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Thursday, August 20, 2015

Unexpected events



Just hours after traveling Rt. 93 north in Concord NH, a massive sink hole opened up. I was very happy that didn't happen while I was driving over that very spot.

It got me thinking. Man makes plans. The gods laugh. You can take all the precautions in the world and then suddenly the ground opens up under your feet and swallows you up.

Most people don't have any idea how truly random life can be sometimes. There's no fair or unfair to it. Stuff just happens sometimes. Back when I was a firefighter my whole career existed because unexpected stuff happens. Often it's a series of unusual things happening at the same time that cause calamity. One thing leads to another.

There was this one house fire that did extensive damage that sticks in my mind. The cause? A leaking aquarium. Say what? The home owner had a very nice large aquarium that developed a leak. Once the water heater was exposed to the air it overheated and caught fire, setting nearby drapes on fire. The burning drapes set the rest of the room on fire. Nobody was around so things got out of hand before the fire was noticed and called in. It took a series of events going wrong to cause the house fire. No doubt aquariums develop leaks all the time without doing anything more than killing a few fish and getting the floor wet.

When random bad stuff happens you just have to roll with it. If you are lucky it's the random sinkhole that did not suck down your car. If unlucky, a leaky aquarium sets your house on fire.

-Sixbears

9 comments:

  1. Succinctly put: shit happens! All the time while we make our little plans, chaos works its wonders.

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    1. Shit happens is more to the point, but makes for a very short blog post.

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  3. We have all been there in one way or another. One time many years ago, we lost a wheel on our boat trailer.. on a busy highway..at night.

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    1. I bet that was exciting. Aren't hauling boat trailers fun? Last year I lost the whole trailer on the highway, but it suffered very little damage. A few years earlier, with a different trailer, the wheel bearing burned out in the middle of the Everglades.

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  4. One thing going wrong is bothersome but usually can be fixed, but when multiple things go wrong at the same time, that can be a catastrophe.

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    1. Multiple events is often what takes complicated systems down.

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  5. You never know, when you get up in the morning, what you'll be dealing with by evening time. For people like me, who have an insatiable need to be in control of events, that can make for some tough days.

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    1. I've learned be comfortable with a certain level of chaos.

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