The Meaning of Life

by Toni L.P. Kelner

In Douglas Adams's book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a vastly intelligent computer named Deep Thought is asked for the answer to life, the universe, and everything. After a considerable time, he gives his answer: 42. Which is meaningless, but pretty darned funny.

I think there's an innate need for life to mean something, for day to day events to have some significance. Take last night. Our doorbell rang at 11 o'clock, and when Steve and I answered, a young woman asked, "Is that your car?" She pointed to our red Camry, which was parked in front of the house. "Somebody broke your window." Steve zoomed down the steps to the street, and sure enough, the rear driver's side window was thoroughly broken. Fragments of glass are all over the back seat, and scattered on the street.

While he thanked the woman for noticing and stopping on a rainy night to tell us, I call 911 and explain the situation. A few minutes later, an officer arrives, makes a brief examination, and gives us a case number. Since nothing was stolen, that's pretty much all the investigation we're going to get. We cleaned up most of the glass, taped a plastic bag over the gap, and moved the car off the street. Today we dealt with the insurance company, dropped the car off to be repaired, and arranged for a rental car. We'll get out repaired car back tomorrow.

You're probably wondering what the point of this story is. Unfortunately, there isn't one.

We tried to find one. We looked at other cars parked on the street to see if somebody had been vandalizing vehicles en masse. We tried to remember if we'd had any conflicts that would cause somebody to take petty vengeance. We wondered about neighborhood kids whose ball could have hit the window, and then been too afraid to own up to it. Any of those explanations would explained the event, but we have no reason to pick one explanation over the other. In short, it was a meaningless event.

That's why I like fiction, particularly mysteries. The events mean something. If we'd been in an episode of Monk, the pattern of glass breakage would have told Adrian that somebody was trying to ensure that we no longer parked in that section of the street so it leave a getaway route for a murderer. Sherlock Holmes would have determined the unique shape of the projectile that caused the damage, and deduced that the vandal was from an obscure town in Norway whose inhabitants bear a grudge against Steve's ancestors. Sookie Stackhouse would have sensed the vandal watching us, and known that supernatural powers were at work. A broken car window would have meant something, because in good fiction, the seemingly unimportant details mean something.

All our broken window means is annoyance and expense, which isn't particularly satisfying. Of course, the up side is that we're not particularly worried about murderers laying plans, vengeful Norwegians, or dark supernatural power. Random destruction has some advantages.

So what's the answer to our mystery of the broken car window? 42.

Comments

[Sheila Connolly]

The local news has been running a story this week about somebody's glass shower door that simply exploded without warning. This was hard on the heels of a warning about glass table-tops that also shattered spontaneously. Think there's a pattern here?

[Donna Andrews]

When things like this happen to me, I usually assume the universe is giving me fodder for a plot. What would Tilda Harper do? (Meg Langslow, my heroine, would call one of Mother's cousins to fix it, and be very shocked when the cousin came back report the body in the trunk.)

[Toni LP Kelner]

Shelia, the glass shower door and table-top breakage was probably due to glass fatigue. Since our car isn't that old, and is of shatterproof glass, that doesn't seem likely. But an interesting thought.

Donna, Tilda would cuss and call the insurance agency. But if the missile that broke the window turned out to be a rare promotional BRADY BUNCH collectible, a reproduction of the ball that broke Marcia's nose, then it might be interesting.

[chris]

I attended a three day course/therapy/lecture/education once and the leader/teacher/therapist/coach made a big thing out of telling everyone that at the end of the second day they would reveal the meaning of life.
At various moments during the first two days he repeated the promises with increasing enthusiasm until anticipation in the room was very high.
At the alloted moment, after a break before which he had stated "after the break - The Meaning of Life", he strolled to the front with the biggest dictionary i had ever seen.
He opened it and read.
"Life- the period between birth and death".

[krisneri]

In a mystery the woman who came to your door to tell you about the broken window might prove to be the one who broke it. But only after our sleuth exhausted the more obvious solutions. Is life imitating art? Do you know why she was out in the dark, supposedly spotting the result of nefarious deeds?

[Rachel Haynes]

Excellent post. I find it somehow poetic that these things can have so little meaning sometimes, and that 42 is as valid a meaning as we can invent sometimes.

I would contend, however, that perhaps the meaning in this situation has nothing to do with the broken window but in the small kindnesses of strangers on rainy night that can make life a bit more tolerable.

[Charlaine Harris]

Okay . . . was it broken from the outside (as you might expect)? Wouldn't it be much more interesting if it had been broken from the INSIDE? What if something was trying to get out of your car, rather than in? There's a story there.