong address. But was it really a “wrong” address? Just by coincidence, the police found themselves at the scene of criminal drug activity and face-to-face with someone who obviously thought shooting police was his only option.
But with seven billion people at all levels of ethical and moral behavior, shouldn’t we expect that some of us will encounter one such circumstance? Car wrecks occur not because there is a single car on all the roads, but because there are a couple hundred million vehicles passing on the same roads that are also subject to adverse driving conditions and inattentive or reckless drivers. Not to diminish the terrible tragedy of the officer’s death, but here’s a little personal example of another kind of coincidence, one with less serious consequences.
I was talking to a friend of mine some ten years after our high school days, when I asked whether or not he had seen Tony C. Why that name popped into my head, I’ll never know. “Whatever happened to him?” I asked. “I haven’t seen him since we left school and went off to college.”
He said, “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him either, but that makes sense since I went away to school and then spent the last six years avoiding MIGs in the skies of Vietnam and Cambodia.”
Later that night, my friend called me and said, “Guess whom I ran into late this afternoon.”
“I don’t know.”
“Tony C.”
“Really? And I just mentioned him.”
“I mean I really ran into him. We had a fender-bender in the mall parking lot. I literally did ‘run’ into him.”
Tragic and comic coincidences abound in a world filled with so many people. There’s only so much space on the surface of the planet, and much of that is water—but then the shipwrecks of the Andrea Doria and the Titanic tell us that even on that surface coincidences abound. We are living on the Planet of Coincidences and Chance Meetings. There are so many of them that we err if we ascribe to them some special meaning or fatalism. The Universe didn’t conspire to cause a brave officer’s death or two friends’ accident. The reality is that more coincidences are coming our way: Being on vacation when a tsunami hits; choosing to build a house on the side of long dormant volcano that later erupts, skiing when an avalanche occurs, living on Earth when a passing asteroid occupies the same space as the planet, having a dispatcher send you to a crime scene that was not the crime scene you were supposed to visit, and you can name a gajillion other such coincidental meetings with both grave and not-so-grave consequences.
We can do our best to anticipate circumstances that might turn ugly, but we should all be forewarned that we can’t avoid all such circumstances, from minor fender-benders with long lost acquaintances to tragic killings by desperate criminals. We live on a finite, dynamic planet that just by coincidence throws people and processes together somewhat randomly simply because of the sheer numbers of people and processes that can interact.
Still, anticipation is our best defense. So, once again I remind you: What you anticipate is rarely a problem. (And now I wonder whether or not I shouldn’t add as a qualifier: “but not always”)
But with seven billion people at all levels of ethical and moral behavior, shouldn’t we expect that some of us will encounter one such circumstance? Car wrecks occur not because there is a single car on all the roads, but because there are a couple hundred million vehicles passing on the same roads that are also subject to adverse driving conditions and inattentive or reckless drivers. Not to diminish the terrible tragedy of the officer’s death, but here’s a little personal example of another kind of coincidence, one with less serious consequences.
I was talking to a friend of mine some ten years after our high school days, when I asked whether or not he had seen Tony C. Why that name popped into my head, I’ll never know. “Whatever happened to him?” I asked. “I haven’t seen him since we left school and went off to college.”
He said, “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him either, but that makes sense since I went away to school and then spent the last six years avoiding MIGs in the skies of Vietnam and Cambodia.”
Later that night, my friend called me and said, “Guess whom I ran into late this afternoon.”
“I don’t know.”
“Tony C.”
“Really? And I just mentioned him.”
“I mean I really ran into him. We had a fender-bender in the mall parking lot. I literally did ‘run’ into him.”
Tragic and comic coincidences abound in a world filled with so many people. There’s only so much space on the surface of the planet, and much of that is water—but then the shipwrecks of the Andrea Doria and the Titanic tell us that even on that surface coincidences abound. We are living on the Planet of Coincidences and Chance Meetings. There are so many of them that we err if we ascribe to them some special meaning or fatalism. The Universe didn’t conspire to cause a brave officer’s death or two friends’ accident. The reality is that more coincidences are coming our way: Being on vacation when a tsunami hits; choosing to build a house on the side of long dormant volcano that later erupts, skiing when an avalanche occurs, living on Earth when a passing asteroid occupies the same space as the planet, having a dispatcher send you to a crime scene that was not the crime scene you were supposed to visit, and you can name a gajillion other such coincidental meetings with both grave and not-so-grave consequences.
We can do our best to anticipate circumstances that might turn ugly, but we should all be forewarned that we can’t avoid all such circumstances, from minor fender-benders with long lost acquaintances to tragic killings by desperate criminals. We live on a finite, dynamic planet that just by coincidence throws people and processes together somewhat randomly simply because of the sheer numbers of people and processes that can interact.
Still, anticipation is our best defense. So, once again I remind you: What you anticipate is rarely a problem. (And now I wonder whether or not I shouldn’t add as a qualifier: “but not always”)
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