Today began as an ordinary Tuesday morning: coffee, walking the puppy, showering, and dressing for the day. I headed out to an appointment, and while playing a video game on my iPhone in the waiting area, an elderly lady wearing a scarf over her head chose the seat beside me. She was double-masked, and her eyes, a lovely pale blue, peered over. She looked at me and began a conversation, meandering through the trifles of weather.
But as I smiled and let her "ramble," she delved into a world far from our mundane surroundings. She spoke of nuclear submarines, her depth of knowledge oceans deep. I almost fell out of my chair. Then she went on to unravel the complexities of uranium isotopes, and just when I thought the dialogue couldn't get more intriguing, she whisked us away into the intangible realm of quantum entanglement. I don't know what the ladies at the reception desk overhearing our conversation were thinking; all I know is I love this woman! I thanked her for teaching me something new, and we then went our separate ways.
What a day this turned out to be - a brief encounter with an ordinary stranger whose story and knowledge were extraordinary. All I had to do was listen.
Then, of course, I drove home and immediately googled quantum entanglement, and now here we are...