As I’ve gone through life, I’ve often heard the adage that titles this narrative, and I’ve found it’s been true many times in my life.

One of the Creative Writing cards in a file box of suggested topics for kids to write about, when they tried to sell the ever popular, “I can’t think of anything to write about,” in my classroom, was to tell how your life might be different if you were born five minutes earlier or later than when you were. Same goes for being five feet closer or farther when something devastating or exciting occurs.

I’m a baseball fan and it’s often said baseball’s a game of inches. Often, a ball is fair/foul by inches, a player was safe/out by inches, the ball was missed by inches, it was a ball/strike by inches. All these scenarios play out hundreds of times through a full MLB season.

Shortly after Sally and I were married, and Chasity was four, Chrissy was two, Sally went out to get something she needed at the store, and took Chas with her. Chris and I stayed home. After a bit, the phone rang and Sally told me she was involved in an accident. The accident occurred at the corner of Fourth and Main in Jamestown. When I arrived at the site, I saw our car was damaged pretty badly.

First, car seat laws were very soft back then. Chas was sitting in the front passenger seat, with seat belt fastened. While approaching the intersection, Chasy’s belt came undone. Sally immediately looked down, grabbed it, and tried to re-fasten it when the light changed to red just before crossing the intersection, whereby the front of our car was struck hard on the passenger side front fender. Fortunately, there were no passenger injuries from either vehicle, but our car was totaled. Thinking about that accident often, I thank God that Sally wasn’t two seconds later in going through that intersection, or the car that hit her would have jack-knifed our car through the front passenger door, where Chas was sitting. The difference between no injuries and what could have been a tragic situation came down to timing and inches. Not only did it make me think, it continues to make me think, that timing is indeed everything.

There have been times that we’ve all recalled personal situations where some outcomes were good, some not, just because of time and/or distance. We were either in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time.

As I’ve told numerous times, I was at the right place at the right time when I met my bride, and my life changed immediately for the better. That’s not to say my life wasn’t good before that Friday, March 23, 1979 night at the Disco 2001, but meeting my soulmate, best friend, confidante, and love, was, and still is, the cornerstone of a wonderful life built together these past 44 years come next Friday.

When I met Sally, I’d been teaching four years, the first two as a substitute, before getting a full time position in 1977. Getting my full time position was a timing thing too. I’d accepted a long-term subbing assignment for a teacher going on maternity leave. It was supposed to be for one semester. There was another teacher going on maternity leave the second semester, and as our principal began prepping to interview for that, the first semester new mom volunteered to come back earlier and fill in for the second semester mom-to-be, leaving me where I was for the entire year. There was an opening in the same building the next year, so I stayed, and the rest is history.

I got in at the perfect time for education in Jamestown, in my opinion. There were many amazing teachers who mentored us rookies, many who participated in union leadership roles, who fought hard for all teachers in the district, and all who befriended us as colleagues no matter the difference in our ages. I am, and will always be, grateful to all of them for helping me get started and continue to help me along my journey as a teacher and coach. It was also a great time to be a teacher because we had flexibility in our classrooms as long as we covered the required curriculum, but there were so many opportunities to be creative in how we taught information and concepts, that went way far and beyond the text, and four walls of the classroom.

As years passed, I went from Fletcher to JHS, to Love, to Jefferson, with coaching stops at Washington, JHS, and Jefferson. I loved what I was doing, and how I was able to do it. There were some things that didn’t always work the way we’d planned, lesson-wise, behavior-wise, grade-wise, which created the need to go back to the drawing board, re-plan, re-figure, re-teach, etc., sometimes numerous times. There were, though, far more things that almost made you often see lightbulbs flash above students’ heads. That went on for many years.

Fast-forward to about the time my son, Jon, made the baseball team at Medaille College in Buffalo (’08), the State Teacher’s Retirement Association. offered early retirement opportunities to teachers, 55 and up who also had 30 years of teaching service. I retired at 55 with 31 teaching years plus one I bought back, so I could watch Jon play ball for three more years. I loved every second of it. Plus, this was a time when many new changes were going to be implemented in education, some of which took away some of the flexibility teachers had previously.

When I walked out the door, my last day of school in 2008, I was both happy and sad. I was sad it was ending, because I still had the passion to teach, but I was happy and grateful for the opportunity to have done it for so many years.

I’ve often walked away from situations like this while still loving what I was doing, never wanting to walk away feeling glad it was over. I was blessed with great timing to both, enter teaching, and walk away when I did. I did it with coaching too, (though I found my way back to a few different coaching gigs after some time off, not yet ready to start doing yard work.)

So flashback to the beginning of this essay. Timing and distance can certainly impact lives, and Happy 44th Anniversary next Friday, Sally!