How Did I Get Here

Some of this stuff starts out first on Facebook.  Some of it starts as a note when I am doing a writing exercise.  This one I am not sure if it got up on Facebook but I know it didn't get posted here.  I will thus post it here.  If you want to follow me on Facebook I am Rufus.Butterworth.9 Just send me a friend request. 

Crafting this note of thanks requires a little bit of thought.  It sounds weird saying that I am thankful for mistakes but I am.  The artful way to phrase this feeling is to so I am thankful for serendipitous events.  Serendipity = mistakes that end well.

In the God’s honest truth I NEVER, NEVER meant to end up a Michigander.  But I am here now and I hold this place dear as if it were where I was born. It is a beautiful place and the people are caring and kind, (well except for the state legislature which is populated by self-centered Neanderthals-but that is true in every state isn’t it?)

I filled out the application for Michigan State never planning to go here.  It was free because I was a National Merit letter of commendation recipient and they promised a response in two weeks.  I filled it out as practice for the other applications I would be filling out, and for no other real reason.  Funny thing I got accepted. Funny thing I ended up going here.

My life plan had been to go to Rutgers and chase girls that I had known in high school.  (Nope didn’t have a career plan in mind, just wanted some uh company of the female persuasion) Rutgers (bag of pricks that their admission staff were) didn’t accept me until after the April deadline for notification.  Apparently my limited intellectual capacity just didn’t fit their mold.  But then again Mr. Robinson my guidance counsellor might have told a contact up there about that whole being found naked in the hallway at school thing.

Being pissed off at Rutgers I decided that going six hundred miles from home wasn’t a bad thing.  Obviously my parents wouldn’t drive six hundred miles without calling first.  Thus I stood no chance of being found asleep with a bottle of Jack Daniels in my armpit on the couch like my middle brother had been.  

The decision to send the application was a goof, a test to see what happened.  What happened introduced me to the place and people that have made me the adult (quit snickering) I am.

Oh yeah and there was that other mistake, my wife’s ulcer that wasn’t. And then there that second upset stomach that wasn’t.  Serendipity changed me.  Mistakes made me.

Mistakes, serendipity, misreading maps all have brought me great joy in this life.  I am thankful for the universe’s backhanded way of creating my wonderful life.