Happy Accidents

The coolest mistake happened today.

I got an email from a judge I knew in 2011/2012. With an article that is from 2011. So I emailed him back.

I met him way back in 2005 or 2006. I was a "witness" for a trans friend who wanted to legally change his name. After I testified and the judge approved the name change, he invited us back into his chambers. He wanted to celebrate this change! He said he spent a lot of time in his court dealing with hard and painful family law stuff like divorces and state custody. He gave us candy and said he celebrated my friend's change.

Then he wrote this article he wrote in 2011 for the New York Times about all he went through to get two people married, one of whom was dying. Liz found it, and I was like, I met him! 

She wrote him in 2011 to convince him to work to vote down an amendment in our state constitution to make marriage between one man and one woman. We won that fight in 2012. He retired a couple of years later.

Now it's 2025. I get this email about the 2011 article.

I wrote back: Hi! Long time no hear. I hope your retirement is going well. Why did you send me this article 14 years later?

Oops, he said, he was deleting old emails and must have hit SEND instead. He didn't remember our connection, and I got to tell him all the ways we knew him. He was delighted!

We've exchanged cell phone numbers. 

The lives we touch and those lives that touched ours are always worth revisiting.