Eight Ate Plates
Shaking my head, laughing. Shaking in my boots, photographing.
I was an adult when I heard seven ate nine.
I mean, I heard “seven eight nine” hundreds, if not thousands, of times, but I never heard: seven ate nine. I thought, Why didn’t I ever think of that? How could I miss it all those years?
My daughters were learning about numbers, and we found a few ways we could have fun with them. I heard “seven ate nine” off and on after that, and I also heard how license plates could never be “real” synchronicity.
Then: Nine nine nine eight, eight nine nine nine, but then ate nine nine nine nine on three plates.
But there was a problem. I was at work.
In Synchronicity, Documented, I share another story that happened at work (as well as a couple about my favorite numbers: 2, 3, and 6). Afterwards, practically every day, I begged the universe not to do it again. But there I was, looking out the front doors at this (in much better focus with my glasses).
The license plate on the left was 9998. The one on the right, 8999.
There were roughly 80 parking spots in the lot and there they were, right in front of the door. I thought, You’re at work. You’ve gotta let it go.
It seems like I stood there forever trying to talk myself into it, then out of it, over and over. Telling myself that one of the owners would probably walk out in the middle of a shot. That too much time had already gone by. That it was a huge risk, and I could lose my job. I also felt like I was acting like an idiot for wanting the shot given what I’d heard about license plate synchronicity, but I knew I was going to miss it if I didn’t act quickly.
I called out on the store radio to say I was going to take a break. I hustled back to the department office, put on my coat, and walked around to the front of the store. I took three shots as quickly as I could, one of both of the cars and one of each plate. Then I hurried back in. I took a minute to check them quickly and my heart sank. The second close-up was blurred.
I couldn’t go out again. At that point it was definitely too risky. I’d tried and failed. I walked back to my post and a few minutes later, one of the owners exited and drove away.
A couple of weeks later, I thought about them again. What else do you have to do when you’re looking in the same direction day in and day out?
I wondered, Maybe there’s enough detail in the photo of the cars side by side. When I looked at them again, there wasn’t. The one on the left was barely legible, but the one on the right wasn’t. I had the right-car-detail shot, but I thought, They are such terrible photos. Forget about it.
I was even more convinced when I saw some photos of groups of cars with up to three license plates in a row that had similar sequences. Beautiful clear shots. Mine didn’t compare.
Still, it wasn’t easy to forget since I spent quite a bit of time standing there, so I told myself constantly, “Just don’t look,” and I told the universe, “Please, don’t do it again.”
It was almost impossible to avoid looking that direction when customers came in, so occasionally I caught a glimpse, but I continued to reminded myself off and on to stop. Then, one day, as I was thinking about my disastrous photos, I realized I was looking out at 9999.
I thought, Good try, but you missed. Then, my mind apparently reviewed what it had seen and said, “Wait. A minute. It’s ATE9999.”
There I was again. Standing at my post thinking, Why? Why can’t this be happening somewhere else? It’s really not worth it. What kind of story would I tell?
My mind argued back, It doesn’t matter. You got away with it once, just do it. I called out on break, put on my coat, put my hood up this time, and stood in front of the car with my phone in a position that no one could tell I was using the camera.
I mentioned it to a couple of people, and one friend said that I couldn’t/shouldn’t show full license plates, but I had seen other people doing it (Mom voice: Just because other kids are jumping off a bridge….) so I googled it, and apparently you can’t get much information from a license plate unless you’re in law enforcement.
Still, it didn’t seem like I had a story worth telling. Then, when I was scrolling through old photos and saw a couple of shots I had taken of license plates a while back, ASK6332 and ASK6203, it felt like I did.
A somewhat famous person once said, “Ask and thou shalt receive.” I see it a lot, especially in “spiritual” posts.
My favorite numbers, 2, 3, and 6, have shown up in some startling places, so when I saw them, I asked for something. I mean, who isn’t asking for something every day of their lives? I’ve always wanted to believe I could ask, and I would finally get what I wanted. But I also often have a hard time making some decisions. Do I want to stay in the job or leave? Do I want to move or stay?
Then, sometimes, something happens that pushes me one way. Instead of ask and receive, a lot of times for me it’s been this:
When your deepest inner self wants something, something your normal conscious awareness might not even be aware of, the universe conspires to help you get it.
I believe everyone will be given things that align with who they are and what they love. The “ask” comes from deep within. Somehow, we know we’ve always wanted it. It may be a thing. It may be a person. We wonder, for what seems like forever, if we’re going to get it, then it comes. It isn’t a superficial “ask,” it has deep meaning.
Even though this put me in a couple of ridiculous situations—where I was shaking my head laughing, while shaking in my boots with all of the anxiety it was causing—these are the kinds of things I am seeing. It was fun. It was filled with purpose and meaning, and now I’ve fully accepted that it’s okay that someone else got the thrill of being the first person to discover seven ate nine.