I’ve been thinking about timing a lot lately. It seems like a lot of the successes that I have had in life have come as the result of pure providence. As much as hard work and preparation play into the end result, more often than not, it’s simply about being in the right place at the right time. No doubt, as talented as he was, Elvis came along at the only time and place that could have launched such an icon into the stratosphere. At a time when the relatively new subculture of the American teenager was still in search of a voice, had Elvis Aaron Presley never been born we would have had to invent him.

Consider for a moment your relationships, your closest friends, your loved ones if you will. Think of the circumstances and all of the variables that had to fall into place for you to meet. It is highly unlikely that my wife and I would have ever met had a coworker of mine not suggested that she apply to work at Chili’s when only an hour before she had been offered a job at Baker’s Square. Depending on how you see the world, this could have been dumb luck or, like George and Lorraine McFly, destiny. Regardless of your belief system, it is clear that a complex series of events brought you to where you are today. And like a butterfly flapping its wings in Tokyo, any slight variance from your path would likely have steered your course significantly.

I observed a couple of events over the weekend that were subject to time and place. Shortly after watching what many are now calling the greatest World Series game ever played, I posted a meme that I created on my church’s Facebook page. What happened next can only be explained by perfect timing. I woke up Friday morning with an unusually high amount of notifications on my phone. Apparently while I slept, this graphic that I created on my phone had gone viral in every sense of the word. It made The Today Show, Sports Illustrated, USA Today, ESPN, and countless other media outlets. It has been viewed millions of times and shared directly from our page over 25,000 times. And so, for about 48 hours, I was caught up in quite a bit of hype. The thing is though, I tend to create things like that and post them on a weekly basis. It’s not unusual to see something from my social media feed that puts a humorous spin on a relevant topic. Typically they are worth no more than a few likes from friends and family and maybe a comment or two. That said, when I scheduled the now infamous “Cubs church meme” to be posted at 9 AM on Thursday, I had no idea that that timing would be so right on the mark.

Let’s jump to Saturday night at one of our favorite spots in Springfield, Mowie’s Cue. If you kept up with us at all in 2016 you know by now that Fun DMC has been on a whirlwind tour of wedding receptions. It’s becoming an increasingly rare occurrence that we play gigs at public venues. As a band that tries to remain relevant, we often seize up on topical opportunities in order to create a theme for our shows. As the 2016 election was drawing to a close, we decided to dig our patriotic suits out of storage and poke a little bit of fun at the madness that has been this election cycle. Right before our third set, a very large wedding party, fresh out of their reception, walked into the pool hall. Never known to pass up on creating a moment, the band invited the recently married bride and groom to the dance floor where they were greeted by the signature guitar riff from the Marvin Gaye classic, “Let’s Get It On.” As I watched them both slow dance and the entire bar full of strangers looked on and snapped videos, it occurred to me the sheer odds of this panning out the way it did. Someday, Brooklyn and Jaron are going to tell their kids about this, how they walked into a bar on their wedding night and the band that was playing just happened to be one of Central Illinois’ premier wedding entertainers at the time. They will likely show them pictures and every time they hear one of the songs that we played that night, they will go back to that moment on the dance floor when Fun DMC sporadically turned Mowie’s Cue into a reception hall for one last dance on their wedding night. And it was all about being at the right place at the right time.