I think about life sometimes, especially as I age. How I arrived where I am and the many close calls that could have ended my walk. Like when I thought to tap the brakes on my old pickup a mere twinkling of an instant before another pickup blazed through a stop sign, inches in front of me. I didn’t see the other vehicle. I had no clue it was coming, but I remember thinking Tap the brakes! Tap the brakes! and wondering why at the same time. I often wonder if the other guy thought Hit the Gas! Hit the Gas!

Like the day I walked into a drilling superintendent’s office looking for a job and as we shook hands, his phone rang. It happened to be one of his drillers, my first to work for, looking for a man with a weak mind and a strong back. Go figure.

Like when I decided to visit an old friend one Sunday afternoon and he was having a party. Through a friend of a friend of another friend I met my wife. That was 29 years ago.

Looking back, weighing the evidence, the more I’m convinced of “by God’s design” than “by chance.”

Relative motion is the calculation of the movement of an object in relation to another moving object. Like cars approaching an intersection from different directions or traveling the same direction at different speeds—a football and a wide receiver, a baseball and an outfielder, aircraft, ships, planets and meteors, and you and me as we journey through life.

Sometimes the twain shall meet. Sometimes not.

Anyone who uses a radar knows about relative motion. Another name for it is Hyper Physics.

We, you and me, are walking physics problems. Okay, wrong word. We’re calculations.

Once upon a time, a woman looked at me and said, “You have a problem!”

I politely said, “Thanks! I thought I had more than one.”