A Dime for Your Thoughts

He always kept his lucky dime in his right pocket.

It had been a dime he had stooped down to retrieve from the sidewalk. That was lucky for him that day because, as he stooped, a large rod had been thrown from the underside of a truck passing by. The rod, as it happened, flew over his ducking head and lodged in the brick wall of the building he was walking past. It sat there in sinusoidal motion, the vibrations of kinetic forces dissipating with a warbling quaver that quickly became inaudble into the higher registers.

This is quite a dime! he thought, realizing how lucky he was that the flying rod had not impaled him to the brick wall, along with causing his certain demise. He had just dropped it into his right pocket before resuming his erect posture, so the right pocket is where it stayed.

As long as I live! he promised his lucky dime, even though he knew he was probably just being superstitious.

But that lucky dime knew that everything had fallen together so perfectly to spare this man's life. It realized that someone had made some purchase to receive coins in change; just the right-sized hole in a pocket had allowed only itself, this dime, to slip through that someone's pocket--someone who had taken a particular path so as to have it fall onto that exact spot of pavement. And several oblivious people would have to miss seeing its shiny, silver milling because of urgent things that had come up in their lives to put their focus elsewhere.

The dime also realized, fatalistically, that everything had fallen together so perfectly to put his savior in harm's way.

For example, the truck had cancelled its maintenance check with the shop that day when a profitable haul assignment became available; also, his rescuer had to get up at a certain time, walk at a certain pace, and even take a certain path to be in the exact trajectory of the javelin coming for him.

The man had kept his promise to his lucky dime, and faithfully kept it as the sole occupant of his right pants pocket. For the dime, his right pocket was his rightful home.

Until the day it wasn't!

The man's realization was traumatic. He looked frantically for his lucky dime--in his kitchen, the pantry, and the den. He checked and rechecked the washing machine and dryer in case he had forgotten to safekeep it during the laundering of his weekly wash load. He retraced all his steps. To the bank, the grocery, the bus stop...

The bus stop!

Of course! He had fished some change out of his left pocket to pay for the bus. He remembered, because he had just the right amount of busfare--plus a dime--his lucky dime--and handed it all over--excepting the dime--to the driver. But that dime couldn't have been with the other coins. That dime was always, and ever was and ever will be, in only his right posket. That was his promise to his lucky dime.

Also, the man had done the preliminary fumbling for change and the retrievals before the bus door had even opened, so he concluded that his dime--his lucky dime--was on the pavement at or near the bus stop, instead of his right pants pocket where it belonged. No, this otherwise put it at the mercy of any predator who might spy it and collect!

How many harpoons were out there with his name on them? We all live in a world of quantum possibilities, he knew all too well. Even now, his mind so whirred, how many different factors and cofactors were conspiring to cosmically intersect with him in their crosshairs?

He left his apartment hurriedly, saying Hail Mary's the whole way. By sheer habit, he checked and rechecked his right pants pocket, which only provoked another Hail Mary each time.

There, ahead, was the intersection where he had caught his bus. He was so distraught and his focus so strongly unfocused that he stepped out, off of the curb, without looking.

And so, another set of circumstances cosmically aligned so perfectly as to have a car strike him dead, despite how well the car had stopped. The driver just hadn't had enough time before hitting the brakes, which, it was determined, did a fine job in otherwise coming to a halt incredibly fast.

"Quite a car," the policeman said to the driver. "Great brakes. Too bad, though."

"Yea," the driver agreed in a monotone of tragic befuddlement. "If I had just seen him a split-second sooner. I mean, that car can stop on a dime."

"I suppose so, sir. Too bad that dime was in this poor guy's left pants pocket."