The Butterfly Effect

I once read that the flutter of a butterfly's wing can eventually cause a tornado in Oklahoma, or a typhoon in Asia. It's called the Chaos Theory. The tiny breeze caused by the butterfly's wing causes a leaf to move which creates a slightly stronger air movement, which causes another thing to move.... and so on, and so on, until the breeze builds into a destructive force.

Months ago I off handedly opined that maybe some sheer curtains would be nice on the living room windows. I figured they would make it a little harder to see in at night, yet we could still see out. Nothing fancy, the curtain rod brackets were already attached to the windows. Mark thought about it and said, "Yes, that could work." I barely thought about it again, until Mark brought home a bag of sheer curtains from Home Goods. They laid around for a couple of weeks, then a package arrived via UPS.

"What's in the bag?" I asked Mark.

"Curtains, some very nice curtains for the living room. It'll make it look very clubby."

"Clubby?"

"You know, like an old time men's club."

"What happened to the sheer curtains?"

I got no answer, we were going to put up real curtains. I looked up at the windows and thought, 'Those brackets aren't going to work'. And I was correct. Mark ran out and bought some new curtain rods and brackets.

"No! They can't go on the woodwork around the windows. You have to mount them outside the square of the window. On the wall."

So I had to drill new holes in the wall, which was not easy. In fact it was a mess, but eventually I got it done. Unfortunately I had to take down the giant mirror next to the windows. It was going to have to be lowered so that the curtain rod would clear it. Two months later, I got around to remounting the mirror. I drilled the first hole of two (The mirror is heavy and needs two hooks to hold it.) and pushed the  anchor into the hole. I gave it a small tap with the hammer to wedge it in there good. The damn thing didn't wedge, it pushed right through the plaster and dropped down inside the wall. I stood there staring at the hole, trying so hard not to curse. I lost that battle. I now had a large hole in the wall that lined up exactly where the mirror was going to hang. I couldn't move where I was going to hang the mirror. It had to go where that hole was. So the more I screwed around with the hole in the wall, the larger it got. More cursing ensued. All I did was quietly suggest sheer curtains that would hang on the existing hardware. I was only half serious about the sheers, yet here I was a couple of months later with a hole in the wall and my blood pressure climbing.

By the way, The Butterfly Effect. It's bullshit. A butterfly's wing cannot cause weather to happen thousands of miles away. The friction of the air around it would damp it down to nothing. No, the best example to use for the Chaos Theory is Mark. He can turn a simple idea into a cluster fuck like no butterfly ever could.