With butterflies and Jass cards on vacation

I don't write because I'm asked to by others - except by my mother-in-law of course - but because I ask myself to do so. I don't write to be understood, but to understand - to find my way in chaos.

At least once a year, we try to escape from the everyday chaos and go on vacation, like almost every Füddlibürger does. Unfortunately, anarchy accompanies us, hidden somewhere in the suitcase, and unexpectedly strikes even during this time of leisure. So this year, we were not spared the turmoil of life and within the first 4 hours, we received our first traffic ticket, at 34 degrees Celsius in the shade without air conditioning. A wise person named Lorenz once claimed that a butterfly flapping its wings in Shanghai could theoretically cause a chaotic tornado in New York. Well, in our case, it wasn't a summer butterfly, but a French squirrel that made sure that everything turned out completely different than planned. Sometimes, the connections are just so complex, or a tiny change in destiny can make it impossible to make predictions about the future. So we were somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in a clearing in the Jura, where the rabbit and the fox bid each other good night. On that fateful evening, we also wished each other good night lying in our tent, while our car keys sweetly slept on our camping table. The next morning, our Fiat Panda was still there, which is not surprising for this Italian piece of sheet metal with a rusty exhaust, but the key was nowhere to be found. After hours of searching, including looking under Luigi's hood myself, we came to the realization that some animal must have snatched the key.

The spare key was at home, but it was immediately sent by express and airplane to Genève Aéroport. The courier Pierre Chatalat, who was entrusted with bringing us the key from Geneva to La Dalue, picked up the hitchhiking Estelle Perrier on the roadside on Thursday, August 13th at exactly 2:35 pm. Not only was the weather hot at that time, but also the greedy lovemaking, which made the Peugeot and all the urgent deliveries in the cargo area shake. The two still don't know that a child will be born from this fateful encounter, who will save humanity from the consequences of global warming with a magnificent invention. Somewhat delayed and smelling strongly of uninhibited sex, Pierre Chatalat handed us the spare key at exactly 6:10 pm, and we had no excuse not to go to work on Monday. If we hadn't left our car keys outside or if Pierre Chatalat had been gay, humanity would perish miserably in a few decades.

To celebrate the day, we had a glass or even two of delightful Schnaps de Gentiane with the farmer and campsite owner Bérnard, who told us about his life shaped by butterflies. It mainly consisted of a abruptly ended career as a cross-country skier in the French national team, for which a ferocious dog was to blame, and selling his beloved cows because of his cowhide allergy. But Bernard has never let himself be defeated by the fluttering summer birds of fate, and so he is still a man full of wit and charm, who has enjoyed his life to the fullest.

Let's finally accept chaos as an everyday companion and forget about the annoying sperm stains on the bed sheets. If the butterfly theory is not enough evidence that we cannot control our lives, go get a deck of Jass cards now. Don't just arrange the Jass cards by the colors heart, diamond, club, and spade - the French cards are an homage to my mother-in-law - but also in order from the ace to the six. Congratulations, you have just created order! In contrast to this order in the Jass card deck, there are 8000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 ways to create disorder by shuffling the cards. This means statistically speaking, that our lives are mostly governed by chaos, or in other words, we don't live to leave behind a tidy apartment.