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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, thanks to some helpful YouTube videos I now know how to pack a suitcase like a pro, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share lessons learned from missed opportunity.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
On February 17, 2004 my wife and I were sitting in a nice restaurant getting ready to enjoy a steak dinner to celebrate my birthday. Shortly after we sat down she handed me a card. I opened up the card and read all the nice stuff that they put inside those things. I then read the nice words that Kari wrote about me…and then I noticed that she had written in an instruction for me to turn the card over for a surprise.
Surprise was an understatement. What do you think it was? If you guessed that it was her telling me that she was pregnant, you’re right. We had already had our daughter and we were perfectly content with her. We weren’t even trying to have another kid, so it was truly a surprise.
Kari’s pregnancy went smoothly and by the time October rolled around she was ready to pop. Right around her due date she started having occasional contractions, but not to the point that we needed to go to the hospital. That is, until the night of October 12th. We had worked out a game plan on what to do if she went into labor while our daughter had already been put down for the night. If that happened we would call some friends who lived nearby and they would come take care of Addison until morning.
So when Kari felt like she was going into labor, we called them. No answer. We called again. No answer. Again. No answer. We found out later they had accidentally turned their ringer off. So we then called Kari’s parents. They lived about 10 or 15 minutes away so we decided that they would come and get Kari and take her to the hospital. I would stay with Addison until morning and then join them.
Well, it turned out to be a false alarm. When Kari arrived at the hospital the nurses checked her, decided it was not the real deal, gave her a sedative, and sent her home. Since Kari’s parents lived closer to the hospital than we did, she went back home with them to try and get some rest. She took the sedative, and off to sleep she went.
A few hours later the sedative wore off and Kari woke up to immediate contractions. These were big contractions. Her mom immediately took her to the hospital and her dad called me to tell me to meet them there.
I grabbed Addison and the bag that we had packed and headed off to the hospital. It took me less than 10 minutes to gather everything and head out the door. The hospital was about 15 minutes away so I was there less than 30 minutes after I got the call.
I walked off the elevator and walked past the nurses’ station. They congratulated me and said that I must be the new father. I smiled and said that I would be very soon. She smiled back and said that I had missed it. I thought she must think that I’m someone else’s husband. I made my way to Kari’s room and couldn’t believe my eyes. There was Kari, holding our newborn son, Colby, and I had indeed missed it.
It turned out that she had been in labor earlier that night and the nurses had made a mistake. Her doctor was very upset that the nurses had turned her away without even calling her. Kari barely made it to the delivery room before Colby entered this world.
There are moments in life that are extremely important. Events that are so monumental that they are the ones that easily come to mind when we think about the moments that mean the most to us. The birth of our children sits near the top of that list for nearly every one of us. And I missed that moment for my son.
I have so many memories of the birth of my daughter. I remember getting the call to come to the hospital, meeting the nurses, watching Kari progress, and hearing that first cry. I don’t have that for my son. As I stood in the room still trying to process the moment, unsure if it was all a bad dream, I had no other option but to accept the reality that I’d missed it.
This story came to mind while watching the game between the Lions and the Giants last night. Despite taking a 14-0 lead in the first quarter, the Lions were making some mistakes that was allowing the Giants to stay in the game. The Lions couldn’t seem to put the Giants away.
In the second quarter, the Giants scored a touchdown to make it a one possession game. The Lions came back and got into field goal range. They trotted out a rookie kicker by the name of Nate Freese to try his first ever field goal as an NFL kicker. He lined up, stepped off his paces to get the proper kicking room, waited for the ball to placed and he let loose.
It was ugly. It looked like a dead duck and sailed wide left. It was about as bad of a start to a career as one could imagine.
Then that made me think of one other sports story. This is one that I know many of you will remember well. It was the 2004 ALCS. The Yankees had the best record in the American League and had defeated the Minnesota Twins in the first round of the playoffs. The Boston Red Sox were the wild card but had defeated the Anaheim Angels in their first round matchup. The Yankees were favored to defeat the Red Sox and represent the American League in the World Series.
Things seemed to be going along just as predicted as the Yankees won games 1, 2, and 3. No team in Major League Baseball history had ever come back from a 3 game deficit, so it seemed impossible that the Red Sox would win the series. But that’s when things changed.
The Red Sox were down early in game 4, but took the lead in the 5th inning. The Yankees regained the lead in the 6th inning and held on to it all the way into the bottom of the 9th. The Red Sox tied up the game and went on to win it in the 12th inning. The Red Sox then won game 5, and found themselves only down one game. However, the final 2 games of the series would be at Yankee Stadium, and the Yankees only needed to win 1 of those games to move on to the World Series.
In game 6 the Red Sox scored 4 runs in the 4th inning. It was the only time they’d score the entire game, but it was enough. They defeated the Yankees 4-2 and tied up the series. Boston dominated the 7th game scoring 6 runs in the first 2 innings and defeated the Yankees 10-3. The win made them the first team in history to come back from a 3 game deficit and took them to their first World Series since 1986. They would go on to win the World Series and capture their first title since 1918. The curse of the bambino was broken.
Here’s what I learned.
A rough start does not have to mean a rough ending. Missing the birth of my son was one of the last things that I would ever want to happen. My family is my top priority and being there at my children’s birth is a once in a lifetime chance.
But just because I missed Colby’s birth doesn’t make me a bad dad. It doesn’t even make me a careless dad. It was just an unfortunate series of circumstances. Fortunately, my son doesn’t seem to remember anything about that day so he’s not bothered by it at all. In fact, I have a fantastic relationship with him.
Maybe you can relate more to the Yankees and Red Sox story. You’ve been labeled a loser for so long that you think that you must be cursed. You’re down 3 games to 0 and the world is telling you that you’re going to fail because no one has ever overcome the circumstance you find yourself in.
Keep hope alive. Keep pushing. How did the Red Sox defeat the Yankees? Quite simply, they did it one out at a time, one hit at a time, one run at a time, one game at a time. But that wasn’t their end goal. Their end goal was to win the World Series. They swept the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series which means that they ended the season on an 8 game winning streak. Talk about a comeback.
So don’t give up. Don’t allow yourself to be defined by past failures. Have the courage to keep fighting until the very end and believe that your future is not defined by your past.
By the way, that kicker for the Lions? He finished strong by making his next two attempts.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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