The Times They Are A-Shatterin’
Septennial Shadoobie
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Here’s how it went.
It was this past Monday, on their seventh anniversary—at seven pm.
At least that’s the time they approximated for the accident to have occurred when they filled out the papers in the emergency room.
He sat with a towel on his head, blood all over his shirt, running down the list of synchronistic sevens. And you know what?—it was just about seven minutes before the accident that we were joking about the possibility of us now being susceptible to the infamous Seven Year Itch.
And now we’re facing seven years bad luck, she replied, smiling.
The cat had zoomed out of the closet (knowing it wasn’t supposed to be in there)—wildly flinging open the closet door, the one with the mirror on it.
Our hero was sitting in the chair, bent over tying his shoelace—and boy did that door make contact with his head. Smashing glass cascading as if in slow-motion, with a few shards landing on and cutting his scalp.
The nurse, Sophia, listened to their extrapolations of seven-this and seven-that while she cleaned up his scalp. No stitches necessary.
You’ll be fine, she said. And here’s one, she added—there is a theory that every seven years we are reborn, a whole new set of cells. It’s mostly old Roman lore, but there is some science mixed in. I’m sure you guys can work it into your conspiracy of sevens while you heal.
They had shut the bedroom door when they rushed out to the hospital and now had the job of picking up the shattered mess. The cat, Kugel, sat in the doorway, fascinated by all this weird activity.
Timothy—he’s the one with the bandaged head—tends towards superstition. The idea of seven years bad luck really bothered him. Lisa, his wife of seven years, less superstitious but still a bit apprehensive, joined him online to try to find ways to break the possible curse.
On Wednesday night, by the light of the moon, they took some of the mirror shards and buried them in Central Park.
On Thursday, following some arcane instructions that proposed rubbing the mirror fragments against a tombstone, they wandered over to Trinity Church and, when nobody…
