Bifurcations and fleeting moments

Or butterflies and tornadoes, if you prefer. I planned to go shopping this morning, as I often do when I'm on nights, to our nearest 24 hour supermarket on my way home from work. When I arrived there, however, my plans were thwarted by the fact that the store had been evacuated because of a fire alarm, so I had to turn around and head for home instead. I was annoyed, as people are wont to be in such circumstances, because to go to this particular supermarket involves a fairly substantial detour in terms of distance and time, and led to me arriving home half an hour later than I would've done without having achieved my object. It also meant that I had to go out again this afternoon, after I'd got up, which in turn led to a memorable, if transitory encounter, and set off the train of thought which has led to this post. I went to our local, small supermarket rather than venturing to one of the bigger city stores, given that I didn't actually need vast amounts of stuff, and while making my way around the shop, I saw an absolute cutie, a very good-looking boy of 11 or 12 with dark, curly hair, who I obviously wouldn't have seen if I hadn't had to make the unscheduled shopping trip. It was only the most fleeting of moments, a few seconds at most, as I looked at him and he looked back at me, before I turned away to avoid the gaggle of females he was with (mother and a couple of sisters, presumably) noticing I was looking at him. I've never seen him before, almost certainly never will again - he may not even be local, the supermarket I was in is right by one of the busiest main roads in Cornwall, and as such gets a fair amount of 'passing trade', especially at this time of year - so one could easily say 'so what?', these things happen all the time, we see people almost every day in passing with no expectation of ever seeing them again. What made this encounter more significant for me, apart from the fact that he was the best looking boy I've seen so far this week, was it got me thinking about the vagaries of cause and effect, how being in a specific place at a specific time can change your life in ways that are completely unpredictable. While I've got no expectation whatever of this particular evanescent, tangential meeting of two individuals will have the slightest effect on either life (apart from the self-evident one that I'm writing about it), I, and I'm sure most other people, can think of events that have happened in comparably random ways, in circumstances that couldn't have been predicted days, hours, or in some cases even minutes in advance, but that have had a much greater effect on one's subsequent life.
One really big piece of my life's jigsaw happened in a completely unexpected and unpredictable fashion. At around 6:00 in the morning of November 12 1991, I left my house to go to work. About eight and a half hours later, I arrived back home to find that I'd been burgled. Apart from calling the police, and later on talking to my insurance company, I rang a good friend of mine, who was far more practically minded than me, to help me repair and secure the back door, which had been the way the burglars had got into the house. We often went out for drinks, but had no plans to on that particular day. He was a divorcé, but had recently met someone new (who he subsequently married), and was due to be meeting her for a drink after she finished work later that evening. He saw how fed up I was with life, and invited me to tag along. I already knew his girlfriend, and didn't feel as though I'd be too much of a 'gooseberry', so I accepted his offer. She obviously didn't know I was going to be turning up with my friend that evening, because she was already at work before  I rang him, but what he didn't know was that she'd also invited a work colleague, who was new to the area at the time and didn't know too many people locally, to come along to a pub near where they both worked where she'd arranged to meet my friend. The upshot of it all was that, at 9:05 that evening, to the nearest five minutes, I met the woman who would, around 17 months later, become my wife. If the peculiar circumstances of that day hadn't happened in the way that they did, it's very unlikely, given the way that our lives worked at that time, that I would ever have met my wife, so, although I would never have expected to have said so, I think I owe the burglars a debt of gratitude!
There's another fallout from the change of the day's plans which will happen shortly - I normally fill my car up in the petrol station at the 24 hour supermarket, which I wasn't able to do this morning, which means that I'm going to have leave about 5 minutes earlier than usual to go to work this evening. so I can stop for fuel en route, and that change of itinerary could put me in a position of jeopardy that I wouldn't have been in if I made my journey at the normal time, or, conversely, save me from being somewhere that I would otherwise have been at the 'wrong' time. Who knows? Wish me luck!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

P.S. Thanks very much to Tintin (Handsomevietguy) for becoming my latest follower.
SB