This story is not a crock

Something dawned on me the other day that sent a few shivers up my spine. Let me tell you about it.

Earlier this year, my family and I traveled to Europe. After visits to Scotland and France, we finished our vacation time in London.

For those of you who have spent time in Paris or London, you know the magnificence of the cities' culture and art. My wife and I wanted to spend some serious time immersing ourselves in museums and the culture of our European friends.

The thing was, we brought along our 4 year old son Alex. And we needed to keep him busy, and interested. A smiling boy is much better than a bored, unhappy boy.

So, on our very first day in London, we took Alex to the London Aquarium. Mind you (not The Gap), Laura and I weren't really "taking one for the team", because we thought the aquarium might be kind of cool also. That and it was right next to the London Eye, which made it easy to access from our hotel. But would we have gone to the aquarium if we hadn't brought Alex across the pond? I don't think so, they don't sell wine there.

What was really neat which Alex got to do at the aquarium was "pet" stingrays. The stingrays were in a large, above-ground tank which had no top so you could reach into the water and "pet" the suckers. It took a while to get Alex to do it, but with Daddy's prodding, he did it. He pet a stingray. And so did daddy, and daddy can report that they feel very sandpaperish.

So the rest of the day, and really the rest of the trip, Alex bragged about how he got to pet a stingray. Pretty cool, huh? He even managed to avoid getting stabbed by one of their poisonous barbs.

If that was the end of my story, it wouldn't have been much of a story. But here is the slightly weird part that recently dawned on me.

The very next day, we were all in line to enter Westiminster Abbey. You could say Alex was "taking one for the team" that day. As we were about to enter, I noticed a guard at the front doors had a tiny green crocodile pinned to his tie. Wanting to make my son happy, I pointed the crocodile out to Alex and a smile immediately spread across his face. Alex asked the guard where he got the crocodile from.

"This was given to me yesterday by the Crocodile Hunter, you know, the Australian guy," the guard replied. "He was here, standing right where you are now."

My wife and I looked at each other and were suitably impressed. Alex didn't seem to care, but kept smiling, looking at the crocodile.

Months later, the Crocodile Hunter was tragically killed when a stingray launched a poisonous barb into his heart.

The same Crocodile Hunter who had been at Westminster Abbey.

At the same time my son was petting a stingray, just a mile away.

You can't make this stuff up.