I've got $5 and a special request

Kim and I recently enjoyed an evening in a local pub with our friends Nick and Amanda. The football game was muted on the large television screens and two acoustic guitar players played popular covers in a far corner.

A few hours in - as the game played down to the meaningless 4^th quarter and the crowd dwindled to just the 4 of us and the guitar players– I paid more attention to the music. There was an empty tip jar in front of the duo and I tried to think of an appropriate request.

 “Driving in my car I would have 100 ideas – but put me here on the spot and I come up blank!”

Amanda and Kim laughed politely and each shrugged and offered a suggestion for appropriate song request. And the conversation moved on to other topics.

My Asperger tendency kicked in and an inappropriate sense of urgency had me distracted, mentally searching for a clever idea to pass along … then it hit me. The perfect song. A fun song that has very special, funny, and romantic history with Kim and me.

It was an obscure song that probably doesn’t get requested much – but I saw the guys were using iPads to view the chord charts and my song was a pretty simple 3-chord song with a straightforward strum pattern. Who knows … they might figure it out… I hope they do because Kim will be surprised at how romantic and creative I am tonight…

I borrowed a pen and paper and quickly (and secretly) wrote down three songs  – Amanda’s song – Hey There Delilah by the Plain White T’s, Kim’s song – Vineyard by Jackopierce, and my song.

Kim tried to sneak a peak at what I was writing down but I wouldn’t let her see because I wanted her to be surprised…

About ten years ago – during a bare-your-soul moment - I sheepishly shared with Kim that I had a favorite movie moment that made me tear up every time I saw it. It was a silly movie and a silly story with silly characters– but for some reason the final scene always gets to me. When I told her what it was - She burst out with a big belly laugh and said “Me too! I cry every time I see that scene!”. And the song has been part of our story ever since.

And now – with a little luck – these two hippy-looking musicians with their bushy beards and their iPads will come through for me…

I put down the pen and got ready to take my list, along with a $5 bill to the tip jar,  But before I could get out of my chair I heard  them strum the opening bars of  Adam Sandler’s “I Wanna Grow Old With You”… from the movie “The Wedding Singer”.

I looked around to see if someone was playing a joke. There was no one else around. How can this be? How did they know? I hadn’t said a word. I didn’t tell anyone that I was writing down song requests on the paper. There is no way that they could have read my scratches from across the room. Who plays that song in a pub for crying out loud?

But they were playing the song! My song. Our song. And when they finished I walked up and showed them what I had written down. They were stunned and confused- just like I was. They looked at each other for a second trying to understand what just happened … shrugged… and then started playing Amanda’s song.

I’m convinced there are wrinkles in the universe and we have the ability to skirt the edges and catch glimpses of things that violate the reality of our time and space.  I inherited from my mother a keen ability to see, feel, and understand things that I should not be able to. I have many, many stories that I could share.

One of our new hobbies in Park City is mountain biking and we ride a lot with Nick and Amanda. Riding our bikes on the steep switchback trails etched out of the hillsides – we can occasionally take a moment to look to the side and sometimes catch a quick view of an upcoming section of the trail that is, in one sense, very close by – in another sense there is a lot of trail to cover ahead before we loop back.

Are all of us moving through life with rapt focus on the path immediately in front and behind us and not aware that the universe a cascading ribbon of time and space where layers of the future and the past are folding and stacking immediately around us on all sides?

Is our lifetime a pre-determined program that has been written by a lazy author who used some amount of cut and paste to fill in the minutiae? And when we encounter this – we call it “coincidence”?

Is our creator and a team of watchful angels reminding us that they are there, cheering us on, offering us insights to help us chose our path, and sometimes just having a little fun with us? (this is, by the way, what I tend to believe. I have more stories … some cute and some life-saving… for another blog on another day….)

Take a moment from time to time and give up your determination on the next choice that you are making in your day.

Press “random play” and see what you hear.

Close your eyes and grab any book.

Let the scriptures fall open to a page and read it.

Contact a friend you haven’t heard from in awhile.

Start a conversation with a stranger.

Do these things with an open heart… and then… tell me I’m wrong.

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p.s. here is a link to the scene from the movie…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1A_X8VMIqU