Sometimes random events happen in our lives that seem to be insignificant. But there is often far more to coincidence than first meets the eye. And these mere coincidences can sometimes turn out to be highly significant and ultimately life changing events. In the summer of 2002 a random seating assignment on a Northwest Airlines flight from San Jose to Minneapolis, unbeknownst to the people involved, became the first in a series of coincidences that would change the life of one of them forever and would ultimately lead to a close and enduring friendship that would bloom and spread to touch the lives of others with kindness and joy and humor.
In July of 2002 a crowded Northwest jet sat on the tarmac of the San Jose, CA airport. Only a few seats remained as I boarded with my husband Gene. We had been on a two week vacation to the Bay Area in an attempt to try and rebuild a crumbling marriage and were now headed home to Michigan. Since the flight had been oversold, we were unable to sit together for the 4 hour flight to Minneapolis. As I looked at my boarding pass, I saw that I had gotten the dreaded center seat somewhere in the middle of the plane while Gene got a seat 5 rows further back. As I approached my seat, I noticed that the window seat was already occupied by a guy in his thirties, wearing a Virginia Tech hat and a smiley t-shirt with part of the smiley missing. It’s funny how I remember small details like that, since the flight seemed so routine and ordinary. I put my carry-on into the overhead bin, sat down with a quick smile at the “smiley guy” and buckled up. The aisle seat was soon occupied by a very quiet woman about whom I remember very little. And shortly thereafter, we took off.
I remember that soon after takeoff, the “smiley guy” began to take things out of his backpack. He started with a bulky notebook jammed with loose papers and pages of scribbled notes. There was a sense of energy and restlessness about the “smiley guy” and I noticed that he quickly jumped from one activity to another. But what really got my attention was when he pulled out a box of crayons and began coloring a picture of “Hello Kitty”. I was intrigued and just couldn’t help myself, so I smiled and asked him, “What are you doing?” He smiled right back and said that he was coloring a picture for his sister and was going to mail it to her as a silly joke since she loved Hello Kitty. I began to laugh and suggested that maybe he should give Hello Kitty some scars or color her in an unusual way just to add to the silliness of the pictures. “Smiley guy” quickly did so, laughing as he colored away.
Before long, he pulled out several white “barf bags” and began coloring silly faces onto them Again I just laughed and asked, “What are you doing?” “Smiley guy” told me he was making hand puppets out of the barf bags and was going to send them to one of his brothers. He said that he often made barf bag hand puppets to entertain children who might be seated next to him on flights. The barf bag puppets completely broke the ice between us and we quickly got into a conversation. I soon found out that “smiley guy’s” name was Hans, that he worked as a computer engineer at a software company in the South Bay and that he was headed to a friend’s wedding on the east coast. Minneapolis was just a hub to connect to other flights for us both. I told Hans that my name was Marianne and that I worked as a teacher in Michigan and was on my way home from vacation.
I seems as if the conversation after that continued nonstop. The woman in the aisle seat might just as well have not even been there. I found out about Hans’ volunteer work with kids at Muscular Dystrophy Camp in Virginia. He would take a few weeks of vacation time each year and fly back to Virginia to work as the entertainment director of MDA Camp as he had done since his college years. Hans learned that I had a son in college who was majoring in computer science. As soon as Hans heard that, he handed me his business card and suggested that my son e-mail him about a potential summer internship at his company. I also found out about a joint venture between Hans and his brother Eric. They had started a website, chickentales.com to promote volunteerism and to post the stories of people they had encountered and about experiences from their travels. Looking at Hans’ business card, there was the reference to chickentales.com. So I tucked the business card away in my purse with a mental note to take a look at the site when I got home.
The flight continued but it seemed as if we got to Minneapolis in record time. Chatting and laughing all the way made the 4 hour flight seem very short. But it seemed to be one of those joyful and rare moments when you meet someone and something just seems to “click”; where the conversation is easy and flows naturally; where there’s an ease and an openness and a shared humor, a sense of being kindred spirits and a feeling of being on the same wavelength. I don’t remember saying goodbye, but we must have parted company in Minneapolis to catch our respective connections to other parts of the country. I just remember boarding the plane to Detroit with a big smile on my face and with a rubber chicken key chain from Hans in my purse.
