I almost died...
More than once...
My favorite color is yellow...
(I'll periodically try to lighten this up with stupidity. Now felt good for dose one)
Easter is soon approaching, this year marking my 17th anniversary of what feels like borrowed time. Easter Sunday of 1999 could have been my last day. This is a story of fear and crisis, acts of desperation, facing the unknown. Oh yeah, I am in it too.
And since I am telling it, I'll be the dashing prince.
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| close enough |
Approaching sundown I took myself, along with my 10 year old cousin, to a gas station to refuel the beast. I drove a Dodge Ram pickup with tricked out wheels that were stylishly low to the ground and glimmering with chrome. They had also somehow done something jazzy to the muffler so I sounded like quite the badass driving about. Epically stupid.
Perhaps I was compensating for something? For more on that, please see the blog penned by my police chief grandfather entitled: "My grandson goes to what kind of bars?"
I digress...
I was a student at the time, knee deep in undergraduate work. You know what I wasn't knee deep in? Money. Quite the opposite. That day I worked an extra shift at the veterinary hospital to earn $20 in cash. And no, it wasn't a lot of money back then either.
Getting to gas station, I went inside to prepay the $20. With my wallet freshly emptied, off I went to fuel my dude-mobile.
Just as the ticker on the petrol machine was approaching the magic 20 buck mark, a man approached me very aggressively. He was dressed in baggy jeans, a t-shirt, and a red handkerchief tied just under his eyes. His approach was intentional. He had an objective.
He also had a gun which promptly found it's intended target, my chest.
In a crisis, people say amazing things happen to them. Time stands still. Everything becomes clear. They suddenly find a superhuman ability to channel a hidden martial artist and kung fu their assailant's tookus.
Yeah, none of that coolness happened for me. I did all I knew to do: hold really still and hope the bad man would go away thinking I was not so interesting.
Strangely, he seemed to be incapable of waiver. Our dance continued.
With face half veiled and gun at the ready, the young man demanded my wallet. I complied. He instructed me to open my wallet and show him the contents. I complied. Upon seeing the empty reality of said wallet, he demanded I produce some cash or he would kill me. I could not comply.
I had no cash. The only cash I had was used to pay for my gasoline. He didn't believe me.
"Give me your money or I'll fucking shoot you." I didn't doubt his sincerity.
Remember how I said people can do cool stuff when faced with a crisis? Want to know my superpower? It's impressive. I stayed super calm. I also achieved superior vision. My calmness and my super vision gave me some critical tools. What did I do with my calm? What did I see? The tale will tell itself, dear reader. How are you supposed to click on the annoying add at the bottom of this post if I tell you the good stuff now? Let's continue.
I explained to the man that I had no cash, which he could see for himself. Being a non-smoker I kept loose change in the ashtray of the car, which I offered to him, to which he seemed unimpressed. After a few rounds of give-me-the-money-you-don't-have-or-I'll-turn-you-into-a-less-alive-person, he finally conceded. The day was won!
Or not so much.
He asked me where my keys were. I calmly told him they were inside the ignition.
Perhaps this is a good time to remind you of a detail of the story from earlier. Remember who I had with me? Yeah, my 10 year old cousin. Guess where he was from the beginning of the story up until now? If you guessed the passenger seat of my absurd truck, you are a big winner.
Nothing like a front row seat to this show. So glad I was able to open his young eyes to some culture.
Our villain told me to get into the car. At this point I realized the gravity of the situation. Had I been upset by this point about my current pickle? Oh yeah! But when I saw the fear in my 10 year-old cousins eyes, I suddenly realized how bad a pickle this really was. I'm talking super spicy pickle here. The one you had better not touch your eyes for at least an hour after eating.
I asked our gunned man if the kid could get out of the car. I didn't know what was about to happen, but I thank God I had the wherewithal to figure that it shouldn't have a witness. The man agreed and I instructed him to get out of the car and go inside. There was that calm stuff again. I was really getting good at this.
I was told to start the car. I did. I was told to get out of the car. Done. I watched as this stranger with a covered face and a gun got into my car. I stood.
And here is where my second super power really made itself known. My vision became something otherworldly. I swear I could have taken detailed images of things miles away and remembered them in perfect detail. I could have seen colors in that sunset that an artist would have only dreamed. Everything in my body shut down except my vision.
And what did I see? How did I use this gift? What did I memorize?
I saw the face of this young man. I saw his eyes.
We had the briefest of moments where our eyes locked, him now sitting in my truck with the door ajar and gun still truly aimed and ready, me just a pace away. In my memory now I would swear it lasted for minutes, that glance. But I'm sure it was only a second or two.
This is a tale of fear and crisis, acts of desperation, facing the unknown. That is what I saw in that moment. I saw depth. I saw sorrow. I saw anger. I saw panic. I saw terror.
May I live 1,000 years and never forget those eyes. And may I live twice as long and never have to see them again.
***Chad pauses for a breath and a moment of reflective appreciation***
And that's it. That is where the story ends. The rest is just little details that are inconsequential now. Our intense moment of connection ended as briefly as it began, he closed the door and drove away in haste.
But one last little detail so as to not keep you wanting. The police officer who arrived on the scene sometime later became a source of information, that night and beyond. He told me great things, things that added quite significantly to my tale.
Turns out, the situation I found myself in that night was part of a gang initiation. To catch us all up, a gang initiation is some sort of action or duty that a person is tasked with doing. Once done, they have earned their right into a lifetime membership of their gang. I won't go into details here, but people will go to great lengths to join some of these gangs, often finding them the only source of hope and salvation for their life situation. But that's another story.
For this particular gang, the initiation was exactly as I've written out above. Hold up a person, steal their wallet and money, take their car. Oh, just one last bit: you were also supposed to shoot your victim in the chest before driving away.
About a week later, exactly that happened. At another gas station less than a mile from mine, a man was carjacked near sundown and shot in the chest. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
The cop who helped me that night offered this information. He said I should have been that man. He said that the assailant was most likely the same kid that held me at gunpoint. He said his interaction with me would have been seen by the gang as a failure. He did not complete his mission. No shot was fired.
When I think back to that day, and even as I sit here writing this now all these many years later, I am filled with so many emotions. A reminder of the preciousness of life. A sincere and palpable fear that still echoes in me today. A sadness for the reality of this young man's life.
My eyes were opened that day. My vision was given to me. I saw.
I saw how easy it would have been for me to have died. I saw how easy it would have been for him to have pulled that trigger.
That day I saw, but today I see. I see that my life is precious. I see what I have available to me. I see my life for what it is: a chance to wake up in the morning and smile. I see my purpose.
17 years ago this Sunday, I saw. Today I still see. And what I see is beautiful, beautiful beyond words.
May my eyes close only after they have seen all they are destined to see, and only then, close peacefully and with the knowledge and contentment of a life fully lived.
Thank you for reading.
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