Baader-meinhof @ MindSay 
Okay, this one goes out to my friend Kelly who I had lunch with today. Kelly got to listen to the concept of this post in person, so I am dedicating it to her for her patience. (Plus she loves to see her name in lights!).
Right after Kelly gave birth to her son, Christian, I put up a post about a Baader-Meinhof that occurred because of that event. Well, that post led me through a series of events that I described in a different post where I described an evening of Baader-Meinhofs. I thought about how fascinating it is that these things can happen to us all of the time. And, while many find it strange that I keep mentioning the BM phenomenon, once I explain it, the whole world says, "oh yeah, that happens to me all the time." Which is pretty interesting in and of itself.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, this happened: my family was in town visiting and my cousin Sara asked me a bizarre question. The last time she had visited was two years earlier and her husband was here as well. While they were here that time, we were playing a game and it led to my dad singing a song. Well, my dad is not a singer by nature. He just doesn't do it. But at that time, he was trying to convince Mike, Sara's husband, of the virtue of a specific song.
This time around, Sara wanted to know what the name of the song was that my dad was singing. Mind you, this was two years ago, but after some serious brain crunching, we managed to recall. The song is "Beep Beep (Little Nash Rambler)" by The Playmates (circa 1958). As it turns out, Mike was never able to get that song out of his head (watch for my upcoming post about Earworms...) and sings all the time as he is doing things around the house. So Sara wants to know what the name of the song is, we come up with it, and then....BAM!....it comes on the radio. Seriously, this is hardly a well-played song and to hear it seconds later was a coincidence of cosmic proportions. Immediately, I say, Baader-Meinhof.
Oh Boy! My dad immediately disagreed with me. He said that it can't be a BM unless the person had no prior knowledge of the information involved. Like reading a word you don't know and then hearing someone say it. This, he said, is just mere coincidence.
Mere coincidence? That didn't make me happy at all. It was just too weird. I knew that there had to be more going on here than coincidence. Obviously, I checked it out. The first thing I did was to make sure my dad was right. Yep, he is. It can't be a BM unless you had no prior knowledge of the information that you keep stumbling over. So then, what is it?
You heard me. Synchronicity (coincidentally--or not--also a title of an album by beloved 80's band The Police) is the concept of a "highly meaningful coincidence". It was first given voice by psychologist Carl Jung sometime in the 1920's.
Ok, fine. So now I know. I read all this information last week, and fully intended to blog about it, just to keep you all updated and to straighten out any misconceptions I may have inadvertantly caused. Then, on Sunday night, I was watching my new favorite show, "In Plain Sight." During the episode, the main character was expounding on the concept of a huge coincidence that had happened in the plot and she mentions Jung's theory of synchronicity.
I was lazily lounging on the couch enjoying the show and then I bolted upright, staring at the screen. Are you kidding me?
And there it was, my very own Baader-Meinhof (for real this time!). How bizarre is that?
The beautiful strangeness of the world can be very gratifying. For instance, just this very evening, my previous post led me though a chain of events that brought me right back here, to share it with all of you. Here we go, my train of thought for the last few hours...brace yourselves.
In the previous post, I told the story of my friend Kelly and the Baader-Meinhof that occurred this afternoon. When I post something like that, I like to include links for more information (as you may have noticed), so I needed to find a link that would adequately explain that phenomenon. So, like a good librarian, I "googled" (I used Yahoo!) the phrase and found several sites. I surveyed a few, looking for the best for my fine friends, until I came across one that was damn interesting. Yep, it was www.damninteresting.com. Sidebar: I added the link to this page to my sidebar. Go check it out (as Meg says, an overused library pun). Ok, we're back on track (get it? train of thought...)
Once I found Damn Interesting, it was hard to resist the lure to wade through the thought provoking, humorous, wacky, strange, convoluted information that can be found there. I was instantly hooked. I detoured from the site only long enough to add it here on my blog. I then went back and played some more. I read an article about "The Birthday Paradox" that floored me, because only a few days ago I was playing trivia with mom and dad when a similar question came up. Something along the lines of "If there are 30 people in a room what are the odds that two of them will share the same birthday?" There were choices to go along with it and I got it drastically wrong. I assumed, incorrectly, that the odds were infinitesimal and, well, read the article. So, whammy, there is another Baader-Meinhof.
Then, I wanted to know just who these folks are that came up with this kickass site, so I click on the "About" tab at the top of the page. I read the bio information and at the bottom, I see a plug, recruiting new writers. This is something that appeals to me. I love quirky things like this, that exploit the inherent uniqueness that makes up the world around us. I could see myself coming up with a topic that is of fascination to me and submitting it to this site. Who knows? I noticed that the site is heavily peppered with articles of a scientific bent, which is cool, but my mind tends to stray more toward the literary sect. Something that has always intrigued me is the use (or misuse) of language; such as, malapropisms, spoonerisms, and some of the best, Yogiisms. Along those lines, I started playing around with different sites that talk about these literary and linguistic occurrences. The second site I see (after Wikipedia) is one created by a guy named Dr. Bill Long. Well, this incredibly well educated professor has a page relating to the use of words and language. In it, he includes spoonerisms, malapropisms, and many others that I was familar with, but did not know the actual names for. (See, I learned something!). One of them is "Tom Swifties", in which he explains the character of Tom Swift who was written by Edward Stratemeyer.
Okay, you're saying, but where are you going with this? Well, in between all of this dancing and dashing between fun websites, I had to do some actual work. I am at Hamline tonight and an off-campus student called with a reference question. She was unable to access a computer and wanted some information on the creation, use, and criticism of serial writing in children's ficiton. Alright, great, so we did that for a bit and I found her some great books. Still, she was not satisfied, so she asked me if I could see if there was any research on this guy who wrote a bunch of children's serials, among them, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. The guy's name is Edward Stratemeyer. Yowza, Baader-Meinhof.
So, aside from sharing this incomparably long blog post with all of you (betcha never wanted to know my thought process that badly, hmm?) I can't help but wonder; can you have a Baader-Meinhof of Baader-Meinhofs? Three times in one day, heck, inside of three hours, I experienced a phenomenon that explains the phenomenon of noticing something you were recently made aware of. That, my friends, is one of the truly beautiful quirks of life.