CAVEAT #1: Ok, I hope to find something political in the following, but if I don't please take it in the spirit that it is meant, which is, "one life slice with peperoni and onions".
CAVEAT #2: I don't believe in God.
Now, I DO believe in a spirit and a larger order, but I don't believe there's a person-like-being keeping score and exacting justice. I just don't.
And yet...
...there's something I'm really hoping for at the moment. I've just shot a pilot for a new TV show that I'm quite proud of and I'm hoping it'll get picked up. I'll get an answer in a little over a week. Now, in the grand scheme of the universe this ranks, in importance, right up there with "regular or super-size?" but y'know I'm me and with me things about me take on disproportionate me weight.
Anyway, the take away is that IF the pilot is picked up I'll be busy on Friday May 29th.
IF NOT? Coffee anyone?
It is with this in mind that I wandered up to the sign up sheet for my almost 7 year-old daughter Josephine's conference to realize that there are TWO SLOTS available on Friday May 29th.
The first slot is at 8:30 in the morning, which is a pain in the ass because it means we'd have to drag my 4 year-old son along.
The second is at 10:30 in the morning, which is a pain in the ass because if I assume the best... I'll be working on this thing I want so badly.
And this is where me-of-he-with-no-God begins to succumb to magical.
I grab a pencil.
I stare.
I pause.
I start to sweat.
I choose 10:30, because I don't want to seem (if even only to myself) presumptuous about the outcome.
I posit that if I choose 8:30AM some force somewhere will know that I've decided I'm going to get what I want and then that force will punish me for assuming I have any power to decide my fate.
Think cosmic shedenfreude.
But then... I stop.
This is insane. If I get what I want I'll just have to either undo all this at the last moment (messing with teachers and other parents) or miss Jo's conference, which is unacceptable to me.
So I cross out 10:30 and choose 8:30.
There, done.
But...I can't do it. I can't take the chance. I know I'll never be able to get it out of my head that if things don't go my way, that .00001% of my fate will have been sealed when I ASSUMED VICTORY.
And so I go back and cross out 8:30AM and put my name back at 10:30AM...
...which is when I can feel the hot breath on the back of my neck.
The hot breath of two other parents (along with Jo herself) who have walked up behind me and witnessed my descent into magical thinking.
They see all my scratch-outs as well as my name g o
i n g
d o w n off the
line.
They can see the terror in my eyes. The sweat in my pits. They look down to see the bemused confusion on Josephine's face.
"You alright, Jeff?" one mother says with that "could it be drugs" look.
"No... No... I'm clearly not," I respond.
***
The political tie... tangential at best, forced more likely... is that my life as a Democrat (and a Cub fan) has ties to this small piece of "all in this togetherness", which, when applied to issues of actual SHARED IMPORTANCE, asks us all to consider a cosmic balence whenever possible to do right by the whole.
That... or I suspect its just a big heaping bowl full of, "Boom-boom ain't it great to be crazy. Boom boom ain't it great to be nuts like us!"