Why We Need Each Other

The other night, I paused a video I was watching to pull down some shades in the room. One shade came crashing down and after a futile effort to re-attach it, decided to just resume the movie. But I couldn’t find the remote I had had in my hand. So I looked in every nook and cranny of the 10-foot area in which the drama took place and I simply couldn’t find it. Old-timers who remember “The Twilight Zone” can understand my sense that something beyond human comprehension had just happened. The remote simply disappeared. Picked up the couch cushions, looked under the couch, looked on every nearby surface, checked my shirt and pants pockets 12 times. Really, it was 45-minutes of non-stop searching with my concept of reality severely challenged. Finally gave up, but it bothered the hell out of me! The next day I looked again and I began to feel that every time I entered that room, I would be reminded that the world is mysterious and doesn’t make sense—and not in a good way. 

So two nights later, I had the Orff Interns over to dinner and told them the story and Bahareh, our Intern from Toronto/ Iran, went to the couch and dug around in a little nook-and-cranny I had missed and came out with the remote, like a grand fish that she could show the grandchildren! Order was restored! I went out to the deck to fire up the barbecue and five minutes later returned to see she had fixed the shade!! I told her if she solved one more problem in my house, I would have to marry her. 

After dinner, we all went to the front room to sing around the piano and someone took out a Turkish string instrument I had in the room called a Baglama. Someone had gifted this to me a couple of years ago, but I never figured how how to tune it. Bahareh looked at it and said, “I can tune it!”

So now I have to break the news to my wife.