" When it is pleasant enough – or at minimum if remaining yet hopeful – one's unfolding fate might be received as effortlessly as a slice of freshly baked Dutch apple pie just prior to nibbling upon its point. If you did not know it, it is the one crowned with streusel – a crumbly topping of flour, butter, brown sugar and cinnamon – all offsetting an underlayer of relatively crisp, tart apple slices; rather than the simple pastry lid which lies atop a sweeter variety.

An encounter with a previously unthinkable misfortune is quite another matter.

Despite the inherent foresight that each of us possess regarding the inevitable calamities awaiting every passage along life's journey, the willingness to cherish a destiny in its totality across one’s lifetime not only necessitates the wisdom of reflection but even then, acquiring the foolishness to trust an incomprehensible unknown.

This may begin with the simple acknowledgment that rats are far better swimmers than nearly any child and a significantly higher number of the latter than you’d surely wish to recognize have suffered the very same misery which befell Hamelin’s rodents in the later sanitized adaptations of the reportedly based-upon-fact piper legend. "

― Monte Souder (Rat Luck)