by Walter McKenzie, a career educator, lifelong learner, co-founder of The Worthy Educator and a champion for mid-to-late career educators. You can learn more and connect with Walter at waltermckenzie.com.
Friday night, May 30, 1980, I was a college freshman, and my girlfriend Nancy and I had just parked back at her place after getting ice cream. The skies had opened and we decided to sit in the car and wait out the downpour. As we sat there recounting our evening and talking about the weekend ahead, I thought I saw a shadow go across the rear window. But who would be out in this rain? As we continued talking, my driver-side door suddenly flung open.
Startled, we saw the dark outline of someone standing there, leaning against the door to hold it open. Before I could speak, his arm reached in revealing a gun in the car dome lighting. “You’ve got thirty seconds to give me your money,” he said. All at once, I looked from the looming figure down to his gun and then over to Nancy when a loud bang shattered the tension.
I felt nothing, but the horrified look on her face told me I was in trouble. Looking back to my left, the imposing figure was gone, but a stream of blood flowing out of my arm grabbed my attention. The smell of gunpowder filled the cabin as Nancy gasped, “You’re shot!” I started to feel a burning in my arm and my chest and then in my abdomen. The shadow had run off as if he scared himself. Why did he shoot so quickly? Did he say three seconds, not thirty? Did I mishear him and get myself shot? He didn't even get what he came for. All this was playing out in my head in a matter of seconds. You never truly know how you’ll react in a situation until it's actually happening.
“Stay here and I’ll go get help!” Nancy pleaded. “No,” I insisted, “I can’t stay here. What if he comes back?” We got out of the car, but as I stood up the pain was crippling and I doubled over, gasping for breath. The bullet went downward at an angle straight through my bicep, collapsing my left lung, grazing the lining of my heart, piercing my sternum and stomach, and lodging in my liver. Reason enough for pain. Reason enough to have difficulty breathing. Bent over with my head at my knees, I hobbled through the rain and up three flights of stairs, onto the couch where I collapsed.
I remember the paramedics feeling for the bullet and discovering it in my lower-left side, the interminable ride in the ambulance to the regions only shock trauma center, and the rush into four and a half hours of surgery. They said I was extremely lucky that the path of the bullet didn’t do more damage or I wouldn’t have survived. That knowledge helped me through the aftermath. Trauma does funny things to a person. I couldn’t listen to fireworks for years and I’ve never been able to eat maple walnut again.
It was the Crime Solvers crime of the month, and detectives came to me multiple times in the hospital. They brought in books of mugshots asking me if I could identify who held us up. I looked through page after page, book after book, but between the darkness, the rain coming down, and the light emanating from inside the car, I never made out his face. Eventually I felt pressured to “pick someone, anyone” so they could make an arrest, but I couldn’t pick just anyone without being sure. The shooter was never caught.
Over the summer I recuperated at home, and as I got my strength back I
knew I wanted to go back to school for my sophomore year. Eventually back on campus, there were many unwelcome conversations with well-meaning people who heard what happened and wanted to express their concern. “Why didn’t you have your door locked?” and “Why didn’t you grab the gun away from him?” were two of my favorite questions (not), as they tried to imagine themselves in the situation. But as they got past their questions, they taught me a valuable lesson sharing their personal stories:
everyone carries their own pain and loss they keep to themselves, be it health struggles, money concerns, personal conflicts, mental health issues, or other crosses they bear but choose to keep hidden away. It was eye
opening. I never would have guessed the suffering so many familiar faces were privately enduring.
My reason for sharing all this with you? Gratitude.
Gratitude? Where is the gratitude in any of this?!
For all the awfulness and trauma and upheaval, every day since May 30, 1980 has been a gift. That’s 44 years, 7 months and 18 days and counting that I may never have seen if those doctors hadn’t saved my life that night. Every win, every heartache, every moment since then has been playing with house money. No matter where life has taken me, who I have encountered and what has happened between then and now, I am so very thankful, for…
- the second chance
- living fully
- having impact
- making memories
- learning what’s truly important
- appreciating everything I would have missed out on, and
- saying, "Sure! What have I got to lose?" to new opportunities
Trying to make sense out of a senseless act is pointless, but it redefined life as I knew it. There was no way I was wasting this gift of an opportunity. Gratitude changes everything. And so, I share it gladly.
What about you? What if you had a second chance? Better yet, what if you marked a point in your life from where everything thereafter is gravy…above and beyond what you experienced and accomplished up to that point and the beginning of things you never thought about accomplishing until now?
You can, and you don’t need a life-altering event to do it. Pick that point on the timeline of your life and begin to see everything through a lens of gratitude. Choose any milestone from the past or this very moment right now…It doesn’t matter. Get started “gratituding” for whatever time you have left. Why not? There’s no such thing as forever. That’s what makes life so precious. The one thing that can sweeten the deal is…you guessed it…gratitude. What can that look like for you?
As we enter the holiday season these next six weeks and prepare for the new year, I wish for each of you the kind of gratitude that transcends all the shortcomings and hardships of life. May you be grateful for every day you have remaining. It will change the way you live!
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