Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller What is it with people who drink a lot of water? People have water bottles on their desk, in their car, by their bed stand. Is it some kind of a fashion statement to carry a bottle of water with you? I could go on, but I’d better not, because I’m one of those nerds that has a bottle of water close by most of the time. I never thought I would be this way. I always thought it was fine to just take a drink of water before you go someplace, and take a drink when you get to where you’re going. In the meantime, if you got thirsty, so what? It’s not exactly a hardship. I always laughed — to myself — when I would see my mother with her bottle of water in the car, and hear her talk about how she likes to have a bottle of water with her when she drives. But something changed a few years ago. I started noticing how much I enjoyed a glass of water, and what good things it did for me. Strangely (or maybe not), I now notice that I am thirsty a lot. I often seem to ...

David Heiller “What are the odds of that happening?” I’m not talking about football odds, like the odds of Los Angeles beating Washington 38-9. I’m talking about coincidences, hard-to-believe ones. I think everybody has a few experiences which they like to tell about that are hard to believe, because they are so coincidental. Here are a few of mine. The first coincidence I can recall happened when I was in seventh grade. Our teacher, Mrs. Sauer, assigned us to write a report on South America. I turned in a sparkling account of the country, and it read word for word like the report turned in by Jerome Traff, a classmate. It turned out that his family and my family bought the same set of encyclopedias from the same salesman who blew through Brownsville one day in the mid-1950s. That wasn’t much of a coincidence, but it was a start. The first real coincidence happened in 1975, when I was in Montana backpacking and visiting friends. I needed a ride back to Minnesota, and was ...