For the loss of a shoe.

Sometimes the downtime can be quite painful when you work the late shift.
And even though I enjoy it for the most part and often times it results in some quality topics for here,but it also can be a bit on the negative side when you reflect on the wrong things.

By wrong things,I suppose I'm saying things that make you think or things that could have been different.
Thinking about things that could have changed on the choice one made on anything.
It's like the old television show Quantum Leap,where Dr. Sam Beckett would arrive to change one thing that would change a life for the better.

I have a few that I'd wish to have back and a few that bounced my way,but there was one time that not only did it change my life,it saved my life and might be the one thing that would make me think about the existence of the Almighty.

It was the year 2000 and I had to attend a little league meeting at a local hotel.
After the meeting,I had to park in a different spot than usual.
I normally parked on the end of a corner because we lived on a one way street.
If I parked on the corner,I could back out into a side road and then go the other way instead of going all the way around the neighborhood in order to get where I needed to be,
But on this night,someone was in my normal spot and I had to park just ahead of him.
A huge thunderstorm hit and I worried about the car being beside this huge tree and when I looked out the window "my" spot was open.
I began to get ready to run out into the rain to move the car,but I could not find my shoes.
It took me a minute or two to find them and put them on and then I began to descend the steps from our second floor apartment and as I hit the landing,I heard a huge crash.
I walked to the porch,saw what it was and then returned to the house to tell Cherie "our car is crushed".
Not just crushed,destroyed to the point that my car was on the front page of the Herald Mail the next morning.
The tree was a huge one in height and width and split my car in two-horizontally through the roof.
Had I gotten down there a tiny bit faster,I would be in the car moving it and most likely would have been killed.
I would have left a widow and two children and who knows what would have happened to them.

I wonder how things work sometimes,but I often think about how not just my life,but others would have been affected.
It is strange and true in how things can change in a second and whether it was fate,luck or the hand of God-I'm still here when very easily I could not be.
All for the loss of my shoes......