On New Year’s Day in 1990, I was walking down the street with a girl; a beautiful girl. We’d gone to high school together (where she’d never given me the time of day) and had parted ways after she graduated.  She went off  to college in New York, while I worked a menial job and contemplated joining the military. Over the holidays, she called me and we decided to go to a parade together to celebrate the new year. At the end of our date, we waited for the bus together near my house. As we chatted, a lone figure approached us, left hand in pocket and said, “Tell your girl to give me her coat.”

“No,” I said as I looked the bandit square in the eye.

My family has a tough time with this part of the story. They never understood why I didn’t simply comply. Here’s the reason: Less than two weeks before this incident, I’d been jumped by four guys while minding my own damn business and had my own coat taken. I was forced to wear a new toggle jacket that I hated. My mother bought it for me to replace the Chicago Bulls Starter jacket that had been beaten off of me. This toggle jacket was the ugliest coat I had ever seen. It sported these ridiculous, chest-high pockets that angled toward my sternum and… let’s just say it was not my taste, at all.  There was absolutely no way was I sending that beautiful girl home without the full-length shearling her parents had spent their hard earned money on. “Take whatever you want of mine,  but you’re not getting her coat,” I told him as I stepped in front of her.

He cocked his head to the side and took his hand out of his pocket to show that he had a pistol; that he, indeed, meant business. So did I.

He said, “I’m gonna have to shoot you if you don’t give it to me, my man.”

“Do what you gotta…”

POP!

It happened just that fast. I looked down at my stomach to the spot where the bullet entered my abdomen and looked back up, but he was already gone.  I was alone with a beautiful girl in a shearling coat screaming at the top of her lungs for help.

I didn’t die that New Year’s Day. I went to the hospital and I was operated on. It was the scariest night of my life. But, as luck would have it, my new coat saved my life. That ridiculous toggle coat with the ugly pockets that I hated so much had become my savior. As it turns out, the pockets were sewn in a way uncommon to most outer garments. Amazingly enough, this pocket placement caused the Sony Walkman (that I never left the house without) to sit in such a way that it slowed down the bullet enough to cause no major damage.

I learned a valuable lesson that day that reshaped my values, beliefs, and outlook on life. Sometimes it takes bad things happening to save you from something worse. These things are only seen in hindsight, with the benefit of time to aid our vision. If you’re the New Year’s Resolution type, I hope you resolve to not dwell on what you see wrong with your life, whether that be your finances, your career, or even the coat on your back, and focus on the blessings that you may have never noticed before.