7/13/13: Say What?

It was lunchtime. I was eating at the table while reading. People around me were talking.

Halfway through lunch, the book I was reading reached a chapter on the psychology of abusive relationships.

Meanwhile, the people around me began conversing about the psychology of abusive relationships.

I had not spoken a word about what I was reading, nor could the conversing people have read it.

As I reached the chapter's end, which summed up why someone in an abusive relationship might choose to remain in such a relationship, one of the conversing people asked, "Why would someone stay in a situation like that?" These two coincided so perfectly, I couldn't help but burst out laughing.

(Some fun facts about this incident:

1. It was by total chance I was reading this book at all. I had bought a used Kindle, and it had come to me preloaded with several books. It was one of these books I would be reading when the conversation occurred, and I had just started reading it the afternoon in question.

2. After I made it known to the conversing people that their conversation had just mirrored perfectly the text I was reading at the precise time their topic turned to abusive relationships, one of the people said, "Oh, like Patty Hearst, right?" Seconds later, on the very next page of the book, it mentioned Patty Hearst by name -- not too notable, considering this was on the same subject being discussed, but still.

3. The morning before this happened, I'd been editing a chapter of a book I'm writing, which made repeated mention of the "rose-colored glasses" phenomenon. Then, when I started reading the Kindle book at lunch that afternoon, it made mention of the "rose-colored glasses" phenomenon.)