by Gerry Baird

Created on: June 12, 2008

50 Cents that Changed My Life

Sometimes small things are the big things that change the entire course of our lives. My life was changed by a 50 cent candy bar in the summer of 1991.

A friend and I were at scout camp that summer. Our camp was at the top of a steep hill, and for each meal two people were assigned to walk down to the camp kitchen and pick up food. We devised a system of broom handles and milk crates to carry the heavy load, but it was still difficult. At the bottom of the hill there was another camp site, and at lunchtime my friend Seth and I took a shortcut through it to save a few extra steps. The scoutmaster asked us to please go around (he had probably seen a lot of kids trying to use this camp site as a shortcut). Miffed, my friend and I took the long way back to our camp and immediately started making plans to play some pranks on this scout troop during the night.

At that time, I was an angry teenager with a fully developed attitude problem. The world, I was convinced, owed me a lot more than it was giving me. So it seemed perfectly reasonable in my underdeveloped mind that if someone gave me hassle I would give it right back.

With our plans for nighttime sabotage fully in place, Seth and I walked down the hill to pick up dinner (taking the long way around, of course). As we returned, the scoutmaster who had earlier chided us walked over and said, "Thanks for the taking the long way around." Then he threw us two candy bars.

There are moments of perfect clarity in life, moments when we see things as they really are. There I was, ready to exact revenge against a perceived injustice. Suddenly, as if waking from a dream, I saw the folly of my planned actions. Seth and I both saw with perfect clarity in that moment, and it changed us forever.

That was the summer before we started high school, and we vowed to be more kind to others. It made high school a wonderful experience. Seth was killed in a gun accident two years later, but I like to think that his life was a little more full and a little more enjoyable because of that moment of clarity. Sometimes, despite our best efforts to live the lives we want to live, God has other plans for us, and he gives us experiences like this one to help us see the error of our ways.

The entire trajectory of my life was altered by one moment of clarity, and I will be forever grateful to a man I only remember as "Bart," for taking the time to throw 50 cent candy bars to a couple of misguided kids.

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