The Night a Famous '90s TV Star Joined Us Around the Campfire
- Cortney Martinelli
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Explore the wonder...
A longtime yoga student shared an extraordinary personal story with me that I'm not at liberty to tell in full.
Not because I don't want to.
But because it isn't mine to tell.
Even so, what happened afterward became part of my story.
And that part, I can share.
For the past couple of years, every Thursday, a man—let's call him Steve—has come to yoga at SHINE.
Steve is a veteran, an adventurer, and one of the most interesting people I've ever met. He also has a wonderfully dry sense of humor, which means half the time I'm never quite sure whether he's telling me a story or setting me up for a punchline.
A few nights ago, Steve came to Paddleboard Yoga.
After class, everyone was packing up and lingering by the water when he walked over to me and asked an odd question.
"What's your favorite TV show from the '90s?"
I answered almost instantly.
I won't tell you which show I said because that answer would reveal details that aren't mine to share. Just know that, at the time, it felt like an ordinary question with an ordinary answer.
It wasn't.
Steve smiled.
"Interesting."
"I have a story," he said.
"Oh?" I replied. "Tell me."
"It's kind of a long story."
"We ain't got nothing but time."
He laughed.
"My shorts are soaked from paddleboarding. I should probably get home."
We stood there for another moment.
Then he looked at me.
"Alright," he said. "I'm going to tell you."
Before he began, we walked over to his truck so he could grab his phone. He told me I'd need a few pictures to understand the story.
As he started talking, I immediately assumed this was one of Steve's famous jokes. If you know Steve, you know exactly what I mean. He has this way of telling a story with a completely straight face, and just when I'm fully invested, he'll grin and say, "That was a joke."
So after a minute or two, I interrupted him.
"Wait..."
"Is this a joke?"
He looked at me completely seriously.
"No."
"This is a true story."
And with that, he began.
He told me about a lifelong friend who had suffered a stroke a few years ago.
He and another close friend had traveled out of state to visit him in the hospital. Sadly, their friend passed away from complications following the stroke.
After his death, strange things began happening.
For Steve, it was the number 222.
For the other friend who had visited the hospital, it was 111.
Not once or twice.
Over and over again for the past seven years.
He told me about boarding an airplane on his way home from the hospital and discovering he was in Row 22, Seat 2.
He showed me a picture from a trip to Paris where the rental car's license plate read 222 D 1167. When he sent the photo to his other friend, they noticed something Steve had completely missed. The remaining numbers on the plate pointed to their friend's birth month and birth year.
Then there was the story that made both of them scratch their heads.
While Steve and his friend were out on an adventure together without their phones, a photograph of a four-wheeler was somehow sent from his friend's phone to the sister of the man who had passed away.
Except...
No one had sent it.
Neither of them even had their phones with them.
When Steve saw the picture, he immediately recognized it. As kids, he'd accidentally driven a four-wheeler into his friend's mother's house.
Story after story.
Coincidence after coincidence.
I'll admit it.
Even then, I still wasn't sure where this story was going.
Then Steve looked at me and said something I wasn't expecting.
"The reason I'm telling you this..."
"...is because you're part of the story."
I laughed.
"What do you mean I'm part of the story?"
He explained that a few months earlier, he'd read one of my newsletters where I mentioned being interviewed by The Telepathy Tapes.
That caught his attention because someone had recently mentioned the podcast to him during a conversation about autism.
Curious, he looked it up.
Without really thinking about it, he clicked on Season 2, Episode 22.
There was that number again.
The title of the episode was Signs from the Other Side.
The episode explored stories of connection beyond what we can easily explain, and suddenly Steve found himself wondering if somehow I belonged in a story he'd been quietly carrying around for years.
But he couldn't bring himself to tell me.
It felt too strange.
So he kept it to himself.
Until that evening after Paddleboard Yoga.
Then Steve told me something I hadn't seen coming.
The television show I'd named at the very beginning of our conversation wasn't random to him.
In fact, it was the reason he'd asked the question in the first place.
For months, he'd been carrying this story, wondering whether he should ever tell me. When I answered with that particular show, he took it as the nudge he'd been waiting for.
Then he held his phone out toward me.
"This is my friend," he said.
I looked down.
I recognized the face immediately.
Not because I knew him personally...
but because he was the person I'd unknowingly referenced just moments earlier when Steve asked me about my favorite television show from the 90s.
I looked back at Steve.
"Wait...what"
I knew who this was...
He smiled.
I stared at the picture again.
"I don't understand."
