File This Under: Count Your Blessings

This time of year has always had a strange effect on me.

As a person who is prone to major depression, AND add to it that I'm 44 and therefore old enough to have lost various people close to me, AND throw in that it gets dark at five-stinkin'-thirty, AND the pressures of parenthood, gift giving and job pressures, I have just a few simple actions I use to help keep me grounded.

I'm a Christian, believe in God, pray, and am so thankful for all of my many blessings in my life.

It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the basis of my being able to handle everything.

Since Thanksgiving in America recently went whizzing by, and we're lookin' down the barrel of Christmas, it brought home to me once again that, despite what problems I have, I am blessed.

At various times during my days, as I work or whatever, my mind skips over different subjects and memories like a rock skipping across the water.

This past weekend I was thinking about when I first started to college the second time, at the very beginning of working toward my engineering degree.

My family and I were living in Powder Springs, Georgia at the time. It's a beautiful small town northwest of Atlanta, near Marietta. We loved living there, and I worked at Hartsfield Airport for Delta Airlines.

I started my new quest by returning to college at Southern College of Technology in Marietta. It has since become a University, Southern Polytechnic University, to be precise.

In my first quarter there, I was required to take a "study skills" class.

Most of the people in there were around 18 and starting college for the first time, therefore they thought the class was a total waste of their time. Really, didn't we all know EVERYTHING when we were 18?

But I thought the class was cool. The teacher was a young, hip, graduate student in teaching at Georgia State in downtown Atlanta. We learned study skills, things to be prepared for that would have otherwise blind-sided us at college, and we were also required to attend at least three cultural events during that quarter of school.

Like I said, I was excited; I was so jazzed to be back in college I could hardly contain myself.

But there was one other person in the class who was even more excited to be in college than me.

I do not remember the boys name. I wish we were all named numbers, I can remember numbers easily and almost forever, but names? Fuggetaboutit. (Maybe I could be named 3.141592693; I'd let all my close friends call me PI of course...and I would make all the people I don't like much call me by my name to at least 9 digits of accuracy. ;)

This young man was 18 years old. He participated in everything. He raised his hand for every question the teacher asked. He was a teacher's dream student.

Why was he so excited when all his peers were jaded and thought the class was a joke?

We found out during the last class of this Study Skills course that quarter.

The teacher went around the room, asking everyone to tell the class what they were doing in college. "Why are you here? What do you hope to accomplish?" Those were the kinds of things he wanted us to relate to the class.

This young, scarily skinny, blond guy I'm talking about here sat in the very first desk, just inside the classroom door. So, him being basically the closest one to the teacher, the teacher started with him.

"What do I hope to accomplish?" the boy repeated.

"I want to graduate from college. That's what I hope to accomplish. I have cystic fibrosis. I was told all of my life that odds were against me living long enough to graduate from high school. Now I'm in college. Now I'm just hoping to live long enough to graduate from here. The odds are against me, although the odds would get better if the doctors could find a match for me and I could have a lung transplant. But right now, I'm thankful to be in college at all, and my next goal is to live long enough to graduate."

You could have heard a pin drop. I had been sitting there like Ralphie in A Christmas Story planning my big spiel about being thankful to get the opportunity to go back to college, imagining everyone finally noticing and appreciating the "old guy" in the class, and this kid ups and blows us all away.

I think about him from time to time, like this past weekend. The holidays are a constant reminder to be thankful for my many blessing in life, and to remember fondly the loved ones who have passed away and be thankful for their time in my life.

But unless he had a lung transplant miracle, this kid probably died over ten years ago. I bet he lived every minute to the fullest. He understood that every minute was precious, and he made his choices accordingly.

I try to honor God, my family, and the memories of loved ones by appreciating life, and making the best decisions that I can.

Because none of us knows how much longer we'll be around, do we?