Occasionally, perhaps more often than not, what appears in this column is a rambling “stream of consciousness” category of writing. A few of you unfamiliar with this style might be tempted to look it up. If you really want to research it for real, fine, do it. For the rest of you who are lazy or don’t give a dang — I’ll quickly give a few characteristics of it which I’ve stolen from AI.

Stream of consciousness writing: A continuous flow of thoughts, feelings and impressions; having non-linear patterns, free association, sometimes disjointed grammar; capturing the mind’s natural, often illogical movement; making readers feel immersed in the inner workings of a mind.

Today, I’m just calling it “Ramblings.” I had a young mother tell me the other day that she reads “Inside Sanpete” to her 15-month-old son. She didn’t comment to me on whether she liked the column or not, but said that it entertained her son. I don’t know. Perhaps that’s my target demographic.

Anyway, to begin the ramble, about a month ago, we were visiting neighbors on a Sunday night. Conversation went from one thing to another. As it sometimes happens, we started sharing what we’ve been watching on television. Many people find shows they like and recommend them to friends and family.

It takes my wife and I a long time to get through a TV series that we’ve decided to watch together. It took us years to get through the eight seasons of the show “Psych.”

My TV time is usually devoted to sports, politics and the rare, partial viewing of “Hoarding – Buried Alive” (seeing that show is a “preventative measure” for my life). My wife watches — well, what doesn’t she watch? It’s everything from old shows like “Little House on the Prairie” to detective shows like “NCIS” to “The Twilight Zone.”

Our neighbors were quite surprised that we hadn’t watched the religious series “The Chosen.” It’s about the life of Jesus. It’s not like we didn’t know about it. It just hasn’t been on our “to-do list.”

The show is very popular among Christians of most all denominations evidently, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The LDS Church is not the originator of the show, but some of it has been filmed in Utah on movie sets owned by the church.

My reaction and reasoning explaining why I hadn’t seen the show, revolved around this impeccable logic. When choosing what to watch on TV, why wouldn’t I select the eternal and life changing effects that a football or basketball or volleyball or baseball or lacrosse or soccer or track and field event would have on my life, instead of a faith building, well-acted, wonderfully depicted, plausibly written, serious, and at the same time witty, series of shows on the life of Jesus?

(That may be the longest sentence to have appeared in this column. I’m glad I’m not back in Mr. Isbell’s English class in high school. He would have had me at the blackboard diagramming the sentence.)

As you may have guessed, we started watching “The Chosen.” By our TV watching standards, we’ve been burning through it. Last Friday night, we watched Episode 6 of Season 2. In that episode, I learned that there are 613 commandments in the Law of Moses. Jesus was accused of breaking some of them.

Now my rambling moves into a higher gear. Before falling asleep in bed Friday night, I was on my phone. I was thinking about and checking out sources for buying a new Beatles T-shirt for myself. I have one which was given to me years ago that I wear quite often when the event seems right for it.

In the process of “window shopping” and reading some Beatles information, I unexpectedly learned what seemed to be a timely bit of trivia. I read that the word “love” appears 613 times in the lyrics of The Beatles’ songs. That averages three times per song across the “Fab Four’s” catalog of music.

So what are the odds of those two separate sources, seen that closely in time, homing in on me with the number 613? I couldn’t guess. But, when I did my best to ask Google in a specific way, my answer was estimated that the odds were one in a million.

With a half-smile, I half-seriously (perhaps, more like 52.61% seriously) (That percentage is based on my 1952, 6th month, 10th day birthday) determined that this was a sign to me.

Here’s my version of the message of the sign. Love is at least equally important as “ticky tacky” rules. As some have said and I’ve seen on posters, “Being Kind is More Important Than Being Right.” (That’s a quote often attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald) Love God and love your neighbor were the great commandments Jesus taught.

Then my mind went further afield with numerology. I took the individual numbers of 613 and added them up — and the sum was 10. Ten is a special number. We have the 10 commandments. And the number shows up in the Bible 242 times. It symbolizes completeness and authority.

Speaking of the Beatles, I’ve been to several musical events recently. The latest was the 2nd annual People’s Choice Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame event in Salt Lake last Saturday night. Kenny Loggins was inducted. Last year’s honoree, Huey Lewis, was on hand to help with the ceremony.

Sanpete’s own “Professor of Rock” — Adam Reader was there as one of the founders of the event. I saw several Sanpeters in attendance as a result of his involvement, besides the interest in the show itself. I think you’ll hear more about Adam in a future column. (In the meantime, check him out on YouTube)

And finally, because this column has to end, even though my “stream of consciousness” could continue (Please No! I hear you thinking), let me say, “Skunks stink!”

Could you Fountain Green people keep “your skunks” off the highway south of town? On the way home from Salt Lake late Saturday night, I ran over one of those little stinkers. I’m not going to tell the neighbors why our car will remain parked outside of the garage for who knows how long. But, they may smell the reason. — Merrill