No one thinks...

“For what [is] your life? It is even a

vapour, that appeareth for a little

time, and then vanisheth away”

James 4:14 – the Bible

“Jesus Christ, this kid is dying!’  Not the words a person is interested in hearing, particularly if they happen to be ‘the kid.’

It was two AM in Vung Tau, the Republic of Vietnam – 1969.  I was working the night shift alone as a radar air traffic controller and napping in our small portable radar unit.  The radios were on, in case an aircraft called in. 

Unbeknownst to me a small centipede had crawled up under my tee shirt.  Unfortunately, it was poisonous and bit the inside of my arm while I slept.  I didn’t realize it was there, but the bite woke me up.  My left arm was numb as often happens when you lie on your side, so I shook it out.  The numbness did not go away and I began to feel sick.   

A call into base operations sent a couple of my co-workers to pick me up and take me to the medical facility – a large sectioned off tent.  By time I arrived, the little creature still under my shirt had bitten me twice more.  Over the next twenty minutes or so, lying on an observation cot, my breathing became a little shallower and pupils began to constrict.  The medics decided to wake the on call doc, who felt I should be given an injection of epinephrine (adrenaline) used for situations of developing shock. 

The problem? He gave me more than he should have.  Within a breath, I was in full body convulsions.  The doctor dropped the syringe and exclaimed those disconcerting words, “Jesus Christ, this kid is dying!”  Everything seemed paradoxically to go into slow motion.  He ordered the two guys who had brought me in to hold down my legs, one of the medics to lie across my chest, and the second medic to get a spring syringe of atropine.  He injected the medication into my stomach, and I slowly began to calm down. 

All of this took place in seconds, but I clearly remember thinking as if it were yesterday, “Well, what a non-heroic way to die…I wonder what mom and dad will think…Damn, I didn’t get to say good-bye or tell them how much I really loved them.”  A centipede just didn’t seem to be very meaningful way to exit planet earth – and so far from home.  As it turns out, I was in the hospital for several days with a splitting headache, and survived.

The point of this story is not the preceding event, as attention getting as it was, but rather the impact that it had on the rest of my life.  I realized two things from this unexpected pebble dropped into the liquid chemistry of my mind:

    One – you can put things in your body over which you have no control – 

               so be very careful about that, and

    Two – life is extremely fragile and can be snatched away in no 

                time...completely unpredictably.

It is the second thing I learned that had the biggest effect.  When you are young, and particularly when you are a young man in this culture, there is a sense of invulnerability – an almost inherent underlying belief you are indestructible.  This event changed that perception in an instant, forever altering my view of life, and as it has played out, the way I interact with others.

Nobody getting up in the morning, with the exception of the condemned or terminally ill, thinks this will be their last day; no child going to school in the morning thinks someone will come into their classroom and take their life before the morning ends; no one getting into their car to head home thinks their life will end within the hour; no person heading to a grocery store to do a little shopping and maybe visit their representative thinks their life will end in the next few minutes or seconds; no one thinks they will never see their mother or father or sister or brother or son or daughter again as the day begins – because, well “…no one thinks the unthinkable….”

Yet this is the uncontrollable nature and randomness of life.  There are NO GUARANTEES. 

This brush with mortality led to a sea change in the way I looked at life and the lives of those around me.  It led to a life-long habit of taking small moments to thank people for their service – colleagues, secretaries, the janitor, the waitress, friends, and my family. 

The experienced has led to a life-long habit of looking for ways to compliment people on their work, no matter what their job.  It led to a life-long habit of encouraging people in moments of personal struggle.  It led to a life-long habit of thanking people for having made a difference in my life, and led to a life long habit of telling people I love that I love and admire them.

The last item is not always easily said nor is it easily understood.  This is where words so often do not work well.  Once you have told someone you love them, the meaning is often left to the understanding of the ‘hearer,’ rather than that of the ‘sayer.’  If it is not clear, it can lead to misunderstanding….and surely there are times when I have not had the words to express ‘the understanding.’  The rewards, however, usually, outweigh the risks. 

Some people say this falls under the heading of doing, “…random acts of kindness…” I reject the former and embrace the latter...these acts should never be random, but deliberate ‘kindnesses’ with gratitude, because “…no one thinks the unthinkable…”

- ted