About a cloud - pt. 1

Introduction

  You know that feeling when you think you’ve done everything right but you somehow still manage to fuck up? I mean, you have everything you wanted, friends, family, a girlfriend, a couple of dogs, and all of a sudden BAM. A car hits you on your way to the supermarket. No? Well I do, unfortunately.
   I must admit that it’s not a very pleasant situation to be in, but being dead does have its benefits. For starters you can’t die again, which is kinda neat. I can’t go through walls or anything worthy the attention of Murray and Co. but I can dο other stuff, I think. To be completely honest I still haven't found out what exactly I can do in this limbo-like reality I'm living right now, but I'm a fast learner so I'll figure it out. I like the one where I flicker the light for just a second so people are not sure whether it really flickered or they just blinked, it messes them up real good. That is my favorite past-time now that I’m eh, well, dead, y’know. Don’t judge me, it’s not like there’s a lot of stuff to do in the afterlife.
  But! This is not my story; I’m merely narrating it. This is a story of something much bigger than me, much more interesting and frankly, much more alive. This is a story about something that even though is seemingly insignificant, it’s actually of great importance. This is a story about a cloud.
  This is gonna be really long and weird, and I'm not gonna make it any shorter, so just try to keep up alright? To make it easier for you, I'll just break it off in 3 parts. The first one is the part where I die. Think of it as a How I met your mother situation, but instead of meeting your mother, I die. And no, it wasn't some idiot driver who got distracted talking on the phone, I was just jaywalking and, well, reading some funny post on Reddit. Hey at least the dude that made it can say that he literally made someome die from laughter, if that's any consolation whatsoever. Dying is all morbid and whatever but trust me, there's worse things that can happen to you. You could get expelled, for one.

  Yeah yeah, we all hate spoilers, I know, but the me dying part is actually the least important part of the story. I told you, this isn't a story about me, but since this part is integral to the events that occur afterwards I can't really brush it aside either. Anyways, to sum up, I was on my way home from the grocery store, on my phone, wearing headphones and crossing the road. Relatively new driver is cruising at a normal speed, perfectly in line with the rules and stuff, but she doesn't have time to react to the idiot crossing the road. She tries to swerve but it's too late; my face smashes on the windshield at first before my whole body is sent flying quite a few meters away. I die almost instantly, and that's that. And that thing they say about your life flashing I front of your eyes before you die? Well, either it's bullshit, or mine was just directed by some french new wave jackass experimenting with a still black frame, which is what I actually saw. If I see the big guy at any point, I'm asking for a refund.
  Now that I think of it, the actual dying part isn't even that relevant to the story, damn, I should probably change the name of the first part. Let's see: "The part where I ramble on for a third of the story". Nah, too tongue-in-cheek. "The one with all the exposition." Accurate, but it makes me sound like an awful story-teller, dontcha think? How about we name it something like, uh, "The part before I die." Yeah, that's a bit more accurate I'd say.
 I actually have to go way way back to give you some context otherwise it's gonna be a shitty story, and this is not something I'd like to fuck up. One would think that after dying you'd just seize to exist peacefully, like your soul rests and all your memories are gone or whatever, but I guess the universe has greater plans for some of us. I don't even really believe in god, or reincarnation, or life after death for that matter, but now I don't even know what or who to believe in anymore. In a totally unrelated matter, I really like squirrels.
  Since that's out of the way, now I can get to the real story. You know, the stuff that is actually important to the plot. To do that though I have to go all the way back, back to the day when Chris and I got adopted. Didn't expect that did ya? Well anyways, you ready? Here goes...

Nothing good happens after 2:00 am

I started rewatching How I met your mother the other day. At its best it's a brilliant show, not because of its comedic value, but because of the interesting way it treats concepts that are known to us but are left unexplored. At its worse it's a pile of crap that drags a single wedding to a whole season and then tears any character development of its last seasons to shreds, but that's another story.
  Last night I watched an episode called "Nothing good happens after 2:00 am" and it kept me thinking, how the hell did they come up with something so specific? It's such an arbitrary number that I fail to understand how such a rule can apply, plenty of good has happened both before and after 2:00 am. Then it hit me: it's not about the actual time is it? There's certain thresholds in which that rule applies, not because of its 2:00 am-ness, but rather because of the idea that there actually is such a threshold that makes us make all the bad decisions. Be it in the am's or the pm's, it's the point in time in which we're most vulnerable, a point where we seize any rational thinking and we let our insticts take over. Not the kind of instict that helps us survive from a bear attack or something, it's the kind of instict that makes you drunk text your ex after a night of partying, or the kind of instict that tells you that it's a good idea to eat that leftover pizza from last week's house party you hosted, or the kind of instict that makes you tell Robin you've broken up with Victoria when in fact you haven't, just to get a head start in your soon-to-be relationship. It's the kind of instinct that makes you drink your third post-midnight coffee in hope that you're gonna cover a semester's worth of knowledge in one miserable night. And trust me, in that context I can definitely agree: Nothing good ever happens after 2:00 am, it's just that my 2:00 am is probably different than yours. Besides, it's always after 2:00 am somewhere, technically.
  So take it from me, or take it from Ted's ma, "Nothing good ever happens after 2:00 am. When 2:00 am rolls around, just go home and go to sleep". Whenever your 2:00 am is.