Friday, April 14, 2017

A Flash of Synchronicity

I lay in bed at night, thinking that it had been a while since I'd experienced any synchronicities.  Well, I was in for a little surprise the next day.  I picked Sanjog up from school and and joked around with him on the drive home.   Quite randomly, I brought up the topic of electric eels, and Sanjog mentioned how they could generate voltages higher than the 110v that comes out of the socket at home.  I recalled to him my reading as a child that "electric eels could stun a horse".   

Images of eels as large as an adult human flashed through my mind from documentaries I'd watched in the past.  Sanjog and I then wondered how electric eels could shock other animals without shocking themselves.  Could they recharge quick enough to deliver a second shock right away?  I made a mental note to get home and research online on how eels generate electricity, and how they protect themselves from the effects thereof.  Of course, by the time we got home, I had forgotten our conversation entirely. 
 
Sanjog went out to play, while I caught up on some work email.  After a while, I decided to take a break and started browsing through the stack of Tintins we'd purchased about a week ago.  I randomly picked out Tintin and the Picaros, a book I hadn't read in at least 20 years.  Here's what I stumbled across about half-way through the book:
 
 
 
"Big electric eels grow up to a couple of meters long and can stun a horse with a single discharge!", said Cuthbert Calculus.  Indeed they can, he took the words right out of my mouth.

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