The other day I had an epiphany. Through a series of bizarre and unlikely personal events I discovered that things which have always seemed obvious, black and white, beyond all reasonable doubt, may in fact not be so clear-cut after all. This was quite a painful and humbling experience.

It was on this said other day that my Facebook status, acting independently and with malice aforethought, updated itself to tell the world that I was visiting Hobart’s premier (ok, only) strip club, the Mens Gallery. Now I know what you are thinking – the Facebook status said you were at the Mens Gallery because you were at the Mens Gallery. That’s certainly what I’d think if I were you and you were the poor schmuck who’s social networking application is seemingly hell bent on trashing your reputation (such as it is). But as Richard Dawkins is my witness, I wasn’t there. Really.

Now we’ve all read stories from time to time that stretch credulity further than the elastic in Jordan’s bra-strap.

For instance:

There’s the one from the hospital ER where the patient claimed he had innocently fallen on to a bathroom utensil after slipping off his toilet seat.

‘I’ve just moved into a new property so I haven’t got carpets. My bathroom floor was a bit wet so I slipped on the toilet seat. Right next to the seat was a toilet brush and I landed literally on it.’ Riiiiiiiiight.

Or the apocryphal young boy who hasn’t done his maths homework and tells his teacher that the dog ate it. Uh huh … just go to the headmaster’s office sonny for a good caning.

And then there’s the high profile entrepreneur who miraculously loses his memory just at the very time that his empire falls down and the Feds start asking difficult questions. Hmmm, yes well I’m sure temporary amnesia is becoming more and more of a problem nowadays … not.

Or Tony Abbott claiming that he always/often/sometimes/once/might one day act in a way that puts the interests of Australia before his own political interests. Keep dreaming Tony, keep dreaming.

Up until this point I’ve always gone to sleep at night comfortable in the knowledge that these sorts of stories are a pack of crap. Until this point. But my naturally sceptical nature has now been shaken to its very core. Now I struggle with the possibilities; I evaluate and re-examine the intricacies and nuances of each argument, each tid-bit of information, looking for signs that it could in some weird parallel universe be true. All because of what happened to me.

Looking back at the remarkable convergence of flukes and coincidences, I still don’t believe it myself. Even as I’m writing this I find myself shaking my head.

So what happened?

Well, I ducked out of work (with full permission, let’s put that to bed right now) around 2.30pm so as to go collect my child from an appointment. After some logistical manoeuvres not here relevant I picked up my child at about 3.15pm. On the way to taking them home I stopped off for less than five minutes at a health food shop some 300 metres up the road from the adult male entertainment establishment. After transacting my business at the said health food shop I proceeded home in (what I at the time thought to be) an orderly and unremarkable manner. When I arrived home less than ten minutes later I happened to check my Facebook status and was shocked, nay gobsmacked, to find that my Facebook status was telling the world that ‘[name withheld] was at Mens Gallery Hobart’. Now how can I possibly explain that?

Now those of you that are Facebook aficionados will know that these status updates don’t just pop up by themselves. You actually have to hit a ‘check in’ button on your mobile Facebook page. But, I wasn’t there and I didn’t do it, honestly!

So how did this happen?

As feeble and as unlikely as it sounds, here is my explanation.

At some point between exiting the health food shop, getting in my car, and driving past the offending venue, my inner thigh (or possibly my outer thigh, I can’t be certain) conspired to bump in some way against the ‘on’ button on my phone, activate the phone by somehow pulling the touch-screen ‘ring’, flick the phone onto the Facebook app, navigate to my profile page, and select the ‘check in’ button, all at the single precise nano-second which would allow the complex and convoluted triangulation process (via satellite communication) to calculate the GPS reading to put me at the front bar of the girly club.

How unlucky is that??

Believe me when I say that I’ve wracked my brain trying to come up with other explanations for this. I even rang Craig Thomson for his insights. However, believe it or not, this explanation was the most feasible that I could find.

After this experience, never again shall I let patent absurdity and incontrovertible truth make me arbitrarily dismiss the half-baked, ostensibly piss-weak excuses offered by accused culprits or embarrassed out-patients. I will give the laws of physics and anatomy due consideration, but will nonetheless give panicked and desperate ramblings and straw-clutchings equal time. As I have now learned, anything is possible, even the almost entirely impossible and utterly implausible.

Having said that, I’d still need convincing about Tony Abbott.