MY MAPLE LEAFS EXPERIENCE THE 23 PHENOMENON

          Last week, while preparing for our home office makeover, Deb and I were cleaning and emptying out the room. We were getting the room drywalled and painted so it was as good a time as any to purge the place while we were at it. There were bookshelves and file folders and the usual accumulation of paperwork that we had to go through. We did our best to stick to task and not get carried away looking through all of the family history reminders but it wasn't hard for me to get distracted as I sifted through the family treasures. Some of it junk some of it priceless.

            One of the items I came across was an album that our youngest daughter Emily had given me a few Christmases ago. She had printed a bunch of my old Random Thoughts articles on some fancy printing paper using an old style writing font and placed them in the leather-bound book for me. Such a nice gift.

            Anyway, I flipped the album open and the first article I came across was Random Thoughts-8 from March of 2007. The subject matter of the column was about the 23 Enigma. The 23 Enigma refers to the belief that most incidents and events are directly connected to the number 23. Some examples of this include: there are 23 chromosomes in a child's DNA; blood takes 23 seconds to make a round trip through the human body; the Earth's axis is on a tilt of 23.5 degrees; Psalms, the longest book of the Bible, is the 23rd  book of the Old Testament and the famous Divine Shepherd psalm is the 23rd Psalm. The list goes on and on. Look it up. It is very interesting.

            Wikipedia says that ,"Numerology is any belief in divine, mystical or other special relationship between a number and some coinciding event. Today, numerology is often associated with the paranormal, alongside astrology and similar divinatory arts." Many people fully believe in numerology and the mysticism behind it while others are completely skeptical arguing that numbers have no occult significance and cannot by themselves influence a person's life.

            Now, I don't care whether you fully believe that the number 23 is indeed an enigma or you feel that it's all complete bunk but there were events that occurred at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto on the night of Saturday November 30th that thoroughly defy the odds and should make a believer out of the biggest skeptic. And it does involve the number 23. Significantly.

            That evening's event was a National Hockey League game being played between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the visiting Washington Capitals. The game was an important early season tilt between the conference rivals who were a point apart in the standings and will most likely be battling for a playoff spot throughout the season.

            Besides the importance of the game in the standings the Maple Leafs were doing a pre-game tribute to former player and popular coach, Pat Quinn, who had recently passed away from pancreatic cancer. Quinn grew up a Leafs fan and entered the NHL in 1968 as a Maple Leaf and returned to coach them for seven seasons leading them to the playoffs in six of those seven years. Needless to say, it was a very emotional night for anyone attending or watching the game at home.

            Now, here comes the eerie part...John Brian Patrick Quinn passed away on November 23rd 2014, his jersey number as a Maple Leaf player was number 23, the Maple Leafs' current coach, Randy Carlyle, also wore jersey number 23 during his playing days with Toronto in the 70's, it was the Leafs' 23rd game of the season, they scored a goal with 23 seconds remaining in the first period, 23 seconds into the second period and they also scored exactly 23 seconds after Washington scored their first goal and they finished the game with 23 shots on goal in their 6-2 win. Hmmmm...believe it or not!

"Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidences"-Emery Allen.