One of the rather curious characteristics of Arthur Dent was his incredible ability to ignore all the extraordinary realities of life. He failed to notice that his best friend was in fact an eccentric and quirky alien who's main interests lay in a towel and a muddy looking satchel, he failed to notice that application for a bypass had been on display for perfectly good time (although this failure is perhaps more forgivable than the first), but perhaps most importantly he failed to notice himself.
In all his years leading up to the day of the Earth's demolition (by the by 'Earth' is an incredibly poor name for a planet; it is of course not the only one made of the substance known as earth, and more importantly, when did we begin naming objects by their ingredients, that would make a whole manner of things known as paper or plastic, and, in fact, ultimately known as atoms, and that would all be very confusing) Arthur Dent had always thought of himself as a fairly middle-of-the-road, early-middle-aged, middle-class man, minding his own business.
There are two things wrong with this. Firstly, the concept of 'middleness' is really quite ridiculous. To say something is in 'the middle' it implies that there is a left and right, or up and down, or both. Given the sheer, infinite vastness of space, therefore, pretty much all things Arthur Dent thought himself to be are useless. Secondly, it is really quite impossible to 'mind one's own business.' It is quite possible that by 'minding his own business' in putting two sugars rather than one into his bracing Monday-morning coffee, Arthur doubles the quantity produced by a Colombian farmer, who in turn fires erratic gun shots into the air, which hit a passing Roborti-Colen space-ship, which in turn leads to the Captain of the Roborti-Colen ship to declare the whole universe is destroying, and shoot at random, inadvertently destroying the rather beautiful planet of Robort-Colen. Thus, Arthur Dent's 'minding his own business' in his choice of sugar leads to the destruction of a planet. 'Silly humans, with their silly, silly language,' remarks the Guide.
But Arthur Dent was not just a little wrong, not very wrong, but humungously wrong. Gigantically, astronomically, insatiably, mind-bogglingly, head-slammingly, beetle-zapplingly wrong when it came to this self-reflection of middleness. For Arthur Dent was in fact destined for greatness. Although he had no discernable qualites in intelligence, or braveness or looks- certainly not looks- Arthur was in fact fortunate to have been born at exactly the right time with exactly the right series of events and mismatches and moments of insignificance, that led him to be lying underneath a bulldozer, a large, yellow bulldozer, as it threatened its rotten, rusted teeth towards his house. And it is this series of events that made Arthur Dent remarkable. And in this 'remarkableness,' he was now about to experience an adventure quite marvelous.
Interestingly, there was a suggestion recently that due to the remarkable nature of a normal man in Arthur Dent, he should have his own entry in the Guide. Unfortunately, there was wide scale industrial strike this day due to the hot chocolate machine having broken. So if you would like to assign an entry to the guide concerning Arthur Dent, please write to Guide headquarters, and fix that all-important drinks machine.
