Sometimes, you're just lucky. I don't want to get all “Butterfly Effect” on you, but I was examining my life the other day, and I came to a startling conclusion. Everything that I've become, almost everything that means anything to me can be traced back to one event. A statement by my parents that they probably regret. I'm sure they ended up regretting it at the time, perhaps reading this will help them understand just what it all meant. Allow me now to extrapolate from their simple offer to a fifteen year old, my entire life.
Event 1: April 28th, 1995 – My parents tell me, on my 15th birthday, that they want to help me get a car when I turn 16. They offer to match whatever money I can earn and save between now and my next birthday, and to put all of that money toward a car.
Event 2: April 1995-April 1996 – I work my butt off to maximize their offer. I helped landscape neighbors yards. I mowed, I directed fairground traffic, and I shucked corn. I saved birthday and Christmas money and saved my portion of the proceeds from a family yard sale. I clung to every penny as though existence itself depended upon it. I saved just over $2,000. Not bad for a high school kid too young to get a real job.
Event 3: April 28, 1996 – I present my earnings to my parents, along with a reminder of their promise (not that they needed reminding, I was kinda obsessed with it.) We purchase my uncle's 1986 Pontiac. It's in great shape, and I love this car.
Event 4: Spring, 1999 – The band I've been in since high school breaks up when the lead guitarist breaks multiple bones tripping on his own ego. Because I'm the only one in the band with his own car, I end up giving the bass player, Ramon rides all the time even after the split. We being fooling around with different tunes and decide to start our own band. The 1947 California Cupcake Company is born.
Event 5: April 14th & 15th, 2002 – The car breaks down. I'm on my way back to Fort Wayne from a visit to my college buddies when the Low Oil Pressure light comes on. It has been shorting out for years, and I know that to make it stop I need simply to pump the gas pedal. Turns out this time, the pressure really is low and I melt my engine into one big block of metal. This happens around 11:30pm, and I spend a few hours by the side of the road trying to figure out what to do. I push the car into a parking lot and walk to a police station, where the cops call a cab for me and have the driver take me home (despite the meager $11 in my pocket.) I get home around 4am and can't sleep.
Event 6: April 15th, 2002 – While student teaching a group of Kindergarteners, I begin stumbling around the room, fall into a computer table, and lay shaking on the floor. The children fetch the teacher from across the hall, and she calls 911. I wake up in the back of an ambulance after my first seizure.
Event 7: April 16th, 2002 – I meet a neurologist who explains to me that my lack of sleep and stress about the car are the most likely causes of my seizure. He also says I won't be able to drive for at least 3 months.
Event 8: April 18th, 2002 – I return to the school, more stressed than ever. I'm terrified that missing three days of my student teaching will affect my grade, and I'm worried that without transportation it will be difficult to go searching for a teaching job over the summer. A real problem due to the fact that I'm scheduled to graduate in less than a month. Our school's special education assistant overhears my concerns about transportation and offers to get me a job at a summer camp. The benefits; I can live there rent free all summer, they provide 3 meals a day, and I don't ever have to drive. It will at least get me through for a while.
Event 9: June 2nd, 2002 – I begin working for Red Cedar. I'm a summer camp counselor working with persons with disabilities. It's something I never imagined myself doing. I'm completely out of my element.
Event 10: Summer 2002 – I work all summer at Red Cedar and fall in love with it. It turns out, I'm pretty good with this clientele, and my educational background makes me more qualified than most others in the field. I'm offered a job working full-time in a group home. I start that job as soon as camp ends.
Event 11: March 4th, 2003 – I have my second seizure. The company tells me that, as I can't drive for 6 months after the seizure, I'll have to step down from my position in the group home. All group home staff are required to drive and transport clients, and I'm no longer qualified.
Event 12: Spring 2003 – I raise a giant stink about a company that works with persons with disabilities firing me for have a seizure disorder. I bike to the main office every day for a month until they agree to find me a position somewhere within the company. Finally they crack and offer me a position working in their day program, something called the 'workshop'.
