Have you ever sat down and looked the choices you have made and how they have shaped your life to this point? Then as you go over everything in your head, you think to yourself “How could I have been so stupid/careless/reckless? If one thing went the other way I could have been hurt, locked up, or worse, dead.” I’m embarrassed when I look at how many times I flipped the coin with my life and tempted fate.
What really got me thinking about this was an article I read on CNN.com. Basically, an off duty cop was helping his father at the family deli when someone parked in the deli’s lot and went across the street. Apparently the street is very busy and the lot was specifically marked for deli customers only, so the father goes out to ask the guy to move his car, the guy refuses, things get hot and escalate to a scuffle which escalates to the guy pulling bat on the father. The son who is the cop sees this pulls a gun and shoots and kills the guy with the bat. He goes to trial, the shooting wasn’t justified so he is sentenced to 29 years to life. He serves a few years and another judge overturns his conviction and he is released. He gets a job, finds a girl, gets married and tries to start over only to have a higher court overrule his overturned conviction eighteen months later and send him back to jail. I obviously wasn’t there and I don’t know all of the facts so I can’t pass judgment, but what struck me was that if it wasn’t for that one choice he would still be a free man and the whole thing never would have happened.
The whole thing just made me very thankful that all of cards fell my way, when by rights they shouldn’t have. One wrong choice could have changed everything and I never would have met L Bird and never had A Bird. So here’s to making good choices…
What really got me thinking about this was an article I read on CNN.com. Basically, an off duty cop was helping his father at the family deli when someone parked in the deli’s lot and went across the street. Apparently the street is very busy and the lot was specifically marked for deli customers only, so the father goes out to ask the guy to move his car, the guy refuses, things get hot and escalate to a scuffle which escalates to the guy pulling bat on the father. The son who is the cop sees this pulls a gun and shoots and kills the guy with the bat. He goes to trial, the shooting wasn’t justified so he is sentenced to 29 years to life. He serves a few years and another judge overturns his conviction and he is released. He gets a job, finds a girl, gets married and tries to start over only to have a higher court overrule his overturned conviction eighteen months later and send him back to jail. I obviously wasn’t there and I don’t know all of the facts so I can’t pass judgment, but what struck me was that if it wasn’t for that one choice he would still be a free man and the whole thing never would have happened.
The whole thing just made me very thankful that all of cards fell my way, when by rights they shouldn’t have. One wrong choice could have changed everything and I never would have met L Bird and never had A Bird. So here’s to making good choices…
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