When I got home, I passed the internship and contact information on to my son but I didn’t think too much more about Hans, the “smiley guy” until one day in August when I got an e-mail from him. Apparently my son had e-mailed about the internship and Hans had passed it along to someone at his company. Meanwhile I had begun to go into school to work to prepare for the upcoming school year. The school where I taught was a private school in a wealthy northern suburb of Detroit. A number of our students’ dads were members of the Detroit Red Wings hockey team. The Detroit Red Wings had just won the prestigious Stanley Cup, awarded to the hockey team with the most wins in a long series of championship playoffs. When school started in September, the Red Wing dads arranged for the Stanley Cup to be brought to our school as “show and tell”. I remember that we had a huge school assembly. The Stanley Cup arrived in a large trunk with a “cup keeper”, a man who works for the NHL whose job it is to keep the cup safe and in sight at all times. The preschool class of one of the player’s daughter had made a giant purple papier mache octopus which had hung in the Wings’ dressing room for good luck during the play offs. Well, now here the cup was at our school in celebration.
There were lots of opportunities for taking pictures, so I took tons of photos and e-mailed some of them on to Hans. I quickly got an excited reply. “Holy cow! Opportunity Knocks!” or more accurately “Holy Fowl! Opportunity Clucks!” Hans wrote that he had a “wacky request”. He wanted to know if I could send him a rubber chicken autographed by the Detroit Red Wings. The final destination for this chicken would be the home of a former MDA camper, Justin Sokolowski whom Hans had known for years. Justin has a rare form of muscular dystrophy called Werdnig-Hoffman’s disease which pretty much confined him to bed and to a series of hookups to assorted tubes and machines. But it turns out that Justin was a HUGE sports fan, and Hans felt that a rubber chicken autographed by the Stanley Cup winning Detroit Red Wings would be a story worthy of the chickentales website. The chicken would certainly put a big smile on Justin’s face and would be a wonderful addition to Justin’s collection of sports memorabilia. So I e-mailed Hans back saying I would see what I could do.
As luck would have it, my school had a “Welcome Back” ice cream social that weekend. Darren McCarty, one of the Red Wings dads was at the event with his family. His daughter’s classroom teacher, Kathleen was also at the event so I approached her about the possibility of getting the rubber chicken autographed. It turned out that Darren was glad to do it and since Red Wings training camp was about to start, there was a chance that we could get autographs of the entire team. And Kathleen’s brother was a sports medicine physician who would be accompanying the team to training camp. He would be our rubber chicken “keeper” in charge of getting autographs and of keeping the autographed rubber chicken healthy and safe.
So I went to a local mall, bought a high-quality rubber chicken and a small pair of Detroit Red Wings baby socks to put on the chicken’s feet. Now it would be an “official” Detroit Red Wings chicken. As I took the chicken to school the next Monday, I thought, “Why not get into the spirit of things and get really crazy with this?” So I talked our school nurse, Denise, into posing for a series of pictures showing the rubber chicken being “born”, checking it’s “heartbeat” with her stethescope and then presenting the rubber chicken to “Mother Hen” Kathleen. I sent the pictures off to Hans who laughed his butt off and then made us official members of the “Rubber Chicken Social Club”. Meanwhile the rubber chicken traveled north with Kathleen’s brother, to the northern part of Michigan to join the Red Wings at training camp.
Some time passed and I got an e-mail from Hans asking about what was going on with the rubber chicken. I learned from Kathleen that while he was at training camp, her brother learned that his best friend had died. So the brother and the rubber chicken left training camp to return to the Detroit area. The rubber chicken ended up at the home of one of the other Red Wings, Kris Draper. And Kris’s wife, Julie arranged to get several autographs for the chicken. So while we couldn’t deliver all of the autographs, Justin’s chicken now at least had a few autographs for Justin to enjoy.
As soon as I got the chicken back, I boxed it up and sent it across that great big wide road to Hans’ house in California. Hans made a trip to Florida to visit Justin and the chicken now lives proudly in Justin’s bedroom, surrounded by tons of other sports memorabilia that Justin enjoys so much.
And about the power of coincidence … that chance seating assignment on an airplane, … my son did get the summer internship and was even hired to be a full time computer engineer by Hans’ company once he graduated from college. And sadly my marriage did end and I relocated to the Bay Area to become a teacher in one of the schools in the area. (There’s an entirely different story there, all about another powerful series of coincidences to be told in a different chickentale). And certainly the friendship with Hans has grown to be close and rich and filled with great mutual admiration, with humor and joy and laughter and has even blossomed to include Hans’ brother Eric (yet another chickentale filled of the power of coincidence). So somewhere in central Florida, in a bright, cheerful room of a young man. who has maintained a cheerful optimism and positive energy despite his physical limitations, sits a rubber chicken. And that rubber chicken was born of the positive creative energies of many people brought together by a single but powerful and far reaching coincidence. |
