On August 24th, I posted an entry which I entitled "Six-car pile-up..."
I was not aware, as I was writing that entry, that there had been an eight-car pile-up on Interstate-5, which killed three people. Probably happened AS I was writing. Fuck.
I entitled it "six-car pile-up" because of the line: "Y'all better be DAMNED glad I'm a writer and not a truck driver, or, this week alone, I think I would have caused a six-car pile-up."
I didn't mean ANYTHING else by it.
Somebody emailed me -- somebody whose email address I don't recognize, and who didn't leave a name, and who just HAPPENED to be reading Olympia's newspaper's headlines -- to send me the story. I can't figure out if they're inferring that I'm somehow responsible, or if this was just some offhand comment. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. I don't think I'm going to reply back.
This sort of synchronicity always bums me out.
(Doesn't this happen to other people too? Wasn't ANYBODY else out there talking about how, despite the fact that they hadn't heard an Alice in Chains song in years, they loved the lead singer's voice, at the very moment he happened to die of a drug overdose? Wasn't ANYBODY else JOKINGLY discussing starting a celebrity death-poll, and putting all their money on a not-so-popular-anymore R&B girl-band when the chick from TLC bit it? Was NOBODY BUT ME having a Stanley Kubrick marathon the night he died? Wasn't anybody else supposed to be born on the day Mt. Saint Helen's erupted? Didn't anybody else write a satire about Dale Earnhardt and NASCAR racing, a week before the first race of the year, in which D.E. bought the proverbial farm?)
(This SO isn't funny...)
~Helena Thomas*