Just a Coincidence

A bit of serendipity yesterday…..

Last year the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation (MSF) began a program of selecting “ambassadors” to act as eyes and ears and helping hands across the country.

(The MSF focuses on providing services to make life easier for multiple sclerosis patients and their families.  It’s  a fairly lean and mean organization. (You can interpret that as LOW OVERHEAD.)  Its national headquarters (in fact, its entire paid staff) is in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  But they can find a home health aid to help a patient in Weaverville, NC or a construction team to build an entry ramp in Nucla, CO.)

Anyway, I was one of the original group of 10 ambassadors from across the country to help with such opportunities as providing information to neurology offices, starting support groups, focusing public attention on issues, etc.  And now it’s year two and a new group is coming on board.

As a means of introducing the old guard with the new team members, our humble leaders in the Sunshine State arranged a conference call for a high-tech “meet and greet.”  They use a service called Spiderphone.  (Each line is a “leg” and spiders have lots of legs.  Also, there’s that whole “web” analogy.)

Spiderphone always works well, and I’m constantly amazed how the service can not only provide a list on the screen of all the participants but can even figure out who’s talking at any point in time.  It makes me nervous that if I cough or my chair squeaks my name will be prominently displayed on everybody’s screen and I’ll henceforth be thought of as “the noisy one.”

So yesterday I was trying to sit very still and stifle a sneeze as I followed the back and forth of people introducing themselves.  And there on the screen, right under the Spiderphone logo, I saw a big ole’ spider having a leisurely afternoon stroll.

Okay, so not all serendipitous moments are particularly momentous.