Thursday, August 4, 2011

Throwback: Destiny

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

It would be a lie to describe my life as anything but hectic lately. I was out of town for 20 days in July, the bulk of it for business of one sort or another. "Destiny" came to mind  today because I've come to a point where I need to decide which part of my career cluster I want to pursue. I've sort of been pulled in three directions for the past few years. And I've had different approaches toward trying to break into each... one I worked in for three years and dearly miss, one I got a Master's degree in, and the third has just come along. Yeah, if you guessed this site was the third, you've hit the nail on the head.

I never wanted to be a writer. I never dreamed I'd be working on several writing projects at once (including a book that my husband has had me working on here and there). But, apparently, it was destiny. Someone found TheTalkingBox through twitter and gave me oodles of advice on things I could be doing. I've already done a few and plan to work on a few more. But I have to question whether I was destined to be discovered just a month before the TCA Summer Press Tour, allowing me to find out about how to apply to attend and therefore gaining tons of knowledge and tons to post about in the coming weeks/months.

Well, this led me to think about destiny on television. There are tons of cases of it, and entire story arcs are sometimes attributed to a single event that happened, creating chaos throughout multiple characters' lives. But, I think one particular episode of How I Met Your Mother really showcases destiny to the fullest. I'm talking about "Lucky Penny" which was Season 2, Episode 15... a throwback to 2007.

Ted and Robin are trying to catch a plane to Chicago, so Ted can interview for his dream job. But, they're late getting to the airport because Ted had a court date earlier in the day. He had to be in court because he had jumped a turnstile and gotten arrested a while back. He jumped the turnstile because Barney needed his help to get off the subway. Barney couldn't move because his legs were worn out from running the New York City marathon. Barney ran the marathon to win a bet with Marshall, who had been training for the event. Marshall wasn't able to run in the marathon because he broke a toe the day before the race. Marshall got injured when Robin startled him at Ted's apartment in the middle of the day. Robin was there in the middle of the day because she was too tired to go home to Brooklyn after camping out with Lily to go bridal dress shopping. Lily wanted to camp out because she finally knew the location of the designer closeout sale, which Robin and Ted had seen people lining up for while walking by and eating hot dogs. They walked by it because Ted needed to treat Robin to a $1.50 dinner because of another bet. He had bet her that a 1939 penny would be worth enough to go out to dinner. He picked up that penny and was thrilled at the minted date. So, because Ted picked up that penny, he began a chain of events that would cause him to miss a plane to an interview in Chicago. Had he made the plane and landed the job, he would have relocated to Chicago and not met "the mother," or at least not in the same way. And, Ted calls that destiny.

What do you think?
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