A Sprinkle of Thyme

When one stops to smell the roses, thus delaying your trip to the parking garage by 30 seconds, your car then leaves the garage half a minute later than it otherwise would have, turns the corner half a minute later than it would have, reaches the intersection half a minute later than it would have, and fails to carry you directly into the path of the gasoline tanker with failed brakes and the horrible screaming fiery death that otherwise would have been yours. Your alive because you indulged a fanciful whim and sniffed a flower. Conversely there could be something on television tonight you desperately want to see, and you hurry to the garage, leave a few minutes early, turn the corner, breeze through the intersection, and end up positioned perfectly to be flattened/shredded under the rolling dump truck full of old farming implements and broken sheet glass. These things happen ALL THE TIME. The very fact that we can even grasp at the edges of this interplay between the possible and the actual, the probable and the likely, is enough to send a strong man into gibbering fits of hysteria.

That by itself is a less than easily digestible morsel, but when pointed out that it struck me while eating a Buffalo Chicken sub on my lunch break, it becomes just another piece of datum supporting my theory about relativistic snacking and its affects on the brain function of adolescent rhesus monkeys who like Sun Chips.