Skip to main content

What Are the Chances...?




What Are the Chances…?

Early this morning as I drove. I realized I needed to get gas in my car.  There’s this little service station not too far from our home.  However, at seven o’clock in the morning at this one local service station, it’s awfully busy handling landscaping trucks and the like.  That poses an issue if you want to get gas at that time in the morning there. It gets crowded fast because of its good service and size.  The politeness is really what I’m going for.  Okay laugh.  Yes. I get gas at a specific station or two or three based on politeness. Not because I like to say ‘hello’. Although I do like to say, ‘good morning’.  But because I love to just sit there as my car is being serviced and watch the clouds.  The sky can be dramatic. Yet, it is sometimes subtle in its changes arriving for those few minutes. It’s time to breath just a tad more. Taking in a sigh or two.

So, today as usual every day is different for me. I pulled into the service station just after seven this morning. I handed my credit card through my passenger side window, so the attendant doesn’t have to walk around the car. He’s an older gentleman at this time of day.  Seems like a kind soul. After asking for the grade and to fill ‘her’ up. Another car pulls up on the other side across from me. It is a burgundy colored car. The car appears to be the same year as my car. Yet, it is a different make.

The man in the burgundy colored car has his window rolled down. Smiling he looks at me and says, “Hello”. I smile and nod.  It’s a good morning. I give a second look at the driver’s side of his car. And at the rear driver’s side, behind the passenger seat is a Marine Corps sticker.  The guy looked like a Marine with a similar tapered hair cut of his all white hair.  The older gentleman who’s the attendant is working by the pump into my car. I then step out of my car. I remark to the attendant, “What are the chances, a Marine is getting gas at this station at the same time another Marine is getting serviced as well?” He smiled, raised a brow and nodded. I smiled back and nodded. I remarked, “Wild. My kid has the other car with the Marine Corps sticker on the back.” I got back into my car.

My window was still down to make it easy for the attendant to give me the card and receipt after the transaction finished. Then the man in the burgundy car rolls down his driver’s side window. I called from a seated position in my car. I remarked, “I see you were in the Marines. What are the chances, a Marine is getting gas at this station at the same time another Marine is getting serviced as well?” He smiled and replied, “That’s my son. I was too tall. Six foot eight.”  I responded, “Ahhhh.” I asked what his son’s MOS was. The two of us relayed back and forth, conversing. After a minute or so, there were still no landscaping trucks nor cars pulling in.  We finished up, blessing each other. Then the clouds parted for the first time in four or so days. The sun came through. It’s a beautiful day.---Jody-Lynn Reicher

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Completion of Humanness

Completion of Humanness As we arrive to the completion of the first year without Norman, I had decided long before he'd passed that I would continue to do things certain things he liked yet could no longer do. I decided I would not take a day off of fitness.  I would run at least for 500 days in a row. I began that in early 2020.  I'd not be concerned with the distance I'd run. It was the very thing I convinced Norman and the thing that mattered to him, from the very first discussion we had August 11th, 1981, was fitness. I loved that he was a College Boy. He loved that I was a Marine. We tickled each other's soul with such admirations. Later fitness continued as an old discussion from 1994 ...getting outside and to run no matter what. I would say to him, "Run 200 meters, then 400 meters. If it doesn't feel good, stop. Turn around and walk back home and know you did your best. That is all you can ask of yourself." I said this,  knowing he would get dow
2 comments
Read more

In My World

As I finish putting away the week's groceries, I contemplate other's lives. Aside from my two daughters,  I consider what may be other's lives.  How they have conducted their lives over the past two years.  This is a thought not unusual for me to have. Yet, it occurs more often than not. Especially  now, as the population is probably feeling ever more irked. Regarding perhaps. their illusion of any lack of their freedom. But isn't that what life is about? The illusion of who we are. What we are about. Where we stand on the planet. Who we love. And who loves us. Our significance. Couldn't we imagine if this were all just an illusion? Sounds like a "Twighlight Zone" episode, perhaps. My aim here, are the thoughts of reckoning. I'll explain why I'm claiming such a thing. For about twenty-eight years of a career in dealing with injured athletes,  pain patients, chronically ill and the terminally ill. I found that there were many people who lied to
Post a Comment
Read more

It Follows Me...

One may wonder what would inspire someone to work hard labor voluntarily. For me it’s the love of many things. It’s the passion that won’t be broken. Because there are so many aspects to such service for me, that it may seem beyond comprehension. I’d compare it to my youthful desire to enter the military as a young child. Then for a multitude of reasons only to follow through thirteen years later at age eighteen entering the Marines. There were things that followed me throughout my life. Sometimes they were questions of how I ever gave up my over decade’s life dream to become a New Jersey State Trooper. My childhood desire to never wed—to never have any serious relationships with another human being. I desired only service in military and law enforcement nearly my whole childhood. Too the extent that even one of my Marine Corps superiors expressed to me last July, “I never thought you’d ever get married. It just wasn’t who you were. You were always a loner.” I replied, “Yeah. I know.
Post a Comment
Read more