Here’s my rough draft for today, Thursday 05.28.26.
Strictly Statistically
It is a little-known fact, but O.H. and I were born in Kapi’olani Hospital in the same year, on the same day, within hours of each other. Barack Obama would be born in the same hospital seven years later.
There is a one in 3,141,592.65 chance that two babies will be taken home from the hospital by the wrong parents.
And wouldn’t you know it.
My actual parents, who lived here in Honolulu, and his parents, who lived in California and were here on vacation at the time of his birth, became more and more suspicious as the weeks went by.
My folks thought that he looked less and less Asian-Caucasian, and were even more suspicious because from month one, he needed to be shaved twice a day. My dad, who only shaved twice a week, and my mom, who never shaved at all, were increasingly skeptical.
Meanwhile, in California, his parents thought that I looked more and more Asian and were mystified by my lack of facial hair.
As fate would have it, both his parents and my parents called Kapiolani Hospital at exactly the same moment – a one in a googol possibility – aka a duotrigintillion, a ten thousand sexdecillion, or ten thousand secdecilliard possibility – that’s the digit 1 followed by 100 zeroes – they called at the very same second to ask if there had been a mix-up. Chins were rubbed, heads scratched, ceilings viewed, footprints compared, the mistake discovered, the correction made, and he grew up there while I grew up here.
Coincidentally, he moved back here and began teaching at O‘ahu High School where he was both my 11th– and 12th-Grade English teacher. Believe me, my class was as amazed by this as much as you may be amazed at this moment. We did not know at the time what a child prodigy was, though, lo and behold, one stood before us lecturing on everything from Ernest Hemingway to Thomas Wolfe, to Tom Wolfe, to Jack Kerouac. His return to Hawai‘i was absolute proof that you actually can go home again.
O.H. recently said that he would never see 40 again. This was at his 41st birthday party a few months ago, so he was stating pure fact. His wife, however, turned 40 on the same day – they always celebrated their birthdays on the same day at the exact same time. They made a pact that their gifts to each other would only be handmade, so this year she made him a watch fob out of her own hair, and he made her a comb out of his pocket watch which he pounded into comb form with the wooden spoon she’d given him the year before.
While it is true that O.H. will never see 40 again, it is also poetically true that he will experience it in a kind of vicarious way through his wife.
Statistical probability. Did you know that here in Hawai‘i, it is a fact that only three out of ten drivers might acknowledge you if you allow them to move into your lane ahead of you?
Of those three, only one will give you a shaka sign. The other two will just wave. Which is okay. At least they’re polite.
Amazingly, ten out of ten drivers expect you to acknowledge them if they allow you into their lane, and seven out of ten who actually acknowledge you when you let them in, expect you to wave or shaka them back, depending upon whether they waved to you or skakaed you.
Most interesting of all, nine out of ten drivers on Hawaii’s roads are bad drivers, and they will not only cut into your lane ahead of you without a moment’s notice, possibly creating a tragic accident if you are not on your toes, but, if they live, they will neither wave to nor shaka you. Why? Because not only are they lousy drivers, but they are also callous morons.
To return to my point, did you know that both O.H. and I are good drivers who drive Scion xBs, and, having both turned 41 this year.
Lanning Lee 