9 / 50 books. 18% done!

Mark Twain is the shiz. Always has been. This is post going bankrupt, losing his daughter and wife and getting very bitter and obsessed with death Twain but its good none the less.

The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg is one of those Twain stories that everyone seems to have heard of, but no one actually knows what it’s about, which is odd to me since it’s about a man that corrupts a town called Hadleyburg and I feel he was pretty upfront about that.  I think it would make a very good musical. I wonder if someone has already written one. . .

There are two other stories in this book, The Invalid and The White Elephant. The elephant story was just weird and dark for no good reason, but The Invalid was one of the funniest things I have ever read. It’s about two men stuck in a room with what they think is a dead body (it’s really a box full of guns) and a piece of Limburger cheese (the smell of which they think is the smell of the body rotting). The way he describes the smell and the way the men react is just so very funny. Also, that was not a spoiler so don’t get mad at me. The narrator tells you that info in the first paragraph so I didn’t ruin anything!

I just had a totally, mind blowing epiphany the other night that kept me awake for several hours thinking about it. I realize that this may not seem as mind blowing to you but it really messed with my head. My husband was not in the least bit phased by this so I am going to write about it here in the hopes that at least someone will pretend to humor me.

You hear people say things like "everything happens for a reason" all the time and most of the time you figure that is just something people say when bad stuff happens to make you feel better about it. But most of the time they are referring to really big things. I just realized that there was a very small thing that totally changed the entire course of my life. It also made me realize the chain of seemingly unrelated events that got me to that small moment. I think I could actually trace the chain back even farther but let’s just look at the last few steps.

Cause: When I was a senior in college, one of the first days back to school, one of my male friends told me about a fight he had with his girlfriend.
Effect: I started to think that their relationship was in trouble. I was secretly happy about this.

Cause: This same friend’s brother was rushed to the hospital the next day because his lung collapsed.
Effect: My friend spent a little over 12 hours hanging out with me because he was worried / depressed he wasn’t home for his brother and I was keeping him distracted. During this conversation, he told me all about how in love he was with his girlfriend and how she was the one and they were going to get married because it was destiny. He made a comment about their getting together being destiny and then compared it to the fact that he and I were such good friends when, by rights, we never should have met at all but were "randomly" assigned as partners in this club we both belonged to.

Now here comes the really small part.

Part one is based on one of my many character flaws. I repeat myself. Constantly. I know its really annoying but I just cannot help it. I forget who I told what so I end up telling the same stories over and over.

Part two is that this guy and I were not "randomly" assigned to be partners. I asked to have him as my partner because, in a lifetime before we were friends, I had a crush on him. This might also be some kind of character flaw but we’ll leave that for the ages to decide.

Part three is that we (being my friends) had talked about the story of part two and joked about it so many times that it seemed like everyone on earth knew.

So I assumed his reference to destiny regarding him and I was a joke since (part 1) I assumed I had already told him that story (part 2) several times and because it was already (part 3) common knowledge. And when his face showed that this information was totally new to him, I panicked and blurted out that I had requested him because I had a crush on him and kinda did for a while (I did not go as far as to say I still did, which, of course, was also true.

So, in essence, that one blurted sentence where I assumed I was just repeating myself again for the 5 millionth time changed the course of my entire life. Why? Because his response, which I will remember for the rest of my life ("This is one of those things that you find out that changes everything. Any one of my other female friends could have said that to me and it wouldn’t have made any difference but you are totally different."), set off a chain of events that have truly forever altered whatever course my life had been going to take before that moment. I would never have said anything or referenced it at all had not the chain of events brought us to the exact circumstance and moment in time where we happened to be talking about how we met in the context of destiny.

That is an insanely scary thought and sends off a whole chain of "what ifs" in my head.

Where I live, what my house is like, what I do for a living, who my children are, every family event, and every moment for the rest of my entire life, for that matter, are all tied to that one blurted sentence.

My husband was non-plussed by this because, he maintains, it isn’t as important as I make it out to be. He still believes in destiny and thinks that we will would have gotten married even if I had never accidentally confessed to him that night.

All the same, I cannot help but think I inadvertently changed my entire life that night. For the better? I cannot see how it would be otherwise. But its very weird to think how any given second can change your entire future.

This is just a celebratory post because Qumana works with Blogger again! Yipee!