A lot of wonderful things have come about as a result of these “Under The Wire” columns. Our electricity doesn’t get shut off as often and best of all, we have made a lot of new friends. Recently a whole new experience has begun to emerge.

Most who publish our weekly efforts follow with our contact information. Recently, we received an email from a gentleman asking if I was the same Gary Hodgson who attended a certain college an undisclosed but big number of years ago. After answering, yes, we began calls and emails bringing us up to date on each either. We did know each other then but hadn’t crossed paths since. Then it began to get weird. In short, our lives had paralleled each other for decades. Success, failure, ranches, businesses that sprang up from our cattle passions. As we met and talked more, common friendships began to pop up with others who also had led eerily similar lives, unknown to each other.

Coincidence? I thought so until a few nights ago. It took an old movie Sue and I watched on TV to bring it all together. We all know if it is on TV or the internet it’s got to be real. Right?

The movie was called “The Bourne Identity.” It was about a young man, fresh and enthusiastic who enrolled in a secret, experimental program to create spies. That’s when it hit me.

I had enrolled in an agriculture college, unmotivated to become much of anything. It beat getting a job. Surrounding me were hundreds just like me. Must have been a nightmare for university officials. Their reputation was at stake. That’s when “The Program” must have been started. While we sat in English 101 and Chemistry classes so boring they put us ranch kids to sleep, it was all part of the plan. Once unconscious from dangling participles and the periodic table of elements, we were all programed to become something entirely different than we ever expected. Our previous lives involving TGIF, FAC and other activities we considered a life ambition were wiped from our brains. Replaced by, no doubt chemically induced, thoughts of success in and dedication to, various cattle and ranch related professions. Upon “graduation” our zombie-like newly programed bodies and minds, led us each on a pre-programed journey, just far enough from the others not to catch on to what had happened to us earlier. That is the only plausible explanation I can come up with. Sue, of course, has pointed out that I never have been very good at plausible explanation or thought processes.

Never the less, after all these years, “It’s All Starting To Make Sense.”