did you ever have a “deju vu” moment where you stop and think “did that just happen? I’ve had several “pop tart” moments since the original one and now I’ve just come to appreciate them for what they are; a coincidence of epic proportions that you can’t plan because the random nature of them is what makes them so great.
let me back up and explain how first the term got coined and then the moments I’ve had since then I’d call a “pop tart” moment.
it was around 1990 and I was living in arlington, tx with a friend. I had just lost my job I moved to Dallas for and he was letting me crash in his back bedroom for $170 a month, all bills paid. I had my air mattress on the floor and a bundle of clothes in a suitcase and that was pretty much all I really had. other than a nice stereo. always have one of those, ya know?
one morning I got up and rolled off my air mattress and went into the living room, turning on the tv as I headed into the kitchen. I opened the pantry and got out some generic pop tarts and put them in the toaster, set it, and went back to my room for a bit. I was headed back into the kitchen and was passing by the TV, the toaster popped up my breakfast and the commercial on the TV said “Your Pop Tarts are ready!”
I just stood there frozen, unable to move. The TV just told me my real world pop tarts were ready and it was 100% on queue. I looked at the pop tarts, crying out in innocence, and back to the tv that of course moved on and left me on the verge of a mental paradox. I just went back into my room and hid.
That story always gets a laugh and you think that those things so seldom happen, where do you go from here? Now I will admit it was quite some time before my next series of pop tart moments would happen and of course, they all have their varying degrees of connection and relevance to the situation.
Many many years ago a friend was visiting me for the weekend and those are always just a free for all of partying. So we hit the airwaves and put on one hell of a show doing shots and what not through the night. Somewhere around 1am we fell asleep at the mic, both of us passing out around the same time. around 7am we both woke up at the same time, looking at each other like “oh wow” (about all you can do after a bender like that) and we went back to picking up where we left off for a little bit longer just to close it out properly.
We both crashed after that and later that afternoon I got up finally and walked out my door to the hallway and looked to the front of my house. the guest room is up there and I look that way, my friend walked out and looked my way at the exact same time.
So maybe back to back pop tart moments kinda fall short on the overall “wow” factor but going a decade without one, 2 so close was pretty cool. But then, they went away again.
Then, over the last few months I’ve had (2) more pop tart moments that literally brought me to tears for the timing and value of humor in the event. A few times a week a friend will come over and we’ll kill some time killing anything we can on GTA4. That’s Grand Theft Auto 4 for you non gamer types. In the game you’re a rough biker dude stealing, prostituting, shooting, dropping grenades, the whole gambit of uber-thuggery. Take out a gun and shoot some one in the face type of people. You can drive around to almost any style of music or talk show and one day I was just randomly killing and listening to the crazy things they say on the talk show. My friend checked out a bathroom remodel he saw for the 1st time and when he came back into the living room he made a comment of how replacing the vanity with a pedestal sink opened up the bathroom.
So I throw on my “gay voice” and just said “oh yes, it just opens that space right up!” and again on perfect queue, the talk show host then says “but I need you to know I’m not gay”.
Pause the game and laugh for 10 minutes.
Oddly enough it would only be a few months before it would happen again and again, GTA4 brought it all together. I was running around the streets looking for something interesting to blow up, shoot or steal and someone starts following me like they want to fight. I tried to ignore him but he kept at it and finally I just looked at my friend and said “does this guy know who he’s fucking with”?
And again, on perfect queue, my character on the screen says “Do you know who you’re fucking with”?
So those are pop tart moments in time. Random events that are totally unrelated that would be meaningless without precision timing and a perfect setup to take advantage of. You ever have a pop tart moment that stood out? Comment the article, I’d love to hear them!
BTW – I couldn’t eat the pop tart. It sat in the toaster until my roommate came home and asked me why it was there. I told him I wasn’t strong enough to tell him about it at the time but to fear the pop tart. Still not sure if I ever told him.
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