The Dave Matthews Effect

Remember the Butterfly Effect?

The butterfly effect is a common trope in fiction when presenting scenarios involving time travel and with hypotheses where one storyline diverges at the moment of a seemingly minor event resulting in two significantly different outcomes.

I’ve renamed and redefined it the Dave Matthews Effect.

The Dave Matthews effect is a common trope in a specific city where Dave hangs out. Everybody hypothesizes what it would be like to be friends with Dave. Everybody has seen or met him and has a story. And everybody most likely creates a lot of fiction about him because we don’t want to believe it’s fiction.

One of my Dave Matthew story lines that diverged into two significantly different potential outcomes was regarding  my child and public school vs private school.

From listening to the Sir.Ken Robinson TedTalk, you might surmise that I am an opponent of the public school system. I am actually just divided and I haven’t figured out where I stand when I’m faced with less and less options based on either rejection or financing for private school. Here’s where Dave Matthews comes in. I’m at a potluck for my child’s school and all the moms were talking about Dave Matthews. I said I’d heard his kids went to such and such elementary and they said that, no, his kids actually went to such and such private school. But I’d also heard they were attending another private school. The debate ensued. For a moment, I thought, “If Dave Matthews kids DID go to public school, why not send my kids?”And then the second thought was, if Dave Matthews kids go to that private school, maybe it’s the best private school and we should pursue it.

Of course it’s moot. It’s mostly fiction. But I had, for a fleeting moment, jumped up and down believing that it spoke to the quality of our public school system.  Again, I’m divided.

Needless to say, we’ve also had embarrassing stories of running into Dave. Yep, mine would probably trump most of yours…