Serendipity is the unexpected discovery of something valuable or useful. Perhaps these events are God’s crib notes for us, His way of helping slow learners figure out some of the puzzling parts of His complex universe.

When a Stone Age man accidentally dropped a flint stone onto a rock containing pyrite and realized the resulting spark was good news, he might have thought, “Oh great! Now I won’t have to wait for the next scary lightning bolt to start a jungle fire. Goodbye to raw meat dinners!”

The apple that fell on Isaac Newton’s head was a serendipity clue that got him started working on the law of gravity. I hope Congress doesn’t try to amend it.

There are other less monumental serendipity events, like when you put on an old hoodie and find a $50 bill in the pouch. If it’s a $50 electric bill, that wouldn’t be serendipity, but at least you’d have finally found out why the power was turned off last winter.

Important serendipity discoveries were made when the persons involved weren’t searching for anything. Biologist Alexander Fleming left a messy lab table when he went on vacation. Returning, he found dead bacteria that had been exterminated by a strange mold, and penicillin was eventually born.

The Kellogg brothers, health food experts, accidentally invented corn flakes when they let a cooked batch of meal go stale. They toasted it, rolled it out, and it emerged in tiny crisp pieces. Percy Spencer, who had a sweet tooth, was doing radar research when he noticed the candy bar in his pocket had suddenly melted. He substituted corn and it popped. He got the general idea and went on to invent the microwave oven. Silly Putty was invented when James Wright gave up trying to come up with a new synthetic rubber formula.

“Eureka!” is the usual shout when a geek suddenly sees the solution to the problem he’s been wrestling with for so long. It’s different with serendipity where there was no known problem to begin with. Sometimes the discovery isn’t all that obvious to the eye witness who might say, “Hey, why did it do that? Oh, shucks, I’m putting in lead and it’s coming out gold. The boss is going to be really angry. The contract calls for lead doorstops. What’s he going to do with gold doorstops?”

Time and motion studies have improved manufacturing efficiency, lowered production costs and even selling prices, but have aggravated workers to distraction.

In a plant where I once worked, master machinists who’d been turning out perfect widgets with tolerances of a few thousandths of an inch for over 30 years did not appreciate getting instructions from a fuzzy-cheeked time and motion study guy on how to do it faster. For one thing, it takes time to insure accuracy. For another, why do it faster when you’re getting paid by the hour?

It sometimes helped if the recently graduated ergonomics expert with the stop watch and clipboard was taller and huskier than the machinist.

When a husband retires and starts spending more time at home, he usually feels he should be helpful and if possible, make life easier for his wife. So he becomes an unofficial time and motion study expert and gives her advice on more efficient ways to cook meals, scrub floors and do the laundry.

In rare cases this has led to increased housekeeping efficiency and more leisure time for the wife, but more typically the result is marriage counseling and minor injuries until the husband finds another job or joins the Peace Corps or the Foreign Legion.

One afternoon at the plant I noticed a hopeful sign of unity when I went out into the shop. The machinists and time study guys stood side by side chatting in front of the silent drilling and milling machines while peering toward the entrance.

Then I caught sight of Miss Zowie strolling in to fetch the day’s production report, on time as usual, bless her. Workers and experts agreed, Miss Zowie was quite pleasant to look at. Forget time. For a few moments they would just study motion.

I had just mowed my lawn and was standing on our back porch looking down at the finished work. It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t quite figure out what. It certainly didn’t resemble the outfield at Yankee Stadium or a fairway at Pebble Beach. It was someplace else that was much less attractive. And then it hit me.

I’d taken pictures at the San Francisco Zoo years ago. They pop up on my computer screen once in a while. I suddenly realized my backyard looks a lot like the gorilla habitat pit at that zoo. Visitors, standing behind railings, look down at the great apes lounging in the vegetation outside their shelter. My yard’s terrain and flora are quite similar to that zoo’s, a very natural, untamed setting with various types of unsightly anonymous greenery, chewed, not by noshing gorillas, but by my old noisy mower which is actually far more dangerous than any gorilla.

As for fauna, there are no gorillas of course and I don’t intend to adopt any to complete the picture. Dian Fossey, the “Gorillas in the Mist” author said the huge silver-backed males are extraordinarily gentle. Maybe so, but I’m sure my neighbors and their pets would be uneasy with my new tenants.