"We grew up together," he said quietly.
"We've known each other since we were six years old."
"We were like brothers."
Then he added the sentence that suddenly made the entire conversation click into place.
"The friend I've been telling you about..."
"...was him."
I won't share his name.
That part of the story belongs to Steve.
But I will tell you this.
The person in the photograph was someone millions of people would recognize instantly.
And somehow, Steve and I found ourselves standing in a parking lot after yoga talking about lifelong friendships, synchronicity, and the mysterious ways life sometimes seems to weave itself together.
Here's the part I keep coming back to.
The television show that came to mind wasn't actually my favorite from the '90s.
If you'd asked me that same question on almost any other day, I probably would've answered Friends. Maybe Seinfeld.
Yet that night, without thinking, a completely different answer came out of my mouth.
Why?
I honestly don't know.
We talked for a few more minutes, and I told him I'd be happy to help however I could. I also shared that I've learned not to dismiss experiences simply because I can't explain them.
Then Steve headed home.
I thought that was the end of the story.
It wasn't.
About an hour later, my husband, our friends Jess and Bret, and I were sitting around a campfire on the pool deck. The sun had long since disappeared, the sky was dark, and the only light came from the fire dancing in front of us and the soft glow of the gazebo lights behind me.
As we sat there talking, I realized no one else had heard the story Steve had shared with me after Paddleboard Yoga. So I started telling them everything that had happened.
Little did I know...
the story wasn't over yet.
I was sitting with my back toward our gazebo, where we have a string of solar lights.
As I was talking, the lights behind me began flickering rapidly.
Not blinking on a timer.
Not fading in and out.
Just flickering.
My husband noticed it first.
Then Bret.
Then Jess.
I couldn't see any of it because my back was turned.
At one point, Bret pulled up the theme song from the television show we'd been talking about.
As the music played, the lights behind me started flashing in rhythm with the song.
"Bret, stop," I laughed.
"No," he said.
"Turn around."
I turned to look.
The lights instantly became solid.
No flickering.
Nothing.
I turned back toward the fire.
Instantly...
"They're doing it again!" Bret said.
I spun back around.
Solid.
Again.
I turned back toward the fire.
"They're blinking again!"
This happened four times.
Every time I turned to look at the lights, they stopped - instantly.
Every time I faced the fire, they started flickering again.
Finally, Jess looked at me and said,
"Cortney...What are you doing?"
I remember answering honestly.
"I don't know."
And for just a moment...
I got scared.
Not because I thought something bad was happening.
But because whatever was happening felt so incredibly real, it took my breath away.
Since that night, I've told this story to a handful of people.
Almost every single one has responded the same way.
"...What happened next?"
I always smile.
Because that's the thing.
I don't know.
At least not yet.
Maybe that's why this story has stayed with me.
We love stories that tie themselves up neatly.
We want the ending.
We want the explanation.
We want to know what it all meant.
But sometimes life doesn't work that way.
Sometimes it leaves us with a cliffhanger.
The next morning, the fear was gone.
What remained was wonder.
Maybe it was coincidence. Yet I don't believe in coincidences.
Maybe it was timing. Yet I believe in perfect timing.
Maybe it was faulty solar lights. Yet they remain unblinking to this day.
Maybe it was something I'll never fully explain.
I honestly don't know.
What I do know is this.
At SHINE, we spend a lot of time talking about connection.
About slowing down.
About becoming present.
About cultivating intuition.
About noticing what we might otherwise miss.
I've found that the quieter life becomes, the more I notice.
Sometimes it's beauty.
Sometimes it's a nudge that changes the direction of my day.
Sometimes it's a connection between people that seems impossible to explain.
And sometimes...
it's a mystery.
I don't know why Steve felt compelled to finally ask me that question - that night.
I don't know why that particular television show came to mind instead of Friends or Seinfeld.
I don't know why the gazebo lights behaved the way they did around our campfire.
And I don't know if this story is over.
In fact...
I have a feeling it isn't.
Maybe months from now I'll understand.
Or maybe I won't.
Either way, I am so grateful for that night, because I expeirenced a great sense of wonder for life.
And realized the moment we become convinced of anything is the moment we stop noticing the quiet wonders that have been surrounding us all along.
If there's one thing I hope we cultivate at SHINE, it isn't certainty.
It's wonder.
Because sometimes the most meaningful moments in our lives aren't the ones we can explain.
They're the ones that quietly remind us the world may be bigger, deeper, and more connected than we ever imagined.
xo,
Cortney
Explore the wonder with me...
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