On to Year Three

A couple of days ago was the two year anniversary of the accident! My rebirth day! It might seem odd to some people that I get so excited about this day. I’m sure some of you are thinking — It’s the day half of his body was paralyzed, and he was permanently confined to a wheelchair. What the hell is he so happy about? — And yeah, things aren’t perfect. But whatever, I’m making it work, and most importantly, I’m still alive! Alive and well, at that! I have been into Roman Atwood’s Youtube channel lately. He posts videos of himself and his crew carrying out public pranks on the streets of Columbus. His “Gas Prank” video was the first one that I saw, and it had me laughing out loud. The other day, I saw that he uploaded another video. It was titled, “My producer got hit by a truck!” It sounded familiar, so I was sure to check it out. Well some of it. It was really long, so I skipped to the part where he meets his producer at the hospital. He had some road rash and a few broken ribs (also familiar). Then I heard him say that he was hit at 35 mph and thrown 20 feet. Roman made a face, and said, “35 miles per hour? 20 feet??” He immediately talked about how lucky he was to be alive. In the couple of minutes that I watched, I heard him say it about three more times… Okay I have a few things to say about this.

1. He is lucky to be alive! That’s a big hit being thrown 20 feet on the pavement. And if I can say that honestly about him, what does that mean there is to say about me? This example alone should give you a much better idea of why I get so pumped on these anniversaries.

2. The driver that hit me claimed, under oath, that he was traveling at 25 mph. I was thrown 176 feet. It was measured at the scene of the accident. So, that means… wait… According to my T.I. 83 calculator, supposedly, the guy who hit Roman’s producer was traveling at 1.4x the speed that I was hit. Yet, I was thrown 8.8x further… Yeah, something’s telling me that my lawyer and I got had. Big time.

3. I’m a military tank.

Roman’s video came at the perfect time. It was just a couple of days before my anny, and it reminded me of just how lucky I was/am. I think it helped me better enjoy my day on Monday. Since it wasn’t on the weekend this year, I didn’t throw any parties. The day was pretty laid back, but it was nice and filled with a lot of happiness. It was an emotional and heart wrenching day, and although I wasn’t able to cry this year, I got close a couple of times, which was good enough for me. Monday’s a busy day for everybody, so I didn’t have a whole lot of free time on my hands. My family and a couple of my close friends were able to go to my favorite restaurant, Sake (pictured above), which was a great time. And many thanks to everyone that reached out to me. You made that day more special for me.

I thought a lot about the impact that would have been made if things went differently. My family and close friends (less than 100) would have been torn up, that’s for sure. And some general friends/acquaintances (less than 500) also would have been torn up, but for a limited amount of time. There are over 7.1 billion people in the world. That means only about 0.000008% of the population would have been effected at all. With maybe a tiny bit more ever even hearing about it. I’m sure that would be a rough fact for anybody to swallow. But… things didn’t go differently. That WOULD have been the case, but I’m still here. There is still time for me to increase that percentage. Matter a fact, anybody that ever reads this still has time to increase THEIR percentage. On a bigger scale, everyone will have their own unique answer for achieving this goal, but on a smaller scale, the answer for everyone is virtually the same. And that is to gain respect from others. After all, unless people (disregarding family) have some kind of respect for you, they most likely don’t care about you. So as you keep your eyes and ears open for your bigger answer, start small by being caring to the people you interact with on a daily basis. Make sure you will be missed whenever your time comes.