Spooky 517

Spooky 517

Some coincidences are pretty mild while others make me stop in my tracks.

A MILD COINCIDENCE

 

Last night at work on Table 12 I happened to notice two gentlemen playing poker right next to each other... one older with a smaller frame... the other taller and younger with a darker complexion.  But what you simply could not help but notice was their shirts were the same color and pattern.... white with black bars and columns intersecting.

 

An artist's rendition

 

Later when the older of the two was cashing out at the cage I asked him if he was related to the younger fellow he'd been playing next to and he chuckled and clarified they had never met previously but that because of their shirts, I was certainly not the first to inquire.

 

As he was walking away I commented to Sarah, the cashier, that the older fellow was the kind you'd like to have for a grandfather.  But then admitted I wouldn't know very much about decent grandfathers.  "Well, one of my grandfathers might have been okay" I said.  "But I wouldn't know for sure because he died before I was born.  The interesting thing about him was he was 6 foot 8 inches... but when he was still 6 foot 5 people would ask him how tall he was and to mess with them he'd answer 5'17 and the response was always an incredulous 'No way, I could have sworn you were more than six foot!'"

 

STOPPING IN MY TRACKS

 

At this point in my story a customer approached Sarah's window so I stepped away in order not to crowd their transaction, but Sarah called me back.  "Hey, where are you going?" she said.  So I came back to her window and realized she was requesting a verification, a common step cashiers take in casinos to make sure they are paying out the right amount of cash for the chips being redeemed.  I glanced quickly at the chips assembled on her counter and basically couldn't believe my eyes.  It was exactly $517!  As though my paternal grandfather were reaching across the years between his death and my birth to share his joke with me.