Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

There is a saying in Hollywood that everyone is tied to Kevin Bacon. More specifically, they are attached by six degrees of connection. In other words, A knows B and B knows C and C knows D. You do this six times and everybody has a connection to everybody. Assume everyone knows 45 unique individuals. If you do this six times, you are connected to over 8,000,000,000 people which is the world population. To give you a real world set of connections I am six degrees from Kevin Bacon. I know my wife of course and she is friends with Fortune Feimster (the comedian and actress.) Fortune has acted with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the TV show, FUBAR. Arnold has acted with Colleen Camp (a long time character actress) in the movie, Last Action Hero. She, in turn acted with Kevin Bacon in the movie, Trapped. Try this yourself and see who you are connected to.

Along this same line of connecting things is we all have a huge number of thoughts every day. Not sure you do this but every day, I can start off with one thought that takes me to another thought and then another thought. Eventually you get to a completely different thought that on the surface has nothing to do with the first.  This is where I tie this to the Kevin Bacon thought.

You are probably thinking I’m crazy but this is where I tie it all together. Not sure where this labyrinth got started but somehow, I eventually landed on the old TV show, “Queen for a Day.” I recently saw a picture of Justin riding Rollie and Fran’s (in-laws) garden tractor when he was about five. This got me thinking about Fran and how she used to love watching the Game Show channel and game shows that were 40 to 50 years old. I then went through those in my mind and I eventually landed on Queen for a Day. I am sure that very few people reading this are familiar with this show. It started as a radio show in 1945 and ran until 1957and was on TV from 1956 until 1964. The premise was that four women down on their luck would come on the show and tell their story.

From Wikipedia, “The interview(s) would climax with Bailey (the host) asking the contestant what she needed most and why she wanted to win the title of Queen for a Day. Often the request was for medical care or therapeutic equipment to help a chronically ill child, or might be for a hearing aid, a new washing machine, or a refrigerator. Many women broke down sobbing as they described their plights.”

After all four pleaded their case, the audience would applaud each. The contestant with the loudest applause would be declared the winner. They would win several prizes including whatever it was they had asked for.  I would watch this during the summers that I was home from school and found it interesting.

Again, I’m sure you are questioning my thought process here but I feel like I have won my own “King for a Life.” No prizes here except for extended life. This week I found out that I am officially on the list to get Julia’s kidney. I still have a few tests to confirm I am still healthy on November 6. As long as those are good and we both stay healthy, we will have our operations on November 19. I have come so far it is hard for me to realize that I am this close to a more normal life. It has been 15 years since I have been on either chemotherapy or dialysis. I look forward to this new freedom. As of today, I only have 20 remaining dialysis sessions scheduled. Thank you all for your many prayers. They have kept me moving forward.