Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Dodging Bullets, Or Wishing They'd Hit

The great thing about friends when you're a writer is that they will always be a great source of ideas and inspiration, whether they mean to be or not.  (Yes, in case you're following along on the home game, I should be working on my book cover right now and this is my form of constructive procrastination.)  Last night I was fishing through my list of Facebook friends in what turned out to be a vain attempt to find someone to set my buddy up with on a blind date.  Instead what I got was literally one massive stinky cheese-laden moment of reverie induced by an old Little Texas song playing on the radio:  "What Might Have Been."

Looking down the list of Facebook people that I still know very well and those I would barely recognize if their I-guess-Jennie-Craig-doesn't-work-for-everyone ass literally ran me over in the grocery store parking lot with a cart full of Little Debbie, it occurred to me for just a moment how many different roads we all start down at one point or another in our lives.  If the theoretical physics is correct and alternate universes are actually generated every time we make a decision in our lives then it only makes logical sense that somewhere there exists a version of you that ended up married to every single person you've ever slept with.  For some of you that may not be a big deal. But then there are those of you out there whose slutty little ass is probably responsible for some Roddenbury-worthy holes in the space-time continuum.  Based on the whittled down bed posts of some of the world class crotch monkeys I've known in my life, to be honest I'm not surprised there aren't more bad Fringe episode holes in the universe created by the sheer weight of all those alternate realities!

It also flashed across my little brain that there were a few individuals on that list of people that once upon a time I was in a relationship with in some form or another.  Looking back now at some of my misadventures I count myself lucky to be where I am in my life and would like to think for the most part that things have worked out the way they were 'supposed to' (if I believed in predestination, but we won't start that argument today).  I also know that there are a lot of people in this world that are critically unhappy with their lives for whatever reason.  I know that all of us have spiderwebs of connections out there with more people than we care to admit.  It's just a theory but I wonder, for all those unhappy people, if somewhere along their spiderweb may actually lie that happiness they are after.  I wonder if they have figured out that one 'magical' decision they made that led them to where they are.  I wonder if that decision is irreversible.

The great thing about being a writer is that everyone, and I do mean everyone, has a story.  If you're happy in your life take a second and look back at how you got here.  It might make you even more appreciative.  If you're unhappy, maybe you can figure out where you screwed up and try to fix it.  If you're insane and smarter than the rest of us, go build a machine and jump to whatever alternate dimension you can find where you're happy and just stay there.  I've watched too much Syfy.  Depressed geniuses scare me.

It's okay, we promise to miss you.  And yes, you can borrow my socket set.

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