Dec. 1: What if...

About 10 years ago, my friend, Natalie, and I were discussing our respective journalism careers. Hers started in 1998 in a small town in southeast Saskatchewan. Mine started in Regina in 1999 after I moved there with her. She got a job at a weekly paper there and she introduced me to her editor, who hired me.

"I owe my career to you," I told Natalie. This did not impress her. She said that her role in my career trajectory was an infinitesimal one, that I should give myself some credit for my own success.

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Still, if I didn't meet Natalie, I might not be where I am right now. When I moved to Regina, I had no ambitions toward a journalism career; all I wanted to do was write a novel. Natalie told me about the job at the paper and encouraged me to go in and meet the staff and see what happened. I wound up surprising myself, I was a pretty good - if not raw - reporter and that job in Regina led to further opportunities in Saskatchewan, Quebec, Alberta, and Ontario, where I reside now. 

So Natalie did play a pivotal role in my career trajectory. And yet...

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Natalie and I met in Calgary in 1993. I had developed a crush on a girl named Kimi, who had a job selling roses in bars throughout the city. I really wanted to get to know her, so I got hired to be her driver. That meant that on Friday and Saturday nights, I was tasked with driving Kimi around the city, which translated to about 10 hours every week in the presence of Kimi.

Kimi rejected me. I do not blame her for this. She had moved to the city looking for some kind of stability and she wasn't going to get it from a 19-year-old theatre studies major who still lived at home and didn't even own his own vehicle (I drove my mom's car on the Kimi runs.) Even so, Kimi inspired me to be more independent. This I did by saving enough money (through the rose job and various magic shows) to buy my own car, which I purchased on St. Patrick's Day of 1993. I was anxious to show it to Kimi the following weekend but, as it turned out, Kimi tendered her resignation around the same time I was shelling out $1,350 for a used 1981 Mazda. Kimi had gotten a job selling cans of Budweiser in a rock and roll bar somewhere in Calgary. She did this while wearing a white bathing suit. I know this because I walked into that bar on June 17 of 1994 and I saw her selling beer there. I know that was the date because it was also the date OJ Simpson fled from the police in his white Ford Bronco.

Anyway, after Kimi quit, another girl was hired to take her place and that girl wound up being Natalie. Natalie and I became fast friends (and friends is the only thing we have ever been.) Natalie's extended family lived out of province so she was invited to our house for various Christmas and Easter celebrations.

So maybe you see where I'm going with this.

What if I didn't develop a crush on Kimi? I never would have gotten a job driving her, which means I never would have met Natalie, which means I never would have moved to Saskatchewan with her, which means I never would have gotten that job at the paper, which means I might not be a journalist today. If Kimi never took a job selling roses in bars in Calgary sometime in the 90s - if she'd elected, instead, to take that job working in the nuclear physics department at NASA, fr'instance - it is entirely conceivable that I might not be a practising journalist today. I might be working at Berk's Fried Chicken in the Northwest Territories and I'd have a whole new subset of friends than the ones I have now.

But hey, why stop with Kimi?

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I met Kimi at Curly's night club in southwest Calgary in the summer of 1992. Kimi was there selling roses and I was there because my friend, Cade, wanted to meet some girls and he asked me to come along with him.

I met Cade at Bishop Grandin High School in 1988. He and I became friends and, since he was taller and older and more charismatic than I was, I kind of let him take the lead in the friendship. I styled my hair like his, emulated the way he dressed, and just generally looked up to the fella. 

So if I never became friends with Cade, I never would have gone to Curly's that night and I never would have met Kimi, which means I never would have met Natalie, which means I might not be a journalist today. Anyone want some Berk's Fried Chicken?

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And I could keep going in this same vein. In Grade 9, my guidance counsellor urged me to go to school at Bishop Grandin even though I really wanted to go to Bishop Carroll, because it operated under a minimal supervision model where students were encouraged to work at their own pace. He didn't think I was disciplined enough for that approach (probably right) but had I not listened to him, then I would not have met Cade, which means I would not have gone to Curly's...

Etc...

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I think we must all experience similar moments of existential angst like this. I think we all must look at the circumstances of our lives, both the good and the bad, and ponder the bit players who moved us toward our destiny.

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Somewhere in there, I heard a sermon about a woman who gave birth to twin girls sometime in the late spring of 2002. She never intended to have those babies and was slated to get an abortion about seven months earlier. The appointment date was Sept. 11, 2001.

And up she rose on appointment day and witnessed the death and destruction and the devastation wrecked upon America. And so she decided that she would not take a life; she would give life instead.

The woman is nameless but I have no doubt she exists. I have no doubt that history is filled with women who made similar decisions in the aftermath of tragedies.

But oh what an ethical abyss those poor children must navigate should they ever learn the circumstances of their existence. I kinda hope their moms don't tell them. Let it be a secret. Take 'em out for supper instead. Berk's Fried Chicken has a special all week. 

And I'm the guy behind the counter.