Is It True That All’s For the Best in This Best of All Possible Worlds?

My parents loved the musical “Candide” and played the soundtrack on the car tape-player as we drove to Cape Cod for 1960s summer vacations with my grandparents. One of my favorite songs was the scene when Doctor Pangloss is teaching Candide and Cunegonde his philosophy. I knew it was a real belief-system, about how a Good God necessarily created the Best of All Possible Worlds, which is where we live.

So, anything that seems to be going wrong is really going right, according to the Big Plan.

For instance…. Yesterday afternoon, my two-and-a-half-year-old grandson woke from his nap at 4pm grumpy, and since my daughter was on a work-related Zoom call, I decided to get my grumpy grandson out of the apartment for a walk. But he insisted I carry along my saxophone (which I’d brought in with me that morning). I picked up the horn, we left the building, and I aimed us toward the spot a block away where I’d parked the van that morning at 7am (having come in from Easton, along with my wife, Gaia).

As we moved toward the place where my van was parked, I experienced confusion. We’d gone too far, and hadn’t passed the van.

We turned around. I moved twenty feet back and forth several times, while my grandson tried to trail along. (He mostly stayed in place.)

I tried not to panic. Don’t panic in front of a small child.

I recalled that I’d marked on my iPhone the location where I’d parked, back at 7am. When I compared the map on the phone to my exact location: I saw I was correct. My van was absent from its parking space. A different car was there.

I phoned Gaia, who was up in my daughter’s apartment. I told her, “The car’s been towed.”

Since it was clearly a legal space, and there were no unusual warning signs posted, I couldn’t understand why it had been towed.

The only other option was, stolen.

My grandson and I returned to the building and rode the elevator. Gaia was on the police website to see if there was info about our towed car. On typing our license plate number, she learned we had a ticket from 2023 for speeding in a school zone. We owed $90.25. Could they have towed the van away because of that?

But there was no report of such towing.

I called the police. The detective told me to call 911. The 911 operator said to return to the parking spot and an officer would come take my report.

My car had been stolen. I was going to have to place a claim with insurance. We’d have to get back to Easton in an unplanned way…. I went back out.

Standing at the curb, keeping my eye out for the police, I considered. I’d get some money from insurance. Not enough. But no-one was hurt, everyone was fine. My sax had been in the apartment—no valuables in the car. This was not horrible.

A text message came from Gaia. My son-in-law had returned to the apartment after his haircut, and he had an idea. I phoned. She said my son-in-law’s car had once vanished from the street nearby—and it had turned out that due to the needs of a road-construction crew, his car had been dragged away and left in a different spot. Only after searching around the nearby blocks, waving the electric door-opener, on its key-fob, had the car been located.

I told Gaia I’d already waved the electric key-fob, and nothing. Gaia said my son-in-law was coming down.

He appeared. He told me directly, it was possible a construction crew had dragged my car a block or more away.

I disputed this as a realistic behavior of any real-world humans.

He suggested I try clicking and waving my electric key-fob.

Humoring him, I did it, again, commenting that, I had already done this before, to no avail, but, ok, just look, see? I pressed all the buttons repeatedly and waved the key-fob around dramatically.

A loud honking was noticeable. It seemed to be coming from…around the corner? My son-in-law took off.

“Wait, what?” I said. “Is that..from my panic button?”

As we rounded the corner, there was my van. A half block from its original parking spot.

My son-in-law commented, “Did you see that scaffolding on the school? The workers probably needed your car out of the way during the day.”

I phoned Gaia to report the car was found. I called 911 and cancelled the police appointment.

Back in the apartment, we each told one another the story. The gist was, nothing had happened.

It was a good thing my grandson had insisted I take the sax along, though, because, that way, I’d discovered the situation at 4pm instead of hours later, in the dark.

And, it was a good thing my son-in-law understood the strange parking norms of that neighborhood, in which one’s car could be moved without notice, and without harm intended.

Everything was good. All for the Best.

In fact, I had even learned skills about how to be a better parker in that neighborhood.

I tell this story as prelude to a different story when nothing happened.

***

On September 18th, 2020, Gaia and I were having dinner outside of Black & Blue, a neighborhood restaurant. At the time, you had to dine outdoors because it was the pandemic, so the inside was closed.

I happened to check my phone and was shocked to see terrible news: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had just died. Before I could tell Gaia, I heard laughter from the next table. I glanced over, and saw three jolly middle-aged men. One began to sing, “Ding-Dong, the witch is dead”—from the Wizard of Oz.

To Gaia, I murmured, “Check the news—on your phone.”

I felt angry. I stood up.

Gaia said, “Andy?”

I walked to my neighbors’ table.

They became silent and stared at me. I stated, “I am a liberal.”

The one wearing a red Make America Great Again baseball cap, responded, “We’re gay.” The second guy said, “We think you want to kill us.”

I asked, “You think I want to kill you?” Since I was smaller than these three tough-looking guys, this seemed unlikely. The MAGA-hat guy said, “I was getting out of my car, wearing my hat, and one of you yelled you wanted to kill me.”

I said, “Well—I don’t want to kill you.” The third guy said, “I’m Latino. From Colombia.”

I said, “I heard you singing the Wicked Witch song. I know that you’re happy Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.”

The first guy said, “You don’t know us. We’re gay. You didn’t know that. You didn’t know he’s Latino, from South America. You don’t know about us.”

I said, “I want to say something now. When Scalia died, McConnell refused for eight months to hold a hearing on Merrick Garland because McConnell said Obama shouldn’t get to make an appointment during the last year of his presidency—the seat should be left open till the 2016 election, so the winner could make the appointment.”

The three guys were silent.

I continued, “So what I’m saying is, by that principle, no appointment now should happen till after the election. It’s only six weeks away.”

I waited.

The guy in the red MAGA hat said, “Okay.”

I felt surprised. I said, “Okay?”

He looked at the other guys, who nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

I said, “So, not until whoever wins the election—”

He repeated, “Yeah, seems reasonable.”

I said, “Well—thank you.”

He said, “Okay, that’s no problem.”

I nodded my appreciation to the three guys and went back to our table. Gaia asked, “What just happened?”

I told her, “They agreed that Ginsburg’s replacement should happen after the election.”

She said, “Wow.”

The men at the other table were looking over at us. The man in the red hat nodded his head, in affirmation. We all smiled at each other.

(That’s it—we did all have dinner, but there was not more conversation among us.…….Over the course of the next several weeks, Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett, and her approval was rammed through the Senate…..Roe v. Wade was overturned….the conservative Supreme Court majority gave Trump immunity from prosecution…..Turns out the three guys at the next table….nothing happened….they didn’t really…umm control…anything…..ummm.)

***

So….these two nothing-stories just go to show that while All May Sometimes Seem to Be for the Best, In Fact, All Isn’t Necessarily for the Best (….in This “Best” of All Possible Worlds)

Dammit, Doctor Pangloss!