Twists of Fate?

So it was my boy Sean's 21st birthday, but times were rough so the "celebration" basically consisted of the two of us. We went to Walker's, near my mom's place, he ordered a few drinks for the both of us, surprisingly they didn't seem to really care that I was never carded.

I had one of the nastiest drinks that night. A rusty nail, which was four different dark liquors, and a splash of coke. Disgusting.

Anyhow, that isn't the point of the story. We ended up getting kind of drunk, wandered about, almost got into a stupid fight (by now you should have figured that Sean tended to do that a lot when he drank), but the night ended without anything too crazy happening.

Actually, on a side note, while drunk, we also wanted some weed but since we were out, we started asking every single person on the street if they had any for sale. Stupid I know.

We parted ways, and I started walking home. It was about a fifteen block walk, headphones on, minding my own business, when some guy on the street seemed to be talking to me.

I took off an earphone.

"You got kicked out too?" he asked.

He had a fitted hat on, a leather jacket, kind of stocky, Hispanic in his late 20s.

"Kicked out? Nah. From where?"

"From Roxy, they just kicked me out for some bullshit."

Some more small talk, and I'm not exactly sure how the subject was brought up, but it came up.

"You smoke?" he asked.

"Trees? Yeah, you got?"

I couldn't believe my luck, after resorting to asking random people, I bump into someone who actually smokes, on my way home.

We ended up smoking on my rooftop, he sold me a dub, and then gave me two pills.

"Here, take these, it's on me."

"Nah I'm good, I don't drop," I said, and started handing them back.

"Then give them to your friends or something. It's yours."

Rarely one to argue against something free, I pocketed them. I didn't actually take pills during this time yet, and I did give them to a friend.

But this is how I met Will, my future dealer from Forest Hills, the one I got the two jars of K from the night before 9/11 (http://nycmemory.blogspot.com/2009/10/unexpected-end_15.html), who also started fronting me pills for me to start selling.

Completely random. Is this the working of fate? Oddly enough, I also met my co-defendant randomly on the street as well. It's very weird to think that something as simple as me having crossed the street when walking home, or not having been outside of that bar that one night I met Jules (my co-defendant), would have literally changed the entire course of my life.

Granted, most likely if it didn't happen through them, it would have happened in many other ways, but we still can't deny a slight change in situation in both of those nights would have had a long-lasting and serious impact on my life.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not regretting. I find it hard to regret many things in my past, regardless if I was wrong or not, not because I'm remorseless, but rather, in the end I'm still happy with myself and who I've become. And obviously, changing anything in my past would inadvertently change the core of who I am today, my values, my experiences, my thoughts, my opinions, my morals.

And those, I will trade for nothing in the world. Because this is the life that I chose to live.