People-Watching Creates Coincidences

Chris and I were downtown today for about three hours because I had a craving for Chinatown pho, and I also wanted to take him to the Mutter Museum of medical anomalies. It was a pretty good day for this, since the trip required a moderate amount of walking and it wasn't too hot outside.

After the Mutter Museum, which is a few blocks from 30th Street Station (west side of downtown Philly for the out-of-town readers), it was pretty much a straight shot to Chinatown (east side and a mile and a half away) to get our pho. Now I really enjoy walking, and the business district of downtown Philly was a prime place to stroll and observe people walking by. Chris and I saw and commented on several unique personalities, including a strung-out looking man with rubber bands tied at five different places on each arm, and a middle-eastern dude who gawked at a handicapped guy zipping by in a scooter. But there was one person who especially caught our eye. Imagine a tall, relatively good-looking guy in his mid-20s, walking in a normal fashion. Now imagine that he's wearing...vertical black-and-white striped leisure pants with a poofiness factor approximately 2 notches below that of MC Hammer's parachute pants. Much zanier now, huh?

Okay, it wasn't supremely zany, but the story doesn't end there. After passing this guy by, we continued toward Chinatown, stopping at the Reading Terminal Market to admire exotic foods. Then we got and ate our big bowls of pho and caught a train at Market East Station to go home.

So we got on our train, and the door's open for a few more seconds waiting for the stragglers to get on. Then, at the last moment, the final Market East passenger boards right at our door, and who should it be but - yes, you guessed it: Stripey McPoofpants! As if this wasn't enough to tickle Chris and me pink, Stripey McPoofpants gets off with us at Overbrook Station, and proceeds to walk into our building and share an elevator with us! At this point, you'd think the odds that he lives on our floor would be higher than a hippie in a hot air balloon, but he actually got off on the 12th floor, one level above us.

(And yes, I was able to, inconspicuously, snag a photo of the incriminating pants after getting off the train.)

Chris wove this whole event together perfectly: the fact that some random guy we saw downtown happened to live in our exact building is much weirder than the black-and-white striped pants he had, but without those black-and-white striped pants, we never would have recognized him as the same guy we saw downtown! There's a stoner moment for you. The universe is full of such beautiful mysteries, where oddness begets oddness.

Anyway, I henceforth dub this the McPoofpants Paradox, and encourage all readers out there to keep a sharp eye open and embrace the weird things that happen in the world. Next time you encounter a jibbering derelict, say hello - he just may be your neighbor*.

*Not responsible for derelict-related injuries.