A woman in New Mexico was running a marathon.  If you have ever run a marathon, you know that it is not that much fun.  Anyway, she was at mile 24 when she noticed a black bear coming at her.  The bear attacked (it had a cub with it) and pretty much tore half her face off.  She laid there for a while until another runner found her and she was airlifted to the hospital.  The woman survived.  The bear, I am sorry to say, did not.  By any measurement, this bear was incredibly unlucky.  If only she had gone up the hill or decided to sleep in or was just a little more neglectful mother, she would still be around eating berries and shitting in the woods.  And that’s the problem with life.  You make all of these decisions and you can never be sure if you are making the right one or not.

Say you are going to get married.  You like the guy- even love him- but you have some trepidation.  Perhaps he is a little shorter than you’d like or doesn’t make quite as much money as your father does.  You think you can look past those things, but you aren’t sure.  And there is no real way of knowing.  To make matters more complex, your old boyfriend from high school is trying to contact you via Facebook.  He is both taller and more successful in his career than your fiancee.  Conundrum for sure.  But momentum rules the day and you take the plunge.  Three years later you are getting divorced.  “Why did I make such a stupid decision?!” you cry out when you realize you could have a house twice the size of your current one if you had only gone with the old boyfriend.  It seems so obvious now.

But you are wrong.  The high school boyfriend was only contacting you because he was on the rebound from another woman he liked way more than you.  You were never more than a consolation prize.  He would have dumped you in three months.  Additionally, the man you did marry would have decided to move to Chicago (instead of staying close to your family at your behest) and would have written a screenplay that would have been eventually made into a blockbuster film.  He would have been rich- if it wasn’t for you.

Not only that, but after getting dumped by your high school boyfriend, you would have started dating a man named Tom.  Unbeknownst to you, Tom would have started dealing drugs out of your house.  Eventually, Tom would have gotten caught and you would have been convicted along with him for running a drug house even though you didn’t know what he was doing.  Do you see now?  The decision to marry- while seemingly bad- saved you a prison sentence.  Your husband is the one who got screwed.  He is the mama bear in your story.

On that note, back to the marathoner who was attacked by a bear.  You see, she started running because her husband casually mentioned that she had gained a few pounds after having the children.  Before that, she was a yoga/ take a walk kind of girl.  But she joined a running club to lose the baby weight.  There, she met a lesbian who she was interested in (though she would never act on it).  Instead, the woman split the difference and made sure she was always at running club.  Eventually, the hot lesbian suggested running a marathon together.  The woman agreed.  Halfway through the training, the lesbian developed an IT band problem and couldn’t train anymore.  The woman wanted to beg out, but she was already committed.  And she didn’t want to disappoint her lesbian crush.  So, she ran the race solo and the bear who should have been sleeping in ended up mauling her.

However, if she hadn’t run the race she would have been killed in an accident on the way to the store to buy some donuts.

All’s well that ends well.