so there was this episode of TNG where the enterprise was caught in this weird time loop. they would get to this point where they had to decide whether to take data’s advice or riker’s advice on how to deal with some wacky rupture in the space time continuum, and they kept taking data’s advice, and he was wrong, so they blew up.
oops.
this was only the 3rd or 4th season, though, so the enterprise couldn’t Really blow up, or at least not with everyone on board, so the universe responded by triggering the time loop to give them another chance, and the episode was like groundhog day, with them just doing the same stuff over and over again, except, unlike bill murray, they didn’t get to remember what was going on.
the memory loss wasn’t perfect though, and pretty soon they start getting this creepy dejavu feeling. the second or third time through data figures it out right at the last minute, but he doesn’t have time to save them. instead, he decides to encode a simple message into the time loop (what a convenient feature!), and he chooses the number 3.
the effect of this is that the next time through, in addition to the creepy dejavu feeling, there are all these weird 3s popping up everywhere, which freaks them out. like they are playing poker and the deck is loaded with threes, which is not the best strategy if someone is going to stack the deck, so they are puzzled.
there are lots of other threes, too, but i forget them, and you don’t care.
anyway, all the threes do their job of getting data’s attention, and when they get to the final moment of decision all the pieces fall in place and he looks up at riker and sees the three little rank insignia doohickeys on his collar, and this inspires him to tell the captain to listen to riker after all, and it works, and they go free.
yay team.
this episode stuck in my head far more securely than most, which is probably already evident given the fact that i just recounted the whole plot, which i cannot usually do without repeated viewings over a prolonged period of time.
i think that it was retained because i have a fondness for stringing together seemingly unrelated incidents into fun stories, so the idea that subconscious messages could be encoded in my surroundings was a kick in the pants.
that said, i’m telling you all of this today, gentle readers, because i feel that i am having a higher than statistically probable number of encounters with the number 2.
or perhaps the number 222.
it’s hard to tell see, because one of them is just the other one, but more times…
anyway, the first time this caught my attention was a few days ago when i found some change in an unlikely place. i counted it and found that it was two pound coins, two ten pence, and two pennies – £2.22. i noted to myself that this was funny, like those times when your total at the grocery store happens to be $12.34, and you think “man, if i was going to try to do that, it would take me all freaking day.”
do you think things like that?
anyway, i would have forgotten about it except that i had at least three more encounters in the next couple of days: i looked at my clock right when something was happening and it was 2:22, i picked up a piece of paper that said something about february 22… things like that.
now, because i am aware that i like to make stories out of things like this, i am quite comfortable with the idea that i prime myself to notice these sorts of coincidences. not too long ago, actually, i was baffled by how often i seemed to look at the clock at 9:11, but david convinced me that i just didn’t notice when i looked at other times because i wasn’t thinking about it, and since 9:11 happened to be a time where i was likely to be awake both in the am and pm hours, i had a lot of chances to make more of the matter than was really warranted.
fair enough.
since then i’ve noticed that it really is true that i just start noticing things when i look for them, and not just with time. i learn a new word that i swear i haven’t heard before and then suddenly i hear it on the news and read it in the paper and the whole world feels like a sesame street episode for grownups – “today is brought to you by the number phi and the latin phrase ad hominem.”
rather than dismiss this, i choose to view it as a fun little game.
for instance, no amount of rationality made it any less hilarious, from my perspective, when karen actually innocently asked me what time it was once at bonnaroo, and i had to dig around in my pockets a bit to find my phone, and when i finally found it, lo and behold, it was 4:20.
that’s the kind of shit that makes my day.
so anyway, this 222 business is almost certainly just my brain finding things to do in kentallen, but i enjoy letting myself derive amusement from it anyway, and since i believe in the power of my brain to make actual meaning out of nonsense, i am still open to the possibility that i will have a revelation regarding the number 2 within the near future.
so consider yourself warned.
:)
now that the story is established, though, listen to this one:
this guy came in for lunch today and wanted to leave a tip on his credit card. this doesn’t happen very often, and that’s probably a good thing because, pardon my hci snootiness here, but the credit card machine is very poorly designed for the transaction. i won’t go into details, but it requires them to do math while peering at a small dimly lit screen and answering yes/no questions with buttons that are labeled “enter” and “a”, so most people get quite confused and require assistance.
the guy today did what most people do and figured out how much he wanted to leave total, skipping the mental math. the machine did not accomodate this, however, so he did a little finger hovering dance for a minute while he thought about it, and finally decided that it was safest to just stick with one button when it came to numbers, which, since he wanted to leave somewhere around £2, means that he left a tip of, wait for it… £2.22.
i was amused by this from a usability perspective, but it also made this whole story cross the line from “crazy thing you keep quiet and don’t tell other people” to “crazy thing you should consider blogging about later,” and just as i was starting to formulate the story in my mind, jackie microwaved something and got tired of waiting for it and stopped the timer in the middle, and when i glanced at it as i left the kitchen i saw that it was stopped on :22.
that’s just weird, yo.
;)
