Randomness At Work

Every now and then, I get the idea that the world is completely random: no matter how much we plan and plot our way through our lives, it all basically comes down to being in a certain place at a certain time to experience events totally unexpected. Don't think so? Think you have it all planned out down to the most minute detail?
So did the people in Portland who THOUGHT they were going to a simple lighting of a Christmas tree but ended up in a foiled terrorist plot. Seriously? Blowing up a tree in a blue state of tree-hugging latte drinkers?

I imagine all the Arab leaders urging the US to take out Iran in meetings they THOUGHT were hush-hush were also surprised to see WikiLeaks expose them.

Face it: nobody thinks he or she is going to be involved in an accident. It's always the other people who experience such disasters.

Who expects to get laid off or fired? Who expects to be replaced by someone in a foreign country or taken advantage of by slick talking politicians (well, OK, maybe we DO expect that one).

I certainly did not expect to be smack dab in the middle of hundreds of people shouting "fur on your head...blood on your hands!" and other memorable diatribes as I walked down Michigan Avenue in Chicago the other day, but there I was, amid the rally gross pictures and zealots who spat when they shouted (no easy feat given the temperature!). So as not to seem unsympathetic, I shouted along for a bit as well, but the leaders kept changing the "call and response" format so I was left shouting the wrong thing at times...a fact which amused the overwhelming police presence along the sidewalk. Whether they were protecting the citizenry or the protesters was unclear, but I saw more blue in the five or six blocks it took me to outdistance the throng than there would be at a nudist convention in the Arctic. I felt safe, but the woman standing on the sidewalk handing out brochures for the furrier she worked for looked a bit uneasy. Of course, she was flanked by policemen so I presume she made it off the street alive.
It was definitely in my plans to do so.
Nothing random about that one.