perfect timing

Earlier this week, NStar notified me by phone that they would be doing maintenance work in our neighborhood on Thursday night, and power would be shut off for some time between 1am-4am. No problem, I thought, it would be a good excuse to get to sleep "early" for a change, and I wouldn't notice the outage. But this evening, working late at the campaign office, I forgot. I headed home shortly after 1am, and only remembered when I was two blocks away and saw that both blocks were completely dark. Yuck, I thought, I'm going to have to use my flashlight to get around, find some food, put stuff away, and go to sleep.

Our building has emergency lighting in the stairwell that goes on when power is out, which is really nice. I got upstairs, unlocked the door, and propped it open with my bag to let some light into the front hall. Then I stepped across the threshhold, into the apartment... and right then, power returned.

It got me thinking back to other incidents of coincidental timing I remember, that were just too perfect...

• One day, years ago, I was driving up to Brandeis to do my afternoon bluegrass show on WBRS 100.1 FM, cutting it a bit too close and afraid I might be late. As I drove to campus I had the radio turned on, and a few minutes before I got there, the previous DJ put on his second to last song. Which coincidentally had a chorus of "He's on time!". I got to campus, still listening to this song, found a parking space, and pulled in at 12:58pm, just barely in time to run into the station and stick a CD on for my 1pm show. As I pulled my car into the spot, I could hear the final refrain, "Heeeeeee'ssss onnnnnn tiiiiiiime!!!" and right as it ended, I was stopped and turned off my car. Just before I got out, I noticed that my trip odometer had just hit 100.1 miles since my last reset.
  
  
• Several years before that, WBRS had Groovasaurus play an outdoor concert during orientation. It was wonderful, and after they did their 2-song encore and got off "stage" again, people applauded enough to bring them back for another encore. They had nothing planned so they conferred among themselves while students yelled out requests. I wanted to hear my favorite Groovasaurus song, Accident, but I stayed quiet, until there was a lull in the yelling of requests. I yelled "Accident!" and just as I ended the word, there was a very loud screeeeech! from a car slamming on its brakes on the campus road about 50 feet away. We all shared a moment of stunned silence, then the band started playing my request with no further debate.
  
  
• Some friends who went to Grinnell told me of an incident which I did not witness: One of their classmates, a guy named John but who at the time was calling himself Rwanda, was being his usual flaming self, hanging out with friends in one of the dorms. He said, "I'm so flaming, I set off the fire alarm", making a hand gesture along with this statement that ended with one of his hands pointing to the side, where coincidentally there was a window. Coincidentally, out that window was another dorm. Coincidentally, at that very moment, the fire alarm in that other dorm went off.

What incidents of coincidentally perfect timing do you remember?

[ wow! I just spent a whole 15 minutes of waking time doing something other than working on the campaign. As penance, I must ask you to think of anyone you know in Cambridge, MA, and email them to ask them to vote for Jesse Gordon this Tuesday. ]