How did we get here?

I had an interesting conversation with my oldest as we drove through Chicago Friday night.  It had to do with the choices we make and how accidental it seems that we are where we are today.  I grew up in Ohio and went to college in Michigan, but ended up in Illinois all my adult life.  We had no permanent family here (my sister and her husband were living in Evanston while he was going to seminary, but we weren't sure where they would end up) and no ties to the region.  We moved here because of an off-hand comment someone made to us that there were teaching jobs to be had in the Chicago suburbs.  So we applied to several places, set up some interviews, moved in with my sister (belated thanks, Mary Lou) for a few days, and went looking for jobs.  Ann had an interview at Lake Forest for a special ed job in the elementary district.  Two minutes into the interview it ended rather abruptly when she was informed that to teach special ed in that district she would need a master's degree and that her best bet would be to check out SEDOL (the Special Ed District of Lake County) to get started in the area.  However, as part of the small talk, she mentioned that I was waiting in the car out in the parking lot and that I was looking for a math teaching job. They invited me into the building, interviewed me for a job opening that had just been posted that day, and I ended up teaching 7th grade math in Lake Forest for two years as my first job.  I'm sure I would have ended up somewhere (there were a lot of teaching jobs in the Chicago area that summer), but that experience and the people I met there were very important in guiding me as a 21-year old teacher fresh out of college.  There was a small group of teachers who got together on Friday nights to hang out, going to Scornavacco's in Highland Park, then over to John Wheeler's house in Lake Bluff to listen to him play the full sized harpsichord that he had built from a kit over the past two years.  We went with Dick Howell, the assistant principal, to yell Opa! at the Parthenon restaurant, had swedish pancakes at Judy's house, and went to see Grease at the Schubert. It was an introduction to Chicago that meant all the difference for two rural small town Ohio kids.  I think our current life would be a lot different (not necessarily better or worse) if I had ended up somewhere else.

I love the new Dr. Who TV show.  Sunday night I watched a show in which Donna turns right in her car instead of left and changes the future of the earth.  She never meets the Doctor, the Doctor ends up dying because Donna is not there to talk him down, and there is no one to save the Earth from some invasion.  Well written and great entertainment if you like the science fiction stuff.

What is spooky about this is that there have been so many instances in the past year or so of two or three events happening within 48 hours of each other that have the same theme.  It makes sense for that to happen the other way, where a story or movie will start us talking about a similar situation in our life.  But lately, our discussion of the concept happens first, then is reiterated within a couple of days by something from the outside world.  Maybe it happens all the time to everybody and I am just noticing it now.  But to me it seems weird.