The following event occurred in 1988.
I was at work and a female coworker (who was also a close friend) asked me to take a short break with her late in the day - maybe around 3PM.
Our office building had a lunchroom with several vending machines; the lunchroom also contained a very small kitchen. This lunchroom was one of five doors off of a hallway. Though the hallway was long, all five doors were very close together and within view of anyone in the hall. There was only a single door leading from the lunchroom into the kitchen with no other way out. I'm sharing all of this floor plan info to try to substantiate my claim that if anyone else had been anywhere near the lunchroom at the same time as us, it would have been evident to us. And, there was no one else around when the two of us reached the lunchroom nor was there any human traffic in the hallway during the 15 seconds leading up to our arrival at the lunchroom doorway.
Okay, enough of that level setting stuff.
So the two of us entered into the empty lunchroom and headed for the vending machines. My friend was talking some nonessential chatter behind me as we stepped up to one of the junk food machines. With my friend still behind me - I'm between her and the vending machine - she asked me what I might be thinking of buying. I'm eying the machine's content and see many snack brands which I'd never buy unless prompted to do so. As I scanned the machine's content, my attention is suddenly caught by a box of Hot Tamales candy; this is a candy that I loved as a child but didn't know was still around in the 80's. As soon as it caught my eye, I also recognized that the packaging was much more colorful than it used to be. So my heavily analytical mind did an immediate visual comparison of the old and new packaging - superimposing one over the other so I could spy the differences in the box cover art (what a dweeb, I know).
My conscious attention was instantly so very fully focused on that box. My vision suddenly shifted zooming in and my entire field of view appeared to be completely filled with an image of this candy box. It was almost like I was one inch tall and standing inside the machine right in front of that box - I couldn't perceive even the edges of the box as my field of vision was so focused, filled, and narrowed.
And then, one box of that candy dropped out of the machine. Of course, neither one of us had put any money in the slot; I don't even recall if either of us had a hand on the machine.
Then a second box of the same candy dropped out of the machine.
And then, nothing more. I pushed my hand into the vending machine's receiving bin and felt around - there were two, and only two boxes of candy. That was it. Just two boxes of this specific candy fell from their station to become our afternoon treats. And the vending machine was not (while we were in the lunchroom) continuing to spit out candy for free.
It took me some many years to come to consider that I might have had an influence on that event. Other events which happened 12 years later made me think back to that possible first time that I influenced the physical world around me and reconsider the possibilities which I did not want to think of a decade earlier.
I was at work and a female coworker (who was also a close friend) asked me to take a short break with her late in the day - maybe around 3PM.
Our office building had a lunchroom with several vending machines; the lunchroom also contained a very small kitchen. This lunchroom was one of five doors off of a hallway. Though the hallway was long, all five doors were very close together and within view of anyone in the hall. There was only a single door leading from the lunchroom into the kitchen with no other way out. I'm sharing all of this floor plan info to try to substantiate my claim that if anyone else had been anywhere near the lunchroom at the same time as us, it would have been evident to us. And, there was no one else around when the two of us reached the lunchroom nor was there any human traffic in the hallway during the 15 seconds leading up to our arrival at the lunchroom doorway.
Okay, enough of that level setting stuff.
So the two of us entered into the empty lunchroom and headed for the vending machines. My friend was talking some nonessential chatter behind me as we stepped up to one of the junk food machines. With my friend still behind me - I'm between her and the vending machine - she asked me what I might be thinking of buying. I'm eying the machine's content and see many snack brands which I'd never buy unless prompted to do so. As I scanned the machine's content, my attention is suddenly caught by a box of Hot Tamales candy; this is a candy that I loved as a child but didn't know was still around in the 80's. As soon as it caught my eye, I also recognized that the packaging was much more colorful than it used to be. So my heavily analytical mind did an immediate visual comparison of the old and new packaging - superimposing one over the other so I could spy the differences in the box cover art (what a dweeb, I know).
My conscious attention was instantly so very fully focused on that box. My vision suddenly shifted zooming in and my entire field of view appeared to be completely filled with an image of this candy box. It was almost like I was one inch tall and standing inside the machine right in front of that box - I couldn't perceive even the edges of the box as my field of vision was so focused, filled, and narrowed.
And then, one box of that candy dropped out of the machine. Of course, neither one of us had put any money in the slot; I don't even recall if either of us had a hand on the machine.
Then a second box of the same candy dropped out of the machine.
And then, nothing more. I pushed my hand into the vending machine's receiving bin and felt around - there were two, and only two boxes of candy. That was it. Just two boxes of this specific candy fell from their station to become our afternoon treats. And the vending machine was not (while we were in the lunchroom) continuing to spit out candy for free.
It took me some many years to come to consider that I might have had an influence on that event. Other events which happened 12 years later made me think back to that possible first time that I influenced the physical world around me and reconsider the possibilities which I did not want to think of a decade earlier.
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