Love in All in the Timing by David Ives

Love is unpredictable. Love is sporadic. Love is complete craziness. There really is no rulebook on how to find love or how to be in love. There is also no warning that informs anyone of when love is going to sneak up on them. It is so important to be attentive in all scenarios and encounters because a connection can form under any circumstance and once words are said, there is no taking them back. Imagine a world with a reset button. A world where anytime you say the wrong words, you can go back in time during the middle of a conversation and correct what was wrongly said. In the short one-act play by David Ives, a relationship between two young individuals is built and rebuilt several times on behalf of a bell. Although the play is brief, Sure Thing resembles various pathways and ideas of how human beings individually interpret love and how maybe, just maybe, it is all based entirely on timing. Timing can be the greatest blessing or the worst form of fate. In this specific case, the timing had to be right before the possibility of true love could surface.

The significance of the bell lies in between the lines of the text. The bell creates a barrier that separates the deciding factors of a relationship between two people. It enables the characters to undergo self-reinvention in the midst of the conversation. The bell presses the audience to feel the time passing by while also triggering the opportunity for the characters to meet again. It also creates an environment in which the audience can feel amazed by the endless possibilities of the characters’ conversation. The bell is the determining factor of where the two will go in the newfound acquaintanceship.

Human beings are flawed, and we often tend to say the wrong things at...

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...hé love-at-first-sight phenomena—it just took an extended period of time to get there. In other words, once their filtration systems were satisfied, the two felt enough in common to embark upon the spur-of-the-moment journey of love. Bill and Betty found a connection characterized by a rush of positive emotions in a micro-moment.

Although the comedy had a happy ending, it also brings into light just how unrealistic and somewhat random that sort of situation is and how timing is even more important in real life. There is no button in this world to reset time or have any do-overs. What’s done is done. There is only the chance that one person’s timing will sync with another’s timing and their worlds will join as one and embark on the crazy journey of love.

Works Cited

Gwynn, R. S. "Sure Thing." Literature: A Pocket Anthology. New York: Longman, 2002. N. pag. Print.