The best kind of happenstance

WARNING: PERSONAL INDULGENCE AHEAD. AND SOME MUSH.

As I write this blog it is Tuesday, February 18th, and at the risk of invoking a heaping helping of “we don’t care” from the readership, I must mention this is a significant date. Nine years ago on this date, you see, Dawn and I said our marriage vows and signed the paperwork with the grand old State of California to make them official.

What does that have to do with the Zombie Ranch? Depending on your perspective, I suppose everything, or nothing. Some people plan (or at least try to plan) their lives out to a greater degree than others, but happenstance still has a huge part to play. Coins flip heads or tails, pebbles lead to avalanches, butterflies stir up hurricanes, and whether or not you believe in some force or fate that guides the outcomes, the end results still occasionally leave us wondering, for better or worse: “What if…?”

Heck, Marvel Comics used to have a whole series titled just that, and there have been plenty of other works exploring the concept, such as Run Lola Run where we see the events of an afternoon end up in three very different ways just because of tiny variations like what exact second a car pulls out of an alleyway. People live or die because of those moments.

Or in our case they meet, and start dating, and move in together, and get married, and eventually start a comic. The last bit might have been the most predictable outcome, even though it still took us four years to get around to it. There was an artist searching out a writer, and a writer who had forgotten about trying to write… not exactly a shocker twist ending. But the beginnings? All sorts of decisions both big and small, all sorts of circumstances–you might say two lifetimes’ worth–jumbled together to get us where we are today.

I look at my life and can certainly see room for improvement. I absolutely have my share of regrets and bad decisions. But give me a time machine and I’ll give it right back unused, because all that happenstance, good and bad alike, conspired to hook me up with the woman I love. And I ain’t ever messing with a single butterfly of that.