The Joy (and Horror) of Randomness

In my estimation, people who listen to music (most everyone) tend to fall into one of two groups:

1. People who like to hear certain songs in a certain order. These people fill their iPods with playlists (they don't buy the Shuffle because it only takes 1 playlist) and seldom, if ever, use the "shuffle songs" function.
2. People who nearly always put their music on shuffle. These people revel in the surprise of their favorite songs mixed together in a different order. "Ooh!" they gasp at the start of each song, "I like this song, and I like it even better after ..."

I tend toward Group 1. The main reason for this is that I listen to fairly wide variety of rock and roll artists. I have a playlist, for example, consisting completely of The Fray and Coldplay because they have a similar sound. I've also found that The Beatles don't mix well with any other groups. Neither do They Might Be Giants. So it would be discombobulating to me if When I'm 64 by The Beatles was followed by Rock You Like a Hurricane by The Scorpions, which was then followed by Don't Panic by Coldplay. That's just an odd mix. Discombobulating.

That said, I go through phases where I tire of all my playlists and use the shuffle function just for giggles. For a few days I revel in the joy (or disappointment) of the randomness of the order of the songs. I do occasionally stumble across artist/song mixes that, had I not heard them randomly assembled, I would never have put together myself. Then I put a few new playlists together and move back to Group 1.

I began enjoying the randomness on Monday, July 30th. It was refreshing, revitalizing music that had become stale to me. I had extra bounce in my step as I strode down Nicollet Mall heading to work that Monday. I don't remember hitting skip (a practice I use to move on to the next song when the randomness gods don't offer me a nicely flowing music mix) for all of Monday, nor even Tuesday or Wednesday.

Wednesday, of course, is the day the randomness gods played with our great city, dropping a random collection of vehicles, commuters, construction workers, et al, 64 feet into the Mississippi River during the busiest moment of the day.

Just think of the crazy randomness of it all. The driver of the UPS truck, interviewed in his hospital bed, described honking at a school bus full of kids, waving, then looking over to his left and seeing a Tastee truck, and having been a former Tastee employee, actually recognizing the Tastee truck driver. "Hey, I know that guy," he said to himself.

Then the bridge collapsed. The UPS driver lived - obviously. As of this writing the bus driver remains in serious condition. That all the kids made it out of the school bus essentially unhurt is, well (I'm tearing up), proof that even the randomness gods follow Alfred Hitchcock's first rule of moviemaking: never kill the kid. The Tastee driver did not make it, his truck one of the vehicles engulfed in flame immediately after the collapse.

All that in about 2 seconds.

I've already heard stories from people who took a different route home that night - thus avoiding calamity. I don't know if we'll ever hear the stories of the ones who took the different route that night and didn't make it home.

But what to make of it all? God's will? Karma?

Life happens. Death happens. It's better to be lucky than good. There are many things in life over which we have no control. For these things we accept the results of our natural lottery ticket and help those who scored a worse fate than us. No regrets. No gloating. We just shake our collective heads, clean up, rebuild, and move on.

By the way, I'm still shuffling my songs and kind of digging it. Good and bad.