Happenstance

A few weeks ago, three college friends of mine and I left the northeast on what we nicknamed the Ultimate Road Trip 2: New Orleans. A few days before that trip, a coworker of mine gave me a $5 bill and asked me to pick up a King’s Cake baby for her. Having never heard of the baby or the cake before her request, I needed an explanation and description of what it was exactly I’d be buying. And then, for whatever reason, while down in the Big Easy, a place apparently known for King’s Cakes, I had difficulty finding the baby and ended up leaving the south without one.

Considering I had never heard of a King’s Cake or a King’s Cake baby before this trip, and because I had had such difficulty locating the baby in the city in which I should have easily found it, as I walked into my home with luggage in tow, I was blown away at the discovery of a King’s Cake baby sitting on the table by the door. The night before my return home, my roommate attended a party, ate a piece of cake, and found the baby. Not wanting to keep it, she gladly let me take it to my appreciative coworker.

While on our road trip, my friends and I determined that even if one of us had chosen not to attend our university, all of us would have met each other eventually anyway. This reminded me of one of my all-time favorite pastimes: the autobiographical, chronological, six-degrees-of-separation game. In other words, who did I have to meet?, what did I have to do?, what did I have to say?, where do I have to go?, etc, to get to where I am standing at this exact moment. For example:

If my family never moved to Plattsburgh, NY while I was in junior high, I never would have met my friend Ferris who later introduced me to Sloan whose presence at a nearby college made it easier for me to choose my college out of state. Had I not chosen this college, I never would have met The Redhead who put in a good word for me with The Gay Editor who hired me on the school paper and later introduced me to Hugh, who, after college, introduced me to Cornell Girl, who, on a hot, sunny, playful, summer day, took my picture while I slid down a playground slide. Had she not taken that picture?……you get the point.

It’s fun to look back on your life at the seemingly important moments and the easily forgotten subtle moments to find that the choices and events in your life are never as clear-cut as you ever thought they were. At the time, moving to Plattsburgh because of my dad’s new job was the most devastating moment of my young life. I lost touch with Ferris as soon as I left for college and while at college, I never once visited Sloan. I was nearly too shy to accept an invitation to dinner with my roommate, his girlfriend, and The Redhead but went anyway…because I was starving. The Gay Editor hired me because The Redhead’s recommendation was misleading and slightly untrue. And though I had fun that day, Cornell Girl soon flaked on me and, per my usual behavior, I cursed all women.

My question today is, are all of these choices and events in your life fate, or are they simply random and sometimes serendipitous coincidences? And regardless, is it ever possible during the moment to realize the important role that moment will play in your life 5 years later? I submit that we’ll never know. No matter how big or how small these moments were at the time, or how ultimately important or unimportant these choices become through time, though all of these events may seemingly culminate to affect your life on an unassuming Wednesday in mid-February, you’ll never have a grasp of how important or unimportant they’ll be on the chronological map of your life. And that’s OK with me because, to quote a recent sci-fi movie, “what happened, happened, and couldn’t have happened any other way.”