Why do things snowball on me? Why when it rains, as they say, does it pour? Why am I enjoying life so much now, with so many things going right, and so few things going wrong that I don't even notice them? Why does it all happen at once?

Standing in the clubhouse after the game tonight, I was talking with Derrick about sitting down to chat for a feature story I'm working on, and he says to me, "I have to ask you something for someone."

I say, "Shoot."

"Are you seeing anyone?" he asks.

I tell him I'm not and ask why.

"Remember the woman who was sitting with my wife at the game yesterday?" Derrick continues, and I did remember her, mainly from when I talked with his wife, Stephanie, outside the clubhouse after Sunday's game. "She wanted to know."

I think my eyes bugged out like Yakko Warner when the nurse walks in the room and I said, "You're kidding." He told me she's a teacher and lives near me, about 15 minutes away.

And I just don't get how all these things happen at once. It doesn't really bother me, and I'm enjoying it, certainly. And, honestly, part of me wasn't that surprised that someone would ask now if I was seeing anyone. That's just how it goes. I mean, what could be better than that? But how would my life be different if these various turns of good fortune were spread out more? I'm just not used to people having others ask if I'm seeing anyone. Usually, I'm the one asking the friend about the friend.

Ah, well, I'll just keep smiling and see what happens tomorrow.

And tomorrow ... I read an article in today's paper that brought a lump to my throat. It brought back some memories, thoughts of the only time I ever read a news story in the paper and cried. It was five summers ago as I sat in a pizza parlor somewhere out in Marlboro eating lunch during one of my exterminating summers. I read a New York Times article on the town of Montoursville, Pa., the home to 19 members of the high school French club who died on TWA Flight 800 when it exploded over the Atlantic off Long Island on July 17, 1996.

Today (this being 1:22 a.m.) is the fifth anniversary of the crash. And reading the story about the preparations for memorial services (and the lack of a memorial on Long Island and the struggle for answers), I was moved again. I read how the Montoursville families have settled with TWA and Boeing for $2.5 million from each corporation as some sort of compensation.

The Montoursville families moved me the most. The students are all buried on the same hill of the same cemetary out in the Pennsylvania countryside. Every time I see the sign for "Entering Montour County" on I-80, I think of the families and the crash. I was home that night, taking a video tape out of the VCR when CNN was the last channel on and the crash was only minutes old. My friends and I watched an hour's worth or more of coverage, stunned by what had happened and by the realization that had we been down at the beach that night (as we often would do), we would've seen the lights of an exploding plane over the Atlantic.

Later that summer, I spoke on the phone with a friend from college. We were more like co-workers, both working for the features section of the paper. I asked how his summer was, and he said, "Not good. I have to have surgery for a hernia, and you know that plane that crashed with all those high school kids on it?" I said I did. "Well, that's like my town, it's the next town over. My girlfriend's sister was one of the students who died."

When we got back to school that fall, after a few weeks or a month or more had passed, he wrote a column about it, about how those innocent lives were lost because of a spark, a spark from a wire in or near a fuel tank that ignited the vapors and broke the plane apart, sending it and the souls on board tumbling into the ocean.