“I always believed we were seeds in the sky,” the narrator started. “Plucked out just by chance.”

What if a chance encounter never happened? What if that one single event that caused your parents to meet didn’t happen because someone decided to turn right instead of left? Almost like the butterfly effect, the fifteen-minute oscar-winning animation The Danish Poet explores the theme in an optimistic way.

We saw this yesterday at the San Francisco International Film Festival in the animation shorts program. It was the cute short that ended the program, borrowing the earlier form animation. No flashy digital 3d or soundtrack. Just a simple story, supported not augmented by animation.

In some way, what if my parents never did meet. I probably wouldn’t be here. What if my mom had decided to pursue a newscasting career rather than go to nursing school? What if she didn’t have that fish dinner in her dorm room that probably got her closer with a friend who introduced my mom to her brother—my dad? What if my mom’s friend decided not to flake and actually went on that trip to United States for the first time? Or what if my dad learned that the best schools in the United States were the Ivy Leagues in the East Coast rather than a school in the Northwest with the word Washington in its name? And what if my grandparents decided to immigrate to Michigan in the boonies than to settle in the bay area? What if? Would it still be the same as today?