I don’t believe everything I hear, even if what I hear has been proven by science, or is generally accepted by deep thinkers.

For example, I don’t care if every doctor, nurse, and health professional in the world say that you can’t catch a cold by sitting around in soaking wet clothes after getting caught in a downpour. They can talk and talk about how it’s impossible to catch a cold by simply being chilled and wet, and I will refuse to believe them. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve had it happen. And a lot of parents will back me up. In private, though. They don’t want to look stubborn and foolish.

I also get annoyed every time I hear, “There are no accidents.” If that’s true, then every stupid mistake I have made was on purpose—or for some higher cause. We’ve all heard stories about a person who shut his hand in a car door, went to the ER, and discovered that his hand was fine but that he had a tumor the size of an adult human head in his stomach, which was then removed in the nick of time. Therefore, the universe caused him to slam the car door on his hand in order for doctors to discover a giant protuberance in his gut. Up until then, everyone had just thought he was fat.

I have to admit that I lean more toward believing metaphysical truths that can’t be proven than scientific facts that have been proven. So, whenever I am involved in an accident, I stop and wonder why it happened.

Today, for instance, I was carrying several flimsy plastic supermarket bags full of groceries on one arm, while closing the car door with the other. The bag containing a giant glass jar of dill pickles broke, and the jar smashed on the road. Pickles and glass were everywhere. This was clearly an accident. While cleaning up the mess, I cut my finger on a piece of glass. That made two accidents. Then my husband came out to help, and he cut his finger. That made three accidents.

If “there are no accidents,” then I was supposed to drop those pickles, and we were supposed to cut our fingers. Maybe the pickles were poisoned; it is possible to get very sick, or die (I’ve heard), from improperly pickled pickles. Or maybe the universe was objecting to my not using cloth grocery bags. Okay, I could accept either of those reasons.

But why did we have to cut our fingers? To make a blood oath? That was the explanation that I settled on. My husband settled on ignoring me. That made four accidents.