metanoia's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blue Feathers, 11:11 and Betty It's 11:11 am. Here's to you, Betty Thayer!!! I once worked with a wonderful woman named Betty Thayer, and she remarked one day that whenever she looked at a clock in late morning, it always seemed to be 11:11. She smiled at that, and so set me wondering (along with her) about this little thing... another of life's little mysteries... a little absurdity. Oh I could go on about human beings attributing importance to time and dates, when in the larger picture they are insignificant. I could go on about how she may have looked at the clock other times but only NOTICED when it was 11:11... but I won't. Because I like that little mystery, that little piece of her she shared with me. So that now if I ever notice the time is 11:11, I think of her. I wonder if I wrote about the blue feathers and the voodoo before? It is also a Betty Thayer story. I was working at the Long Beach airport at a repair facility there. It was an old building, an old company, an old operation. It was an anachronism, with roots and connections to flying in the early days when it was wild and wooly, anything goes. Anyway. This building was old, no air conditioning so we had to open the windows for ventilation. There is a lot of fine dust around an airport, and so with the windows open we had dust everywhere. Now, I am not a clean freak, but there are things that bother me... gritty floors (because I go barefoot alot) and gritty tabletops (not to be confused with regular house dust, which doesn't bother me in the least) but I hate my desk and papers to have a fine coating of ... grit. Anyway, I bought a cheap feather duster with turquoise feathers and every day I would dust around my workspace. Being cheap, it sometimes lost it's feathers. I would pick them up as I saw them, but every once in awhile I'd miss one or two. We had an old Jamaican man who came in in the evenings and cleaned the offices. One day he came in early to pick up his check or something and saw me dusting with that feather duster. With a look I can only describe as great relief, he said, "oooh lawd!! this is you? These blue feathers! I have been afraid someone was working their mojo on me! I even began counter measures!!!!" He laughed and just seemed so happy. I later recounted this to Betty, who asked "Did you ask him what the counter measures WERE?" I told her I had not. She was quite disappointed. And, after she asked, so was I. To this day I wonder what those counter measures might have been.... Could have accounted for that run of bad luck I had for awhile.... 11:11 a.m. - 2010-02-02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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