Coincidence – Food for Paranoia, Contentment, and Abandonment

We returned from a trip to the country side with a new puppy, only to find our older dog foaming at the mouth.  Since the older dog acted fine when we left the day before and she behaved, except for the excessive foam, I attributed the foamy anomaly to over excitement because of the new puppy.  The facts of the days ahead proved me wrong.  Two simultaneous events do not a correlation make.  Simple solutions to disturbing symptoms should first lead one to serious consideration and not quick dismissal.  So it goes with a dog foaming at the mouth upon the return from a trip away from the animal.  The decision to “blow it off” could have been tragic.

I drove away from the Ford dealership after getting service and my tire low pressure warning light came on.  Here we go again, bad service by a lazy technician, or worse, intentional tampering in order to get a stingy customer (me) to pay for additional service.  I checked the tires and they seemed fine. I felt pretty sure.  After a service station checked them I thought it almost positive.  When the light suddenly went off by itself I suspected a ploy by Ford.  Then, later on a trip, it came on again and I ignored it.  I would not let this warning taking anymore of my life time away.  I would have the gauge looked at when I got back from my trip.  A trip that would require me to drip many miles at high speed and (as I would discover) at great risk.  When you don’t trust someone (the Ford oil change specialist) you create your own reality and possible demise.

After the flood, I asked my farmer friends to take my surviving chickens to help me out and he never responded, never helped, never showed up.  I felt like my situation deserved more attention than any other priority.  The urgency of getting stranded animals back in a safe environment should have meant something to someone who understood the criticality of chickens unprotected in a predatory world.  But nobody came.  Nobody seemed to care.  Nobody remembered the I helped them when they were in need.  Maybe it’s time to get some new friends.  When you’re in the crisis of your lifetime and feel abandoned, never believe you are in more pain than the person next to you.  Don’t abandon those who seem to be abandoning you.

I complained about certain members of a weekly discussion group to a confidant and later found those who I complained about not speaking to me.  After about a month, after shunning the ones who upset me, I noticed they were shunning me.  Even the bar maid at the pub where we met seemed cool towards me.  I decided to stop attending.  If this had become an event where no one cared for its purpose and only showed up to engage in simple socializing with a narrow clique of friends, then it held no value for me.  This guy made a joke of it.  That guy made a joke of me.  The other gal ignored the importance of our gathering.  Pub Theology turned into something mundane and not worth my time.

Sometimes coincidence leads to unwarranted ease.  Other times coincidence incites suspicion and contempt.  Occasionally coincidence causes long and deep relationships to dissolve in short order for shallow reasons.  Too often coincidence makes enemies where none exist.  The events described are examples of such.  Coincidences brought about logical but inaccurate conclusions which caused undue calm, stress, paranoia, and loss.

The presence of the new puppy excited my old puppy, but not that excited.  In the next two days, the slobbering dog got worse…slobbering that is.  She remained the same happy fun neurotic dog we loved but she drooled.  What started on a Sunday, became worse on Monday.  By Tuesday, the left side of her face grew enlarged and drooped.  I felt a gland under her lower jaw the size of a tennis ball.  Oh, yeah, Houston, we have a problem.  I read about it on the internet.  I described it to the receptionist at my dog’s Vet.  I related it to the Vet who owns the bar that we meet for discussion.  DO SOMETHING!  Wednesday young Syndee looked better.  Thursday the lump disappeared.  Hallelujah!   Too much calm in the face of too little information could have been the end of a dog.  How bad do I feel now?

After the trip home on Saturday in the Ford with the low pressure warning light on, I continued to drive around.  But Thursday, since I visited the area, I stopped at the tire dealer where I bought the tires and discovered there existed a legitimate problem.  Low pressure in the rear passenger tire.  A drywall screw, laying in the drive since the summer flood repairs to the house, made it leak – slow.  With that repair making me safe, I drove on.  To ignore a warning because of coincidence which includes paranoia is to invite disaster.  This time calm caused an indirect product of paranoia about someone I didn’t trust.  The distrusted could not be blamed for the tragedy that my wife, my new puppy and myself could have suffered.  Warning are there to be looked at and resolved.  Not to be relegated to a priority less than the paranoia that bought them on.

The coincidence of one person’s worst tragedy meeting head on another person’s worst nightmare is rare but not impossible.  When my flood brought crisis to my flock, a good will gesture brought my friend’s flock close to demise.  He accepted new chickens from a stranger for free and the free birds were diseased.  His chickens started to die.  The loss made him determined not to get any more off site birds.  My flood feathers counted in that number.

The meeting group members I complained about are not holding a grudge and neither is the wait staff.  My fear of retaliation for my strong comments brought on paranoia and my talking to someone I trust alleviated my fear and paranoia.  I’m back at it with a different attitude.