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While recovering from an injury, I watched my weight in movies. Among them was the astonishing Forrest Gump. I took notes because I have had this thought lingering for years that, in many ways, we all are like Forrest Gump.
Was it destiny or determination that catapulted a slow-minded man into a lifetime of miraculous feats?
Perhaps, both as Forrest relates at the end of the flick. From college football hero, to war hero, to table tennis phenom, shrimping magnate, to running freak, Gump is all about the improbable rising to the fore.
You and I have had our Forrest Gump episodes. Most don't reach the magnitude of his, or do they?
I want to know about them. I want you to write me about them for publication. I will give you the details after I relate one of my stories to give you an idea.
Keep them brief but poignant. I will share mine from time to time because this is my column. But this space will become your forum.
*********************** I was 18, and me and two friends were walking a back road in Colerain Township on a butt-ass cold night on our way to a party in 1976.
Saturday night, and we were trucking, with our arms against our bodies. I cut a cool image in my waist-length Levi coat, but I was freezing; no hat, no gloves, but very hip.
The night was pitch black, but we could see something in the road from about 100 yards that looked more and more like a person as we began to run.
Laying in the road was a teenage girl, who had been struck by a car only moments before we arrived. Blood from her head had frozen her to the asphalt.
My friend Jamey, always the quick thinker, ran immediately for a house to call an ambulance. Bob blocked the road, and I stayed with the woman.
I instinctively covered her with my coat, and began to talk to her. She was conscious but in great pain. She calmly but sadly said she could not move her legs. Her head was split open.
We talked for what seemed like hours in the dark, on the cold road surrounded by woods.
I don't remember much of the conversation but I recall that she smiled, and I knew, and she knew, she was at least safe from being run over again or freezing to death.
Red lights and sirens shattered our seclusion. Within seconds, men and women were sweeping me aside and attending to her.
We waited as the large group of lifesavers remained around her. Suddenly, the stretcher parted the crowd and they raced her into the life squad.
As they whisked by, I grabbed my coat. I remember how warm it was as I put it on.
I remember that night as if it happened last night, and I always will. I have no idea if we ever made the party.
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So send your Forrest Gump moments, episodes, and chapters to Shoes of Life, Joe Awad, at Register Publications, 126 W. High St. P.O. Box 4128, Lawrenceburg, IN 47025; e-mail to
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