Event 13: April 28th 2003 – On my 23rd birthday I begin working at the workshop. I help adults with disabilities work on piece-rated jobs for companies all over northeast Indiana. It's the best job I've ever had, management is respectful, there are opportunities for advancement, and I'm tremendously happy. Between my joy at this new opportunity, and my inability to drive (again) I decide to put the summer teaching position search on hold for another summer.
Event 14: Summer 2005 – I still love my job at the workshop and have begun deciding that my career will never be teaching. I've decided to make my career at the workshop and make my life in Fort Wayne. My guitarist is looking for a teaching job of his own, and I talk to him about the school across the street from the workshop. It's a Spanish-Language magnet school. My guitarist majored in both Elementary Education and Spanish. It seems like a perfect match.
Event 15: August 2005 – My guitarist and best friend, Ramon, decides to take the teaching job at the Spanish speaking school and move up to Fort Wayne. With him now just around the corner from me, we begin playing open mic nights all over the city, including at a Christian coffeehouse known as Seekers, where our originality and charisma earned us immediate acceptance. We become the regular hosts of their Monday open mic nights.
Event 16: January 2006 – On Super Bowl night, my dad and I have always had strange bets. On this night, the Seahawks (and the refs!) cost me my hair. My dad giggles hysterically while shaving my head.
Event 17: February 2006 – As we host open mic night, I notice a new girl in the audience. She looks cute, but probably too young for me. She really seems to enjoy our band and begins showing up at shows.
Event 18: July 2006 – After having seen her at every open mic and show for months (but never actually having spoken to her) I notice that the cute girl is no longer anywhere to be seen. This saddens me until the next orientation at work. As the orientation group takes a tour of the workshop I notice my cute girl in the back of the group. We smile and wave at each other. Turns out she stopped coming out because she's taken a 2nd shift job with my company.
Event 19: August 2006 – I begin getting reports from her co-workers that the cute girl has a crush on me. I'm intrigued. Given that she works at my company she must be at least 18. I'm too timid to speak to her, but definitely interested. It turns out she is 23.
Event 20: August 11th, 2006 – At a going away party for a co-worker, she positions herself next to me. We talk for 2 hours and exchange phone numbers. I am a bumbling, babbling idiot throughout the conversation, as her intense beauty has intimidated the crap out of me. Before I even leave the parking lot I call her to apologize for my dorkiness. She finds it endearing and agrees to come to my band's charity show the next day.
Event 21: August 12th, 2006 – During a set-break at the charity show we share our first kiss. I'm hooked.
Event 22: July 2nd, 2007 – Our daughter is born.
Event 23: October 27th, 2007 – I get my wife a professional massage for he birthday. When the massage is over, the masseuse exits the room to, “get some more oil.” I enter the room and resume the massage, finishing on one knee, placing the box under the face hole in the massage table and asking her to marry me.
Event 24: August 31, 2008 – I marry the cute girl. She's now the beautiful girl, my wife, the mother of my child, and the love of my life. Nothing will ever be the same
Without that car I never start my current band. Without the band the cute girl never seem me. Without the haircut the cute girl never develops her crush on me (trust me, she has told me this repeatedly). Without the car I never start having seizures. Without the seizures I never find the job I love. Without that job, I lose track of my cute girl forever when she starts working 2nd shift. Without that girl I never have my daughter.
I don't intend to get too spiritual on the blog today, but I can't view each of these events, and their eventual effects on my life without feeling like something or someone was guiding the entire thing. I'm happier today than I've ever been. I have an amazing young family with a wife and daughter I'd gladly lay down my life for. I have all of those things because of a car that probably cost my parents more than they were expecting. I have all of those things because of a seizure disorder I cursed for years before I realized how it has guided each of the major moments in my adulthood. Without those things I wouldn't be anything like the person I am today. I'm a better person because of my seizures. I'm a better person because of that car. I'm a better person because of that silly deal my parents made with me when I was 15. They thought they were teaching me a lesson about hard work and saving money. It turns out they were changing my life, and causing their granddaughter.
Cool huh?
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