Friday, November 7, 2008

Warning: Deep Thoughts Ahead

As a regular consumer on Amazon.com, they often send me helpful suggestions on what books they think I should read next. Most of the time I ignore them, because hey, Amazon - you're not the boss of me. This morning however, their suggestion intrigued me enough so that I'm pretty sure I'll put it on my want list. The book is called The Time of My Life by Allison Winn Scotch and it's about a woman who's kind of just floating along in a fairly unhappy marriage and life, but by some magical interlude gets transferred back seven years into her past, allowing her to be armed with foresight when she has to make the big decisions like quitting her job, getting married, etc.

I really didn't read further into it and for all I know it could be the fluffy kind of chick-lit I go to great lengths to avoid.

But I've been thinking about it all morning. I love time-travel stories and I also love stories about fate and the controlling or changing of. There isn't a person alive who hasn't asked themselves the question "What if?" It's why so many people (including myself) thought The Butterfly Effect was an insanely cool movie, even though it was done pretty much all wrong and is kind of stupid on the surface. The thought of something as small as a butterfly flapping its wing having massive consequences in the world...ooh, gives me the chilly willies just thinking about it.

Why am I sitting here today, home on a Friday in my house in Columbia, SC? How did I get from high school graduation to here? Well, if I skip a bunch of stuff that nobody wants to read and I don't feel like writing, I can simplify it to a couple of easy steps.

1. After graduation, I waited a year to go away to college so I could go to Auburn with my then-boyfriend, who was a year younger than me. (I've always liked my boys young apparently)

2. After a terrible year with him, I moved back home and went to work at the town's newspaper where I met and immediately became friends with April.

3. April introduced me to Delorme and I quickly fell in serious like with him.

4. We hung out for a year or so and became boyfriend/girlfriend after a Thanksgiving trip to here to visit his dad and family, and decided we liked it enough to move here.

5. That summer, we moved here and lived together for a few years. Then we broke up. I thought about moving back to Inverness again since that's where a lot of my family and friends still were, but by then I loved it here so I stayed.

6. I lived with a roommate until my sister moved here after graduating college.

7. I'd been working out of town and was burnt out from the 80 mile commute, so applied for a job here at USC.

8. The night I got the job, me, my sister and a friend went out to celebrate. I didn't know it at the time, but Brian also lived here but worked out of town. Because of a freak snowstorm in North Carolina where he was working, he happened to be home on a night he wouldn't normally be. He decided to go out with some friends he'd never gone out with before, to a place he'd never been before. The same place me, my sister and my friend were. Which so happens to be Wings & Ale in Lexington, SC - holla!

Damn, now I want some wings. And ale.

9. Brian and I met.

10. Love (lust) at first sight.

The End. (Or IS it, bwahaha!) (Well shit, I hope it's not "The End," now that I think about how that sounds)

So, there it is. Ten easy steps from graduation night to now. Of course I'm skipping a lot of stuff, both because twenty-one years is a lot to write about and also because some of it is not meant for mass consumption, but the basics remain. Soooo...where would I be right now if one little thing happened differently? Obviously I have no idea. Just pondering it makes my brain hurt. Would I be better off? Worse? A roadie for Aerosmith? I don't know. But it's kind of fun to think about.

I'm pretty sure I'm buying that book. Probably today.

4 comments:

Whiskeymarie said...

I think about this a LOT. I have very, very elaborate daydreams where I start over as a teenager, but armed with all I know now. In my daydreams, I end up wealthy, driven, drop-dead gorgeous and sometimes famous.
In reality, I think I'd just find new ways to end up in the same place I am now.
I'm fine with that, I like my life, but if someone ever develops a formula to actually go back in time I'm totally doing it.

Anonymous said...

I know a lot of people say they wouldn't change anything, but there are certainly things I would if given the chance.

I'd like to read the long version of the story if you ever feel like telling it. :)

I could go for some wings too...

Anonymous said...

It's fascinating the very small and seemingly insignificant occurrences that can change our lives completely. I think about this quite a lot actually, which is probably why I vacillate horribly when there is a decision to be made.

Anonymous said...

I think we all think back and look at decisions we made that brought us to where we are right now. The funny thing is that your Brian has a similar list that put him there on that night too...