My job requires me to do a lot of "Root Cause Analysis" of problems. At Saturday's engagement dinner for my daughter the father of the groom asked me how either of us had gotten to this point. That got me thinking about minor choices in life that lead to major outcomes years later.
In my case my father had hemorrhoid surgery and was stuck in the house in December of 1977. When one of the cows went into labor and the calf was breach it fell to me to pull the calf. Christmas eve, about 0 degrees, in a barn full of frozen cow shit with my left arm in a cow all the way to the shoulder, I made a decision to leave the farm behind as soon as possible and never look back. That led to the Navy, which led to training in the Adirondacks, which lead to a night of drinking in Saratoga Springs where I found a 19 year old girl so drunk that she was lost in a revolving door.
36 years later the daughter of all those chance meetings will get married to a kid who is the first in his family to be born in the US.
"...the street finds its own uses for things"
In my case my father had hemorrhoid surgery and was stuck in the house in December of 1977. When one of the cows went into labor and the calf was breach it fell to me to pull the calf. Christmas eve, about 0 degrees, in a barn full of frozen cow shit with my left arm in a cow all the way to the shoulder, I made a decision to leave the farm behind as soon as possible and never look back. That led to the Navy, which led to training in the Adirondacks, which lead to a night of drinking in Saratoga Springs where I found a 19 year old girl so drunk that she was lost in a revolving door.
36 years later the daughter of all those chance meetings will get married to a kid who is the first in his family to be born in the US.
"...the street finds its own uses for things"