Under a Microscope

- Joe Tornatore, standing in the second row fourth from left.

God must have a damn good sense of humor. Nobody can make sense of irony because it just happens. Maybe God wants it that way. I have encouraged my readers to look for irony in their lives. Irony can function as measures of purpose and levity. On a personal perhaps mystic level, I believe that irony is God’s way of talking to me. Although irony has broad sweeping tentacles in my bizarre life, I needed a magnifying glass to uncover this irony.

While scrapbooking, I came across a 1974 group picture of Gloucester County Times newspaper paperboys. Like yesterday’s news, in studying the dated photo it takes me longer than it should to find myself, a former paperboy. Dressed in nothing but shorts and a short sleeve shirt, my sprouting body shone summery flesh. What first caught my attention was my flesh. I grab a magnifying glass to check out the integrity of my skin. I wanted to see what my skin looked like prior to developing the connect-the-dot blemish pattern of my rare skin disease, urticaria pigmentosa. Now magnified under glass, my eyes scan to find myself. The lens tracks to the center to settle on a familiar figure standing in the second row. I do a double take then violently pull away from the magnifying glass.

“That is impossible!” I utter in disbelief to nobody but myself.

I take a deep breath. A Curious George, I return to the lens. My eyes zoom in on the irony needing magnification. I am wearing a Ripley’s Believe It or Not imprint shirt! I stare at the time-stamped picture. Despite my present affiliation with Ripley’s Believe It or Not, I completely forgot that I once owned their tee shirt. As my poly/cotton blend recollections return, I realize that I am an unwitting billboard for the television show that I would appear on thirty years later and for the book that I would write about my disease. Call it a weak moment but this is too much irony for even the host of Freudian Slips. I need a witness to my viewpoint.

So I entice my son to look at the group picture. My son finds nothing unusual about the picture. He does not even recognize me in it. I point to a lad in the photograph then hand him the magnifying glass for closer inspection. He provides a carefree look but cannot see anything out of the ordinary. I impatiently grab the magnifying glass from him. Through a squint, I can now even make out the signature Ripley’s logo across the top of the shirt.

“Look at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not shirt.” I proclaim. “Doesn’t that beat all?”

This may have been the most ironic folly since the discovery of Fool’s Gold. At that exact moment in time, the landline phone rings.

My wife greets, “Hold on…” She passes me the phone.

With one hand pressing the magnifying glass to my eye, my other hand cradles the cordless telephone. I do not pay much attention to the caller at first. While my left eye marvels the ironic picture of myself wearing a Ripley’s Believe It or Not tee shirt, my right ear catches the purpose of the phone call, a rare book order for my book Stop and Smell the Silk Roses.

“…You want to what?” I asked into the phone.

Everything came into focus. Albeit an eerie coincidence, the timely phone call connected my past to the present. Life is like a trail of tiny bread crumbs that can only be seen under a microscope. Just ask my magnifying glass.