We do have an annual meandering black bear visit, but Smokey seems to prefer our lake shore area a block or so west of here. So mostly there are our resident squirrels who live off the million acorns falling from our big oaks and whatever they can steal from my bird feeders. Once in a while a wandering deer, a cottontail rabbit or a raccoon will pass through, denuding the gardens and tipping the garbage cans looking for leftovers. Skunks will stop over now and then. I rarely see them, but they have a way of letting you know they’ve been around, just something in the air.

Then, of course, there are the pesky lions who arrive every spring. You’ve seen them, the brightly-dressed ones, the dandy lions.

Lord, I hope You’re sitting in tonight. I really need Your help. I’m down to a small pile of chips after losing a huge pot, and I had four sixes, for God’s sake! Oh, sorry about that Lord. It’s just an expression, almost a prayer, wouldn’t You say? Anyway, Pete won with a straight flush, and good for him. I’ve always liked Pete even though he’s not a churchgoer. I’m sure you’ve noticed that and his cussing, but down deep he’s really a swell guy. I don’t believe half the things his wife says about him, not half. She’s been miffed about him not working at the food bank with the rest of us twice a year.

Goodness knows, I’m not asking You to break any rules, but if You would sit behind Pete during this five-card stud game, You could help me and, if I happen to win, my church donation next Sunday would be several dollars larger. I’m showing four spade cards to a flush, a fairly good-looking hand on display out there. Everyone but Pete has folded. It’s just me against him, the fallen Methodist, who shows four cards to a straight.

Unfortunately, my hole card is the jack of clubs and doesn’t make a pair. I’m trying to look confident, but I’m not sure it’s convincing. Pete’s big smile might also be a bluff. If only I knew more about his hole card, just some little hint, nothing specific. Lord, if You could……. WOW! Wasn’t that the loudest clap of thunder you guys ever heard? Pete, you didn’t hear that thunder? My ears are still ringing! Well, I guess I’ll fold. And look at that, Pete. I see my jack-high hand would have beaten your busted straight. Well, good for you, Pete. Lord knows you deserved to win.

I was a happy-go-lucky 10-year old boy eating breakfast one morning when my mother said, “I think you[re old enough now to…….” I interrupted her at that point by choking on my oatmeal.

I’d heard that ominous phrase before. “I think you’re old enough now” was always the preamble of an announcement that wasn’t going to make my life more carefree or exciting. . Mom wasn’t going to say I could now have a BB gun or a motor scooter or that I could quit school and join the circus. No, another burdensome item was going to be added to my list of chores.

Sure enough, I was told I’d reached an age when I should be capable of making my own bed.. That might sound trivial, but it was a ten-year sentence with no possibility of parole.. From then on I had to get up 15 minutes earlier every day to begin wrestling with blankets and pillows and chasing wrinkles over uncooperative chenille bedspreads. Rats!

Just a week earlier my father had decided I’d reached another important milestone and should be responsible enough to trim the lawn with our balky boy-powered reel mower. Rats!

I would have liked working with our chainsaw or even the hacksaw, but Dad never let me handle anything sharper than that rusty old mower. I’d swapped my Tom Mix autographed holster for a neat penknife with one and a half surviving blades and a bottle opener. When I proudly showed it to Dad he said, “Oh, thanks, just what I needed., a one and a half-bladed penknife with a bottle opener. ” That was supposed to have been my hunting knife. Now I had to go on safari in the local Fairview woods with an old butter knife. Rats!

Part of my problem was my unsynchronized growth. My hands and feet were growing much faster than my other parts resulting in my reputation for clumsiness. This wasn’t all bad. I wasn’t allowed to wash dishes or handle anything breakable and expensive, like storm windows. I thought I’d grow out of it, but Dad wasn’t sure. He made me promise never to work at Picatinny Arsenal/

Anyway, I managed to enjoy a happy, normal life and I was thinking about that at breakfast the other day when my wife said, “You’re getting too old now to…..” I interrupted her by choking on my prune juice. Now I have to get rid of my BB gun. Rats!

d

I ate lunch while driving to save valuable time,

but my efforts were in vain.

for now I see by the map on my lap

I’ve been following a ketchup stain.

f

We don’t know who invented pockets, but that genius should be given credit in encyclopedias and history books. One historian claims pockets became common in the late 15th century.which was when Columbus discovered America during an era of worldwide exploration. There might be a connection. Pockets did widen horizons as well as our trousers. Who knows? The Roman Empire might still be in power today if they had installed pockets in their togas.

