When my grandson came to say goodnight to me yesterday, I noticed that his right ear was a flaming red.

“You have one red ear,” I told him, looking at my daughter to see if she knew.

“Yup. He gets it every once in a while,” she tells me. “Lots of people do. You can Google it. It won’t last long.”

And so I do a search, and find “red ear syndrome.” No one knows exactly why it happens, but apparently it happens to all kinds of people. And if it weren’t for the internet, we would have never known that it was as common as it is. One mystery solved.

It’s kind of like my seeing 11:11 periodically over the years. I blogged about it several times. It’s a number that lots of people keep seeing (Google it and find out).

But that’s not the weirdest thing. The weirdest thing is that if you add up the numbers for the day and time my mom died, you get 11 (for the date) 11 (for the time).

If you add up the numbers for the date she went into the hospital, you get 11.

Like the red ear syndrome, we don’t know why it happens, but it happens.