I know a guy, a guy to whom things happen. Taken individually, each misstep, each misalignment of circumstance, is not terribly unusual. It is the pattern, the patchwork history of tumbles, stumbles, and falls occuring over and over and over again that lends him a Charlie Brown like aura of futility.
His recent trip serves as a case in point. It begins when he hurries off from work because he's already late for the airport. In his haste, he forgets his cellphone charger. Realizing his mistake, he grabs his car charger to take with him. Somewhere along the way, the car charger vanishes.
His phone's battery has been historically iffy (though I believe he did get a new battery recently). Arriving and realizing he has no way to charge his phone, he takes comfort knowing his mother has a universal charger. He relaxes, secure in the knowledge he'll be able to get a charge once he gets to his mother's.
Somewhere between when he landed and when he got to his mother's, he was able to charge his phone. However, once he gets to his mother's, he found that she'd gotten rid of the universal charger. Now he's living on borrowed charge.
The night before his return, he spends the night at a friend's. The friend will drive him to the airport for his flight the next day. The flight is early. Very eary. He'll have to get up at 4:30AM. He'll need to set an alarm.
Set an alarm where? On his phone.
The same phone wheezing on a stale charge like an old man after walking up a long flight of stairs. That phone. He sets the alarm. He sets it and goes to bed.
Problem #1: he sets the wrong alarm, the Monday through Friday alarm. This is Saturday.
Problem #2: his body senses something is wrong and wakes him up repeatedly. However, sometime while he slept, the phone lost any signal and wouldn't display the time. In the darkened house, he can't find a clock.
It's 5:30, an hour late, when he is finally roused. He wakes up his friend. His friend does not sense the urgency. It's almost 6 before they leave the house.
Almost in sight of the airport, his friend inexplicably stops the car to get a coffee. He sees his flight take off as he gets to the terminal.
He doesn't get back home until after 8 PM that night.
Look at his story and wonder, wonder at each point at which things turn wrong, at which an in-retrospect bad decision is made, at which an oddity of circumstance bends the action. The tangle of what-ifs are amazing and terrible: if he hadn't forgotten his charger, if he hadn't lost his car charger, if his mother hadn't sold her charger, if he had trusted his instincts to wake up, etc., etc.
I can say this without hesitation: this is not the first (nor I fear the last) of these episodes in which this man is the willing or unwilling star. Yet I know of no one else to whom these wild tumbles of fate are inflicted (or self-inflicted). He exists in an almost parallel world of strangeness in which unintended consequences are king and in which decisions unravel through the unlikeliest of threads.
I am witness to this looking-glass life. I am witness and I am wary, lest I be drawn into that wierd world. Let me never forget my cellphone charger.
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