Women seem to resist the benefits of commodious pockets and prefer to lug their bulky expensive handbags around which leaves them with only one free arm and that is often holding a cellphone. Men prefer to be two-fisted and have always embraced pockets, the more the roomier.

Thanks to pockets, I’m not worried about the threat to outlaw plastic bags. I’ll be ready. I’ve got the personal capacity to almost do away with bags altogether. I took inventory the other day when I was dressed for cold weather. There were six spacious pockets in my ski jacket, four in my jeans plus two more pockets within pockets and a huge pouch in my hoodie that’s equal to at least four average pockets. In a pinch I could have the checkout guy load some small items into my hood.

It would be a different situation in summer without the ski jacket and hoodie, but then I’d be wearing my cargo Bermudas. If I wear suspenders to make sure the shorts don’t go to half-staff before I reach my car, I’d still be able to accommodate an average food shopping payload. For larger loads there’s my backpack which is actually a megapocket. If they start putting wheels on those big wine boxes, I’ll be all set.

In the long run, high school athletes are better off being on a losing team. It gives them a more accurate picture of the real world and provides a valuable dose of humility. Also, the bond between members of losing teams can be very strong, similar to that of shipwreck survivors.

I was on a losing high school football team for two seasons and it was just what I needed to prepare me for the fumbles and losses of later life. I’ll never forget the first time I got to play in a varsity game, I think the coach had decided not to send me in unless the team was so far behind it wouldn’t make much difference.

“Kid!” he called, pointing to me on the bench. I was shocked. I hadn’t been pointed at all season. “What’s your name, Kid?”

“I forget Coach, I’m very nervous. Just call me Kid.”

“Okay, Kid. There’s a time-out. Go in at left tackle and tell them to run the quarterback end run play. We might actually get on the scoreboard before the final gun.”

I tripped over the water bucket running out. My vision was impaired because I’d put my helmet on backwards. “The coach said to run the quarterback end run play,” I shouted as I approached the huddle. Unfortunately it was the wrong huddle which was a serious security breach. Our quarterback was nailed right after the snap.

I got to play in more games the next year mainly because the squad was smaller. An anti-football committee was formed on the PTA called “Mothers Against Mayhem” and some of our best gridders were forced to switch to the track team. Our record was pretty dismal.

The game we dreaded most was our last of the season and possibly of our life on earth. We were to face the mighty and undefeated Memorial High. The very name invoked a grim vision of Valhalla and dead warriors. There was always at least one ambulance parked near the field during Memorial games.

After another one of their running plays when their bulldozer of a line had flattened our defense, my buddy Tom who played left end had a dazed look. “What day is it?” he asked me.

“It’s Sunday. We always play on Sunday. What’s the matter with you, Tom?

“If the coach thinks I’m too beat up, he’ll bench me and that’s always his test question, ‘what day is it?’. I just wanted to know for sure.” Poor brave Tom. I should have told him it was Monday.

“

It was our first trip to modern Rome and the carefully preserved remnants of ancient Rome. We found the Eternal City to be beguiling and seductive, in more ways than one.

I clicked away a roll of film in the Colosseum where Christians and gladiators perished to the cheers of the crowds and their emperors.

Very early one morning my wife and I walked in the empty Roman Forum where Julius Caesar had been slain by Brutus and his co-conspirators. We stood where Marc Antony delivered his eulogy as immortalized by Shakespeare. (“I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”) Later we climbed the Palatine Hill, picking up tiny specks of marble from the bygone palaces of Augustus and his successors.

Toward the end of that day as I walked up the Via Veneto from Mass at the Capuchin church, I saw a group of attractive women in evening gowns, strolling in sultry circles in front of my hotel. We had visited the Temple of the Vestal Virgins in the Forum and I was quite sure these ladies were not related. A man in a tuxedo called out to me as I approached. “Sir, would you like to experience the most wonderful night of your life?”

I scratched my head and said, “Maybe. You and the ladies wait here while I go and ask my wife.”

“Ask your wife?” he shouted. “Crazy Americans!” I can’t record the rest of his reply. I’m not fluent in profane Italian.