Strange Things Are Happening To Me

For a long time I have known that weird things just happen to me. You can ask anyone I know and they'll say "The Archer? Weird things happen to her." Most of these things are, luckily, positive. I've run into a lot of celebrities in the street, most notably Daniel Radcliffe on Central Park South. I get a lot of free stuff just given to me, from t-shirts to a fully signed playbill from the original Broadway cast of Moulin Rouge. One time, as I was waiting after a performance of If/Then to meet Idina Menzel, the person behind me started bragging about how she used to babysit for a girl who performed on Broadway. That girl? My cousin Emma.

There is a bit of skill involved in finding yourself in weird experiences. I've learned to recognize when a show is being filmed and how to figure out which show it is. I tend to be very friendly which makes security guards and staff warm up to me and help me to get close to the cool person I want to meet or fun experience I want to have. I've also always had a weird sixth sense for when something is about to happen-I know before a raffle is drawn whether or not I'll win, I just have a feeling. Also most of those raffles were from my school days and I'm pretty sure they were rigged but still.

It isn't all positive. I've had weird medical experiences that pop into my life and pop out with barely a moments notice. As I've chronicled on here, I have had random bouts of projectile vomiting on the bus ride home from Lakewood. I've been lucky enough to be on the subway when they find a dead body MULTIPLE TIMES. I tripped on the sidewalk and cut my face open before a job interview.

Maybe my life is completely normal and I just tend to overdramatize things. I'm a writer, I see significance in places where there is none, and I turn each experience into a story. I also notice things that others overlook which tends to put me in the right place at the right time.

But I like to think that everything is a sign.

Because there is one strange experience that hasn't happened to me yet.

The idea of finding a life partner is inherently insane. We meet people from different families, different towns, different schools, even different countries and we hope that they are compatible to us and will want to partner with us on an eternal mission. The idea that this works for anyone is crazy. And yet it does. There is a line in the musical Matilda: The most common thing in life is life and yet every life is a miracle. The most common thing in life is marriage and yet every marriage is completely insane.

I try to remember that, that even though 80% of my class and 85% of my school from when I was a senior has found their partners, each one of those partnerships is a miracle.

I also try to see all of my tiny miracles-meeting Daniel Radcliffe, going to a surprise Amazon sponsored Taylor Swift concert, ending up on MTV for the VMAs, meeting a third cousin I didn't know existed online, getting handed a free bag of souvenirs, the number of times my picture has miraculously landed in the paper-as signs from G-D.

G-D is doing weird things for me because He wants to tell me that the weirdest thing of all-finding someone made for me-is coming. G-D is in my life even if He is saying "not yet" to the one real thing I beg Him for.

At least, that is what I choose to believe.

I'm going to keep taking long walks and seeing what happens because the weirdness makes me happy. And when I despair that there is no one out there and that I've used up all my chances I am going to remind myself that 15 year old me would have killed to go to the VMAs but she had to wait until she was 24 for that miracle. I can wait and I can see all my little miracles as signs that my big miracle is coming.

And it will be miraculous.