Life certainly is strange and full of coincidences.

I started thinking about this when someone called me a couple weeks ago in a panic. I was on the road and could not access my email, so my friend read to me on the phone a part of some email news that she received. She was worried because she thought the young man being described in the news was my son. And it was not good news.

She never got the full story, but the gist was that a young man described as a dreadlocked dub poet, who is proficient in martial arts, is alleged to have physically attacked a young woman. The story also said that the young man has one parent who is well known in the arts and another who is a prominent educator. My friend assumed it was my son.

Without hearing the rest of the details I did the thing what I was told for years that parents should never do. I swore for my child. I assured my friend that the description is coincidentally close to my son but I am willing to put my neck on the block and swear that my son would never, ever hit a woman. The incident is now before the courts so I won't comment further, except to say that these kinds of news remind me that parenting is a weird thing. Yeah man, parents carry the credit and bear the blame of the actions of their children, and sometimes it can be painful.

But more on the matter of coincidences: The sudden passing of South African reggae star Lucky Dube created another sad moment in the history of entertainment, and counts as part of some really strange occurrences. Check it. Lucky died on the birthday of Peter Tosh - the man who's vocal styling he modelled. And check this: Both Peter Tosh and Bob Marley died on a Friday the 11th. Bob on Friday May 11, 1981 and Peter in 1987 on 9/11. And hear this: Bob and Peter both had 7 solo albums each. Strange eeh?

Higher region

And on that fateful Friday September 11, broadcaster Jeff 'Free I' Dixon who also died in the attack on Tosh closed his radio show by saying he had to leave the studio early to "go to a higher region". He was referring to going to meet his friend the Stepping Razor in his upscale Barbican house; or was he? But it gets even stranger. Check the picture on Tosh's Mystic Man album with him on his unicycle. The building in the background is the World Trade Centre!

It's no strange coincidence, though, that I picked up on some of this interesting entertainment trivia while talking with my brethren Randy Fagan - the walking, talking encyclopaedia of Jamaican entertainment.

Whenever I pass through NY and check Randy, I get something to drop in the box. I'm in the 'Big Apple' for the 6th annual Kings & Queens of Comedy happening this weekend at Brooklyn College. But I wish I were back home, for a number of reasons. The main reason right now is the fact that my friends from high school - the Excelsior graduating class of 1977 - are all in Jamaica for a big reunion. Yeah, the sevens clashed for my classmates and me 30 years ago. And I walked from school in Mountain View to home in Trench Town on July 7, 1977, and nothing strange occurred, maybe.

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