Nine Months

Have you ever seen a movie named Chances Are? It's about the soul of a man who dies and is in so much of a hurry to return to earth that he doesn't get the injection to make him forget about the life he just had. His soul enters a newborn who grows up to fall in love with the dead man's daughter. Said daughter takes boyfriend home to meet mother, and confusion ensues. Now let's play "What if?"

What if it were true that souls were "reused"? What if they were placed into humans at birth rather than at conception? What if souls are kept together to promote bonding on earth (whether they remember each other or not)? What might happen?

A friend and his wife just had a baby boy. Can you imagine if my father's soul were put into my friend's son, for the purposes of grouping souls known to each other? Would I have a responsibility to be a mentor to this child, doing for him what my father did for me? (I don't think I could teach the boy even half of what he knew when he was my father.)

Then I start to wonder whose souls my other friends have, and whose I have. My paternal grandfather died two months before I was born. Maybe it was a natural for me to be given his soul. (In that case, I'm My Own Grandpa.)

This is the sort of trouble I get myself into when I have nothing else to do.