Milestones:

Predestination, Karma, or Dumb Luck?

In 1964, my dad owned a tractor shop in McKinney, Texas, a hole-in-the-wall farming town twenty miles North of our home. If you visited the thriving metropolis of McKinney today, you’d never imagine that it was once just a dirty spot on highway 5.

On Saturday mornings, I’d go to the tractor shop with my dad where I’d perform menial tasks, like dusting the tractors in the showroom, in return for the hamburger and fries he’d buy me at lunch. Afterwards, I’d explore the rusting ghosts of long-dead farm equipment in the back lot, or meander downtown McKinney and shoot the windows out of hundred-year-old, deserted buildings with my slingshot.

The First Milestone
One Saturday morning we were headed to McKinney in my dad’s new Chevrolet pickup, driving up old highway 5, a narrow two-lane blacktop, when an oncoming driver lost control and crossed into our lane. We were headed North at fifty miles per hour, and he was headed South at the same speed, and oh yeah, nobody wore seat belts in those days.

I still remember locking eyes with that old cowboy as he crossed our path less than five feet in front of our truck’s hood. We narrowly escaped a cataclysmic wreck. The right rear corner of his Volkswagen van clipped the front right corner of our truck, and the jolt was terrific but not deadly, at least for my dad and me. We came to a sudden stop, but that van rolled three times and landed upside down in a ditch. The last thing I remember about that cowboy was seeing the worn soles of his boots as they loaded him into the back of an ambulance.

Was it God, luck, or Karma that kept us from being only one second ahead of schedule, in which case I wouldn’t be around to write this article?

The Second Milestone
Ten years later, I was in my first semester at the University of Texas at Austin. 40,000 other students my age were attending that same institution. It was a bit daunting for a kid from a small suburban setting. On a rainy morning, I was riding the shuttle bus — a repurposed school bus — into campus and I took the last open seat next to a mousy little girl from Uvalde, Texas — an equally small Texas hick-town.

Her name was Teresa, and we would become close friends although we were never what you’d call “friends with benefits”. Teresa invited me to visit a church group she attended on Sunday nights, assuring me that they were just regular students like me, looking to connect, and that no one would pressure me into joining anything or speaking in tongues or giving money. That group evolved into some of my closest friends — a few of whom I still know quite well fifty years later.

On my first visit to the group, I met Teresa’s roommate, a wealthy young co-ed from Houston, and through some eerie turn of events, after only a few dates, we were engaged to be married. How the Hell was I going to worm my way out of this mess? And how soon did I want to anyway? Keep in mind that I was a dirt-poor college student which miss wealthy Houstonite showered with new clothes, dates to expensive restaurants, and free transportation (she had a car, and I only had a bike).

The Trifecta Milestone
About a year later — I’m ashamed to admit that it took me a year to ditch that mutually-destructive relationship — I lived in a small apartment complex and my roommate was a fellow I’d come to know through the small group. In fact, several other folks from that group lived in the same complex. My “fiancé”, miss Houston, resided three miles away.

On a particular evening, miss Houston showed up and confronted me with the fact that I had time to walk next door and visit with other members of the group but not enough energy to ride my bike three miles and spend every waking minute with her. The conversation became so heated that she pointed a gun at me. As luck, or God, or Karma would have it, the gun turned out to be empty. Needless to say, our distant wedding was cancelled and miss Houston’s rich daddy flew her off to Europe to recover from the trauma.

From that point on, I began developing an interest in a smart-assed — I mean that in the personality sense (and maybe partly in the physical sense) — blonde named Paula who lived upstairs from me.

Fast-Forward
A few weeks back, my wife, Paula, and I were celebrating my sixty-nineth birthday along with two of our adult kids. Earlier that evening, I had spoken by phone with our other daughter and our two grandkids who live out of state.

If, in 1964, that old cowboy had been just a hair slower on his reflexes or if my dad had laid down on the gas pedal only slightly harder a mile back, I’d have never lived to see fifth grade, much less my sixty-ninth birthday.

If I hadn’t entered that shuttle bus at the exact moment I did back in 1974, I’d have never met Teresa, the life-long friends she introduced me to, or my future wife.

If that gun miss Houston picked up had been loaded (especially considering where she was pointing it), I’d have never begun dating my wife, to whom I’ve been happily married for 45 years. The three kids and two grandkids who mean the world to me would never have been conceived.

Just imagine the adventures and milestones those five offspring have ahead of them, entirely because those previous milestones in my life fell into place exactly as they did. So, my question is, “What milestones have you already forgotten about that shaped your very ability to read this article?” If you’re still on this side of the dirt, you might want to start mustering some thankfulness for them.

Just in case you’re wondering, I’m not a Calvinist or a Buddhist and I don’t believe that three-legged rabbit is feeling any too lucky. The only thing I can say with certainty about why things happen the way they do is that I have absolutely no idea at all. Let’s have coffee and you can tell me about your milestones.

A meeting of great minds who think alike