Ever have a period of time where you are strangely in sync with another human?

Those weird moments when the thoughts you can’t put into words don’t have to be, because they are understood. Last night was a traditional Wednesday – work from home, join a friend for Korean BBQ, then go together to the board game night at our local game store.

Conversation was good, but pretty normal, until the last round of pork belly came out for grilling. Somehow we discovered that six of the pieces were matched pairs from the same strip. Normally even if this happened, we wouldn’t see it, but mystically they lay on the grill in such a way that they lined up perfectly. It brought strange joy for a coincidence, and I have no way to explain why it was so entertaining, but it felt like a cool and kind of special magic.

Later we were playing a game called ‘Dixit‘ that I remembered from years ago, where you play with picture cards, and each round a storyteller dictates the word or short phrase theme for one of their cards, just cryptically enough that some but not all the people will know which card is theirs, then other players try to match the theme. All the cards are mixed and revealed together, and the players vote as to which they think is the storyteller’s card. It’s beautifully simple to play, and the cards are wonderfully absurd, as well as abstract, art. I had a moment where I had a girl peering through the curtains on a stage, so I used “Slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” because it’s a quote from Hamlet. As I predicted, my KBBQ partner totally knew what it was, but many other people at the table did not. Later he laid down the theme “teapot” and I guessed that the card with a hand-held sized tornado was the reference to “tempest in a teapot.” In a game where knowing your audience can make all the difference, these line ups were wonderful.

Other, smaller moments manifested, not that any of these were large. Nods to shared in-jokes with our tabletop RPG group, for instance. Just moment after moment of remembering why you are friends and sharing those strange brain-twists that are so rare to find in someone else.

I’m finding I don’t even have the words today, it feels like a bit of dream that you remember the feeling of, but not the subject or why it mattered. So all I can ask is that if you find that moment of wavelength with someone, hold that close because the value transcends language or logic, and yet can mean so much.