If is a short word, but it carries a lot of meaning. How different things would be IF this happened or IF that didn’t happen.
This week, I’m remembering October 19, 1962, the Friday evening my husband’s parents were killed when another auto crashed into their Corvair at the intersection of Riverside Boulevard and Owen Center Road on the west side of Rockford. Rolland, 55, and Hazel, 51, were coming home from their office jobs. On their way, they’d stopped at the Logli’s supermarket in the Rockton Avenue Shopping Center and stocked up on a week’s worth of groceries.
It was a terrible shock to Lola Mae, Tom and Ken. Most of Lola Mae and Joe’s six children were old enough to have a slight understanding of what had happened. Tom was single, but Jan was his girlfriend. We’d been married 3 1/2 years. Our daughters were one and two, too young to know why we were so sad. Kurt was on the way, but I didn’t know it.
The next day, Ken and Tom went to look at the car. They came home with many “ifs.” If their folks had been wearing seat belts. If they’d been driving a bigger car. It was three years before publication of Ralph Nader’s best-selling book, Unsafe at Any Speed, condemning the Corvair.
I listened and thought a lot about it. Finally, I realized if they’d bought another can of peas, a staple on their shopping list, the time it would have taken to grab the can off the shelf and place it in their shopping cart plus the checker to ring it up would have changed when they passed through the intersection. The other car would have missed them. Sometimes I believe things are meant to happen.
What “ifs” have made a difference in your life?