Very few people, if any, know what I’m about to write in this blog entry. I’ve kept it near and dear to my heart for several years, and only now do I feel comfortable sharing it.
In 2003 or 2004, I spent almost six months (in its entirety), in airplanes, taxis, trains, and hotel rooms. My marriage had subsequently dissolved and I was in the process of getting my first divorce, I had received news that my best friend, Rob, had died in a car accident, and I was having a hard time dealing with it all at once.
I was, for lack of a better word, depressed. I was down in the very pit of my soul, and there was nothing that could drag me back out. During the worst of it, in Indianapolis, many sleepless nights were spent out on the balcony of my hotel room, ten stories up, with my feet dangling from the edge and writing about what it would feel like to jump.
That all changed midway through the trip.
I drove my rental car to the office of a State Farm representative. When I went in, we met, shook hands, and he showed me back to where their servers were located. He was an older guy, much older than most of the people I’d been helping up until then. I was there to diagnose some hardware issues that State Farm had been struggling with for months.
As was the policy, the user needed to login in to the server so that I could check the usual log files and such. I asked him to do so. He said, “Let me tell you the password.” I shook my head, and said, “No, that’s considered a security risk.”
But he nodded, smiled, and said, “It’s kind of difficult to hide.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant until he pulled down the sleeve of his shirt, and there it was, that terrible bluish tattoo on the inside of his forearm. He’d been tattooed by the Nazis, and he’d been using his serial number as his password.
Life has a way of putting your life in to perspective; snapping you back to reality and realizing that, “Hey, things could be a lot worse.”, and that’s what that man did for me.
He was a winner, as far as I was concerned. He’d been dealt, unequivocally, one of the most difficult hands that life can muster, and he succeeded and went on. And instead of dwelling on the past, he made light of it, using his serial number as his password and joking, “At least I can’t forget it.”
I don’t know why, but I always think of him around Christmas. I don’t know if he’s still alive, but I certainly hope that he is. We spent the better part of four hours talking that day; about life and death and faith and God, and everything in between. He invited me to his house for dinner and I (of course) accepted; we spoke late in to the night, and he regaled me with stories of his past and growing up and when he immigrated to the US.
I came home that following weekend feeling alive. Not just alive, but ALIVE.
Wherever you are, sir, gezunt dir in pupik. I may just owe you my life.