February 22 - Small World

Glenda Haelstrom pays her bill and leaves the TGI Fridays at DFW to catch her flight for Phoenix. Less than half a minute later, she realizes she's forgotten her laptop and runs back to get it. On her way out of the restaurant the second time, she runs into Leanne Stuart, an old friend she had gone to graduate school with.
Although they are both in a hurry to catch their flights, they chat for a few minutes and do a rapid fire update on where all their mutual acquaintances are.
As they are finishing up their conversation, they discover that they're actually both on the same flight--a flight that Leanne had been thinking about changing until the following morning, but decides to stay on since her friend is on it.
All the way to the gate, Glenda keeps going on about the odds of it all, and how if she hadn't forgotten her laptop they wouldn't have met up, and isn't that crazy.
Yes, Glenda. Crazy indeed. And not the first time, either. There have been plenty of other instances of just happening to be in the right place at the right time to run into an old friend, classmate, or colleague. It's happened to everyone. But what goes undocumented are all the times in history when people have barely missed happening upon each other: Poorly timed crosswalk lights, elevator arrivals, conclusions of conversations, and deliveries of restaurant checks that if they had gone just the teensiest bit differently would have produced dramatically different outcomes. In fact, they would have changed history.
Dig:
November 21, 1963: Martha Hayes stops to tie her shoes, setting in motion a long ripple of consequences that ultimately results in her not running into her old high school flame who at the time was actually thinking of her and still very much on the fence about whether or not he was going to go into a certain Dallas book depository. The man's name? Lee Harvey Oswald.
July 13, 1957: A young man in Liverpool leaves his flat to catch the bus, gets about five steps down the sidewalk, and realizes he's forgotten his wallet. That extra half minute is all that's needed to throw off the cosmic clock and prevent him from catching the bus that's carrying his old grade school friend who's just back from the States looking for someone to take the extra football ticket he's got on his hands. Instead, the man catches the next bus and takes it downtown where he happens to meet another young man named John who's interested in forming a band. The man's name? Paul McCartney.
May 1, 1879: A young man's attention is momentarily distracted by a hummingbird hovering on a tree. While he is looking the other way, he misses seeing his best friend from boarding school who has just returned from a whirlwind tour abroad where he became hooked on a wonderful drink called absinthe. By looking away at just the right instant, the man avoids running into him, eventually becoming hooked on absinthe himself, and, in doing so, robbing the world of the invention of the automobile. The man's name? Henry Ford.
I could go on and on, but the point is it happens. A lot. Yes, people run into people all the time. But they miss running into each other much more often.
But not Glenda. Not this time. This time Glenda times things just right and runs into her friend who in deciding to fly that night rather than the next day ends up taking the seat that would have gone to Ray Stiegler, who's flying stand-by.
The same Ray Stiegler whose number was in Glenda's cell phone when she lost it just days after meeting him and hitting it off with him at a sales conference in Indianapolis.
The same Ray Stiegler who'd also misplaced Glenda's business card at about the same time and kicked himself about it for weeks.
The same Ray Stiegler who would have been seated next to Glenda on that flight.
The same Ray Stiegler who she almost certainly would have ended up marrying and having three beautiful children with if only she hadn't forgotten her laptop.