Cosmic Particles

When I was in college I came up with the phrase ‘cosmic particles’ to explain things that happened by eerie coincidence. Anything that happened by chance but needed a better-than-chance explanation – that’s when I used ‘cosmic particles’.

Well this weekend there was a doozy of an example of cosmic particles.

I was in Texas for a flying visit with my family. My sister brought her whole crew to my dad’s place north of Dallas and my cousin and I were up there too. More cousins came up the next day. So at the end of the day we’re standing around, saying goodbye to one set of cousins, when Kelsey and I start looking at each other’s feet. (We’re girls. We like shoes. We look at feet.)

I narrowed my eyes suspiciously and said, “What nail polish are you wearing on your toes?”

She said, “Bogota Blackberry.”

I whipped off my shoe, held out my toes and yelled, “BOGOTA BLACKBERRY!”

We both started jumping around and making the big eyes at each other. We were both – BY COINCIDENCE – wearing cute and comfy bright orange shoes (very different styles though) and we were both wearing OPI Bogota Blackberry toenail polish.

Completely. Unplanned. Eerie. Coincidence.

Are you as bowled over as we were?

Yup. That’s cosmic particles.*

*For those of you who are left singularly unimpressed by the power of cosmic particles (because you’re probably lacking some fundamental cosmic characteristic but that’s okay, I’m sure you’re still a lovely person), you should understand – that too is cosmic particles. So there you go.