Bryan killed a butterfly tonight...

As a 10-12-year-old I was influenced (affected? damaged?) by ironic tales of destiny versus free will with undertones of the supernatural and a 30-minute (or less than 100-page) plot line. Rod Serling, Hitchcock, Ray Bradbury, Asimoff  - that kind of stuff. Brent could read the entire Hobbit series, consuming in 500-page increments. When I picked up a book - I'd first look at how many pages there were before I decided whether to  read it.
I got through the Chronicles of Narnia only because C.S. (S.?) Lewis wrote a bunch of thin, 150-page books instead of one, epic 750 page door stop (like the ones next to Brent's bed).

One short story that I still remember was a science fiction tale where some time travelers went back a billion years. One of them strayed from the path after he was warned not to and accidentally stepped on a butterfly. That changed destiny and when he got back to his time - the "other guy" won the presidential election and it was bad and it was all because he stepped on the butterfly and started some chain reaction that propelled a billion years of alternate universe.

That reminds me - in a future blog I'll tell the story about how Kim got an A+ in a college physics class for presenting on time travel by plagiarizing the scene from Back to the Future where Emmet Brown draws the alternate time line on the chalk board. I think that physics professor must have had an infatuation similar to the french guy in my previous blog who took english lessons so he could so he could praise her in e-mail...

I've gotten way of course now (but I have to put Kim stuff in or her family quits reading)... let me get back to my story from tonight...

Kim is in Melbunn (no 'r' sound) tonight so I'm by myself for the night. As I was sitting in the quiet and watching the waves in the distance I remembered that someone back home recently asked me how warm the water was. I didn't know. I haven't even stuck my toe in the water. "That's weird" I thought to myself. I've been to the beach multiple times. I take a ferry almost every day. I could practically reach down and touch the water multiple times a day... weird.

Then I thought back and started remembering the different abstract things that happened whenever I was around the water (got new shoes on - don't want sand in them, my hands are full of shopping bags, the game is on TV back home let's go...). Things that kept me from taking 10 steps over to stick my toe in. Then my Twilight Zone 10-year-old imagination started to take over... this is actually what happened earlier this evening. I sat by myself and pondered ...

Oh my God. This could be pre-determined destiny for me. I'm going to spend whatever time I have living here and a series of ironic and pre-destined events will prevent me from ever touching the water. I'll get summoned back home unexpectedly and ...

and decades from now I'll be a shriveled and frail old man. On my death bed I'll remember, and I'll come out of my coma and whisper ... "... I never touched the water". Kim will be by my side taking care of me and she has waited days for me to wake up and she leans closer and says "what did you say dear? what can I do?"  "I <cough cough> never <swallow and gulp, Kim wets my lips with a damp rag> touched  the water".


Kim has spent her days by my side and solving my problems - so she spends the last of our savings and charters a one-way flight on a special life-support air ambulance with a wheel chair. She flies me to Australia and wheels me onto the beach, pushing with all of her strength through the deep sand, and in my last act of free will I dip my wrinkled and blue toe into the water. 


Kim, now penniless with no way home smiles. Because all she cares about is solving my last wish. 


The sun sets directly over our former home in the background and the credits roll....










Screw This! I muttered to myself as I snapped out of my dream imagination state and back to reality. I'm going to go walk to the beach RIGHT NOW and get in the water and put an end to this nonsense.

So I got up,  put my shoes on and took off to the beach, smiling at how vivid my little story got to be in my mind.

As I approached the beach I saw a Ben and Jerry's on the corner, steps from the beach. I'd never noticed it before. I decided that a cup of Ben and Jerry's was just what I needed tonight - so I went in and got a cup of ice cream and decided to eat it on the sea wall across the street. Probably 15 steps from the water. I didn't want to get my shoes wet, but my hands were full of ice cream stuff, so I decided to finish the ice cream so my hands would be free to hold my shoes when I would go to the water and defeat destiny by stomping on my figurative butterfly.

I finished the ice cream and I saw a trash bin behind me. So I got up and walked 20 steps away from the beach to throw away my cup. I had dripped some on my hands and they were sticky - so I noticed a rinsing station another 20 steps  further away from the beach. So I go rinse my hands off. With my hands clean and my belly full (and my feet still as dry as when I stepped off of the plane last month) - you know what I did next? I shit you not. I started walking back up the hill to go home. Never once sticking my toe in the water that was just a few feet away. I'm not making this up.

At the second cross walk I remembered my original mission and realized that destiny was winning and that maybe, in fact, I had no free will. I should give up. There is nothing I can do.

With all of the concentration I could muster I turned around and headed back toward the water. I didn't make eye contact with anyone and a car honked at me for stepping out into the street - but I made it to the water.

And as the first wave rolled over my feet and I changed the course of my destiny -  I remembered that I had my iPhone with me. Hey, this is blog material!

Now anyone who has read Bradbury or watched Night Gallery on 70's television knows that this is how the story would have ended ....

The spot where I took this picture tonight was, in fact, the exact spot where 50 years from now Kim was destined to wheel me for my last act of free will. Since the gods of irony and destiny do not lose - a deadly box jellyfish stings me and I die there. Alone. No Kim. No smile and sunset and credits and music. Cheating myself out of the next 50 years that I was supposed to have...