weird things...

Has anyone noticed things in life that are just kind of weird? Things like coincidences that have no proven possible explanation? These types of things have come up in my life since I was a small kid.

First one that comes to mind -
When I was 4 years old, we lost our house to a fire. It was a tragedy for me. First, let me tell you the story as best as I can recall...
My mom, aunt Sharon, cousin - Tracy and I were driving home. We were sitting at a red light waiting to turn down the main road to get to our street - maybe 1/2 mile. A fire truck came zooming by. There really wasn't room to move out of the way and I think they just drove in the other lane. I am not sure who said what, but my mom and aunt had an exchange of dialogue about the fire truck coming, turning down the road and hope it's not going to our house.
The light turns green and we turn headed down to our house. We turn on our street and there it all was - fire trucks and commotion right there. We lived 3 houses down so it was the first thing we saw when we turned on the road. By this time, the fire had been put out. The house was black on much of the left side (our side - mine and my parents' room). There were a lot of people. I really don't know. People were coming up, people we knew. How they knew, I have no idea as we didn't have cell phones to start texting and calling. Maybe a neighbors phone or the corner store pay phone. I remember a good friend of my mom's, Susan and her daughter, Angi, took me around to the little corner store. The owner, who we knew well, let us sit in the back area. I am not sure why Susan chose to tell me the story of Noah's Ark, but that's what she picked to do. I remember telling my mom later, I thought she was going to talk to me about the fire, not Noah's Ark! All the events of the day aren't clear to me at this point. I can remember my mom bringing stuff from out of the house to the front yard. Susan was able to salvage many of our pictures. I don't know where my dad was - probably at work. I don't recall when he got home or much other than the few things I've written. My aunt Pam was asleep on the couch. She woke up and ran outside. She tried to push her car back away from the house as it was parked right in front of the left side, where the fire started. She burnt her hand and had to stay over night in the hospital. I have no idea how she got there. I don't remember seeing her there on the scene but do remember seeing her at the hospital that night. We were later told the cause of the fire. It came from the window unit a/c that was located in our room. When I heard that, I remembered how I had stepped on the cord that was laying on the floor the day before and it was very hot. I didn't tell anyone that it was hot or that I stepped on it. Of course, after hearing it was the cause of the fire, I told them. That's all weird. Like, at 4 years old, why wouldn't you say ouch! I burnt my foot on that cord. I can't say that I'm much different now though. I just kind of have this idea if that's how it is then it's that way.  

The other thing that I learned later in life is that I had an imaginary friend, Jennifer. After the house fire, I no longer had Jennifer. I don't know what happened to her. She might have been in that fire.  I do not know how long I had Jennifer or how I came up with the name. I know that 9 months later my mom had a baby girl and she named her Jennifer!

Huge fast forward, when Breanna was about 3-4 years old, she had an imaginary friend. We would see her talk while she played and how she drove her barbie jeep around and around. Then one day, we heard her call her imaginary friend's name, Jennifer Aries. Not too out there seeing my sister's name is Jennifer and she was a huge part of her life as far as taking care of her. Makes me wonder if my sister had an imaginary friend and if so, what it's name was. She doesn't remember a lot from child hood like I do but I want to see if she or Mom remembers.

Colby doesn't have a huge imagination. As far as we know, he never had an imaginary friend or pretended to be talking to others during play.

Ethan had an imaginary friend. His friend, Johnny, came along when he was about 3. He came about not long after my uncle Johnny passed away. It was very weird as one day, he just told me he was bringing his friend Johnny with him to the store with us. We talked about Johnny and he would ask me if I see him. Johnny hung around for a little over a year. There were times Johnny would be in the car with us, at the store, at a restaurant and yes, we had to have a place for him to sit and get the double seated cart at HEB so Johnny could sit next to Ethan.

There are a lot of these in my life. I have no idea as to what this stuff means if it means anything at all. I wonder if these are pieces to the puzzle?