TBI Tales It’s Just a Fork in the Road
It’s Just a Fork in the Road
Life offers many forks-in-the-road. We all run into them. As a teenager, you might have to choose between going to the Friday night football game or going to the Saturday night dance. Without knowing, you choose the dance and meet the boy you are going to marry someday. You have to wonder – would you have met someone else at the game, someone whom you would have been interested in? Who knows!
You’re graduating high school and preparing to choose your life career. Being a flight attendant would make you soar to the clouds. So, you send out tons of applications to every airline, both domestic and international, and then wait with excitement and anticipation. When weeks later each application is returned with a “Sorry you do not meet our height restrictions,” you brush away the tears as if your life were ending. Then through blurry vision you move on – searching for your next fork-in-the-road. True story!
That was a major fork that was decided for me. Of course, I was devastated. At that young age, I didn’t know there’d be other forks down the road – forks that would have better paths for me. Some years later, I stumbled onto the road to teaching young students (5- through 9-year-olds), which would become my career, one that I loved for more than thirty years. Forks can literally change the course of your life.
Some forks may be joyous. Choosing the number 4 on the lottery ticket instead of your usual 7 may put that winning ticket in your pocket.
Other forks may save you time. By turning down Delancey Street instead of going your normal route down Avenue One, you may have avoided the unadvertised construction that would have added an hour to your commute.
Forks can even be disastrous, like the one that has governed my life since January 13, 2005 – the day my husband, David, had a traumatic brain injury. That morning altered the course of my/our life/lives forever.
We encounter forks in the road every day, sometimes every minute of our days. Most of the time we aren’t 
aware of them or don’t think about them. Many of them we have no control over – even the ones we do don’t always have the outcomes we might wish for.
Forks-in-the-road are what make up our lives – what make our lives different from any other life.
So, enjoy the good forks. Make the best of the ones that put up the detours in your life and … get on with living.
(Clip Art compliments of Bing.)
(Photos compliments of John Hanlon.)
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