When Ratios Attack...

There are more than a few simple truths in this life. Truths that are consistent for everyone. Proverbs such as: What goes up must come down; An apple never falls far from it's tree; A cow that is dragged to a far off land is still a cow; and, It is unwise to hide in a pride of lions while wearing a freshly killed game suit.
There are just as many, if not more, truths that govern us that have not yet made it to proverb form, such as: the sun will rise and set regardless; drinking too much poison will kill you; eating asparagus will make your pee stink; eventually, your favorite television program will be interrupted by a weather report; and, exposure to enough Ben Afflec acting will cause untreatable testicular cancer in men AND women!!
Beyond these are the truths that are particular to the individual. Verities in life that may only be true to us and us alone.

The problem with truths is that when and if they ever become 'untrue' all at once, or for a single moment, they can have devastating consequences on an individual, community, society or the world as a whole.
Evolution, for example, replaced the popular truth many subscribed to that we were all created by an all powerful omnipotent golden fart 'who art in heaven' that had a plan for each and every one of us. While many were able to adapt to this new truth, either by accepting it altogether or by interweaving it within the plan of their creator, countless others couldn't. Many refuse the new truth, while many more lost their minds and are found clinging to jars of peanut butter as testaments to their faiths.

The same can be said for the truths of the individual.
Recently I found myself with salsa and no chips. Two full, unopened jars of salsa, to be more specific, and not a chip in the house....not even a chip substitute like a cracker. While this might sound trivial to everyone else, it has always been in my life that chips will out number and outlast the salsa, both at home and in pseudo Mexican restaurants. And now, for the very first time in my 36 years, I find that it is otherwise. The very fact of it might honestly have already torn the very fabric of my existence. Only time can tell where or how this will lead. Will I awake one day to discover that the sun has stopped in one spot in the sky? Will apples now migrate miles from their trees? Will I be able to drag a cow somewhere only to discover that it has become Ben Afflec? Will I travel to a store to buy a new bag of chips?
And, such as the subatomic particle who, once observed, not only changes it's mode or velocity of travel, but overwrites it's entire history with this new mode, will whatever change resulting from my unfortunate chip to salsa ratio overwrite it's own history and thereby effect the history around it? Could we all possibly awake tomorrow in small pools filled with pond scum to a new existence where we have descended from salamanders and not primates?
In any case, I await the consequences with equal parts of childlike fascination and abject terror, and whatever the outcome, I sit here praying to this jar of Creamy Peter Pan that the following days finds you all only dusted from the breeze of the butterfly's wings in a new world.....possibly one without Canada.