A Funny Little Convergence

   The past week and a half has been a little strange--just odd little things happening at strange times.
   I turned sixty just recently and those milestone birthdays tend to make you think back on things in your life just a touch. My boss of over thirty-one years just announced recently that he was retiring. I am in no position to retire myself but his announcement, as you might imagine, has led me to look back at my working life as well. Listening to him talk about his retirement plans has also made me just a little wistful as to what my plans for the future might be.
   Then, as I'm standing in a Tim Horton's with one of the people I support this past week, the lady ahead of me recognizes my voice, turns around and it is Irene, one of the Alice Saddy staff who worked there back when I first started. I hadn't run into her in probably eight or nine years. She, as well, is just in the middle of preparing for retirement and was amazed that I still worked at Alice. We chatted briefly and then went our separate ways. This, of course, gives me pause for even more reflection on my life.

"The Beatles Are Back" into my little convergence...

   The day after that, I get the chance opportunity to attend a performance at Budweiser Gardens with Doralyn. For the past few years, she and a friend have been purchasing a subscription to "Broadway in London", a series of musical performances put on at the Gardens. That particular night, Doralyn's friend was unable to attend and I became the fortunate recipient of her ticket. The performance we saw was by a group called "Rain",  a Beatles tribute band. I was happy enough to go but was somewhat prepared for this show to possibly be mildly lame--honestly, how do you do justice to the Beatles? Well, I was blown away. They looked like the Beatles (from a distance) and, more importantly, they sounded like the Beatles. Part of the multi-media presentation involved film clips from the early years of rock 'n' roll, leading up to the arrival of the Beatles. Beyond that, there were also film clips from Beatles T.V. and concert appearances. Some of what I saw was stuff I'd seen the first time around, particularly the T.V. footage. I was wowed, even more so than concerts generally make me.
   It struck me as I sat there in Budweiser Gardens, that this, then, was yet another convergence of my past with my present.

12 hours a day, six days a week...

   Earlier on this week, a picture of the merry-go-round at Springbank Park showed up on Facebook. It was a picture taken many years ago when the merry-go-round was in its original location, near the river bank. I spent the summer of '72 running that merry-go-round and its sudden appearance on Facebook struck me as yet another criss-crossing of time and memory. Doralyn was five years old that summer and tells me that she used to ride the merry-go-round all the time, if you want to count that as a convergence.
   Now that I think of it, the week before last, I was with another person I support at the Bay in White Oaks Mall and we were buying something in the menswear department. We were served by a gentleman named Ken, at least that's what his name tag said. Ken doesn't know it, but he and I go back about 40 years. Back in '70 or '71 my sort-of girlfriend at the time called me up, terribly excited. She'd just been to the Simpsons store downtown and had seen a salesclerk who looked just like Art Garfunkel, of Simon and Garfunkel fame. At the time, she and I were huge fans of Simon and Garfunkel and she just had to take me downtown to show him to me. We made it downtown and had to lurk around the menswear department until this guy made an appearance (I think I pretended I was shopping for something) and when he finally showed up I had to admit that he did look quite a bit like Art Garfunkel. Well, that was Ken and Ken still works in the men's department, more than forty years later and, in fact, served us two weeks ago! I guess that counts as a bit of a convergence, although, frankly, I wasn't even thinking about that chance meeting when I sat down to write this blog post and I suppose the fact that Ken was my Dad's name and Ken is the name of my aforementioned boss who's retiring seems almost irrelevant.
   I suppose all of the above could simply be coincidental. I can't help but think, though, of all those old stories about ancient prophecies which predicted that, on a certain convergence of events, monumental things would happen in the universe.
   I'm not sure if I'm prepared for monumental things to happen in my life and I don't know if any of these intersecting occurrences are the slightest bit significant. I suspect they are all merely incidental chance.
  Unless, of course, they mean that soon someone will arrive in the world who is all-knowing and powerful and who can use their abilities to steer us all toward world peace. And that his name will be Ken...? Who knows?