A joke:
An 18 year old dude hears a knock at the door. He answers it. There is a snail on the doormat far below him. He picks it up, murmurs "What the hell?" and tosses it about six to eight feet away into the garden. 1/?

Dude goes back inside. A few weeks later he graduates high school with honors and is accepted to a good college. He spends his time bouncing between majors but settles on a double major of American History and Engineering.

He graduates and immediately goes to work building and renovating houses outside of Washington DC. He tries his best to preserve historically important buildings from interference from corporations and lobbyists--sometimes he wins and sometimes he loses.

He sneaks architectural details into new buildings that tells the stories of the ones they replace. Every buttress, every doorway whispers a story from 200 years ago. A young cub reporter from NPR notices his work, and interviews him and they end up flirting outrageously.

The guy and the reporter end up marrying. A few years later, they have a mortgage, a a baby, and two dogs. They build a hectic life full of traveling and documenting architecture and reporting, and they create a charity dedicated to the preservation of historic buildings.

It eventually takes root across the country, resulting in many residences being declared historic landmarks and saved from a developers' wrecking ball. They continue this work for many years--the baby eventually grows into a college age woman herself who becomes an artist.

The dude and the reporter eventually retire to Amsterdam, easing into a bohemian life full of cheerful eccentricity. At the age of 76, the man goes back to his old house one last time to sign the realtor's paperwork.

He walks from room to room, the hardwood floors lit in the dusky warm sunset light of memory, beauty in every step. He sighs as he watches the motes of dust dancing in sunbeams through the unwashed windows.

The unrelenting immutability of time that takes everything. He hears a knock at the door, maybe the last knock at this door he'll ever hear. He goes to answer it.
At the door is the snail, who looks up at him and yells, "Dude, what the fuck?!"