I’ve got two hours to kill in the Sydney Airport. I am staring at people and the woman in the coral shirt eating toast just moved her tote bag two inches closer to her chair. Now she is poking at her phone and shaking her foot nervously. The foot is wrapped in Nike, a striped neon design that stings my tired eyes. Her shirt has a zipper down the front and a hood in the back. She is dressed for an all-day outdoor volunteer activity.
I am thinking about a strange occurrence, several weeks old at this point. I dreamed that my husband and I flew into space, but instead of a rocket, we sat on a couch and cradled large melons in our arms. As we ascended, passing spaceships and floating garbage, the melons exploded all over our shirts and helmets. My husband turned to me and said, “I don’t want to have to teach classes to aliens,” and then we both laughed.
When I awoke I called Dave to tell him about the dream. He was fifteen hours behind me, in San Francisco, and I could hear he was on a busy street. “I just left a store,” he said loudly. “I was looking at couches.” I couldn’t believe the coincidence, given my dream about a space couch, but he told me to keep listening, to wait for the weird part.
As he was leaving the furniture store, a couple of backpackers walking past asked my husband he knew anything about quantum mechanics. Dave said yes, and then they asked if he could answer a question for them. My husband replied, “Sorry, I don’t know that much,” and continued walking. Dave could not explain why he did not allow this couple to ask their question, and now, his refusal bugged him. He wanted to know what they were talking about, and regretted this missed opportunity.
Two people in two different cities, simultaneously having encounters with couches and physics, and one of them avoiding a teaching moment. This coincidence has been floating around in my mind like a satellite, and now, staring at the woman in the coral shirt, I want to tell her this story. She will toss her phone in her tote bag and lean forward, elbows resting on her knees, captivated. This will be a nice way to pass the time.