We all have lives that are defined and changed by tiny pivotal moments.
A high school goalie falls on the ball and a kid’s leg, and breaks the leg. The ball is unhurt. The kid is stuck in an immobile position for two months and learns to play the guitar. He goes on to have a successful musical career INSTEAD of playing forward for Manchester United.
A kid plans to go to Woodstock with his best friend. The best friend calls his father a “mother**cker. The best friend does not go to Woodstock. The replacement ride to the festival is a semi-stranger who terrifies the aforementioned kid. By the end of Woodstock he is the kid’s best friend and they start a band. The kid goes on to a successful musical career.
A man, freshly divorced, is standing in a club in Georgia. The man (who is the Kid, all grown up….did you get that part? Yes? Good.) is playing a show with another friend and the other friend asks… “So, who do you have your eye on to go out with, now that you are single again?”
The man/kid looks up over the friends head and sees, on the wall behind him, a promo picture of a different, very female, performer who plays the club with some regularity. She is someone he has had a crush on for many years. Now, right now, she is literally directly over his head. If it had been Bob DiPiero’s picture in that spot….who knows.
The man/kid points and says “Her. That’s my dream girl.”
The man goes on to have a successful career as a husband after many poor tries.
A slight move to the right or the left and everything is different. I have had so many of them in my life. Let me tell you a horrible one.
The kid is driving his Chevy Malibu down the hill from his house. In the passenger seat is the best friend who did NOT go to Woodstock. It is a beautiful Fall day. They are hauling ass down the steep hill, their speed encouraged by the best friend who is a bit of a reckless young man. On the side of the road up ahead is an enormous pile of leaves. It is obvious someone spent hours raking the lawn to gather up such an impressive stack of foliage.
“ Go through it!!!” urges the devil on the kid’s shoulder dressed like his friend.
“I’m not gonna mess up the poor guys pile!” He shouts back like the choir boy that he was.
“Roll right through it! Scatter them everywhere!!!” the future juvenile delinquent shouts again even louder as if volume was gonna make the kid do it. It almost does. He was going to go thru it. That poor guy’s leaves were about to be all over the road, the yard, the eastern seaboard. They were hauling ass. This was gonna be epic.
The kid couldn’t do it. At the last minute the fine young man his parents hoped he was reared his perfectly combed head and veered away from the pile and roared past it.
As he left the behind him, he took a glance into the rear view mirror and saw a small boy climb out from the pile where he had buried himself.
I get chills even today 50 years later thinking about how different my life would have been if I hadn’t turned the wheel.
Tiny moments that tip you to the good or the bad. You never know. I do believe that,in my life, I have had more than my share of the good and been sheltered from the worst of the bad. You have to treat each day like it’s loaded with those tipping points and always try to be the kid you’re parents hoped they raised. The kid that misses the leaves.