Some things go the way you expect. You pour water onto your tennis shoe and it gets wet. You look across your morning mug of coffee to see that the sun has indeed risen. 

But sometimes things are surprising. I heard of a spray called neverwet that you can use to create an impermeable coating. Then dump a bucket of water and watch it repel off. Somewhere between your first permanent tooth and your learner's permit you find out that the sun never rose at all. The earth is the one that chases it's tail around the sun.

There is a story in the Bible about a battle between a medium sized army and an enormous one. The Mideonites outnumber the Isrealites by a factor of four, which is ominous in itself. Yet rather than beefing up the troops, God tells Gideon, the leader of the Isrealites, to shave off everyone who is afraid. That makes the odds still steeper, at thirteen to one. Not what you might expect. But even then the ratio is too small. Gideon commands the men to go drink by the stream and every soldier who gets down on his knees to scoop water is sent home, leaving a paltry three hundred men. This jacks up the inequity to four hundred and fifty to one. Gulp. 

Paring down the forces is not what you would expect. It is counter intuitive. And yet it is the preamble to an historic victory involving jars, torches, and trumpets. 

The other day I felt annoyed at someone. They were not, if you can believe it, doing what I wanted. The nerve. My knee jerk response was to rev up the annoyance. That would get them in line. But then a fresh notion wafted in. What if, instead, I was generous. Just give them this one. A freebie. Out of character. Be kind. 

Amazingly, the friction peeled of. It did not soak in. Kind of like that spray. If only I could jam the feeling into a can, and call it nevermad.