A story...

One morning I was getting ready for work, which usually involved showering and some slight ironing (just shirts tho, this was before I worked at a job where you couldn't wear jeans). I was completing my pre-departure rituals when I heard a knock at the door.

I never had visitors in the morning, it was unprecedented. I didn't owe anyone money and to my knowledge there were no contracts on my life, but I was still cautious when I opened the door. And standing before me was a man, maybe a few years older than my father, pretty bald who stared at me intently.

He looked down at my shirt, which was an Tap.com shirt (this was when I worked there) and read the "where students live online" tagline aloud. And he looked up at me and said, "Is that where you work now?"

All I could do was reply, in the most confused voice I had, "Yes."

He then looked at me and said, "Jon, don't you recognize your father?"

Just how fast does the mind think? What's really happening when the mind races? Why is it sometimes you can sit and stare at a piece of code and think to yourself "select what from where?" and other times a lifetime of possibilites pass through your eyes? This was one of those instances. Everything I thought I knew was instantly gone. Somehow I was adopted. I had a new family I was going to have to meet. What had happened to me? Why had I been put up for adoption? Was that, in fact, what had really happened? Was my sister not really my sister?

Instances like those you push your mind farther and faster than it can go. I think that kind of mental intensity is only achieved a few times in an average lifetime. And when you hit it, it's like you're floating in fear and euphoria wrapped into one emotion. It's wonderful and terrifying. And you're locked into it, it doesn't stop until it wants to. Sometimes it can take days, and sometimes it only takes seconds.

Can everything that we know change that quickly? Does that change the person we were and will become? What really determines our sense of selves? It's a frightening concept to have to deal with, but everything I thought I knew was changed in an instant.

While the thousands of possibilities were playing themselves out in my mind, another guy walked towards us from down the hallway. He looked at the man and said, "Dad, I'm in #12, you're at the wrong apartment."

Funny how things work out like that.