Knowing what you know now, what is one piece of advice you'd share with younger students? by Ronald

Knowing what you know now, what is one piece of advice you'd share with younger students? by Ronald - April 2016 Scholarship Essay

I would have to say to live in the moment and not dwell on the past. The past is the past and the present is the present and life can change at the blink of an eye! I will now share my story on why I believe that life is so precious and can change in a minute:

There’s a rule in baseball where you're not allowed to get off the field of play if something happens with a spectator, generally not a rule I usually worried about. What started as a normal high school varsity baseball game for Colon Cancer Charity turned into something that would forever change my life.
I was taking my lead off first base and one of my best friends, Nicky, was up at bat.

He fouled the ball over to the left where the ball took an uncommon bounce off the turf and skidded over the fence right where my Dad was helping a teammate who got hurt and needed ice. The ball caught my Dad smack in his right eye and knocked him down to the ground. Blood was everywhere! It happened so fast I didn’t really know it. It then felt that everything moved in slow motion – I heard my Mom crying and then an ambulance was taking my Dad away. The surgery was 6 ½ hours. We weren’t prepared for what the doctor said, “The baseball on impact squished his eye, like a squished grape and he’ll be permanently blind in that eye.”

Mom was an emotional wreck. She already had so much to worry about –she had just gotten laid off after 33 years on her job and now this!

I used to think that nothing could happen to the people I love. They were all invincible. Clearly not the case. It’s true – life can literally change in an instant. From this moment on, I feel this shaped who I am. It impacted my life immensely. My Dad, the man I always looked up to, and who I wanted to be like when I grew up was forever changed. The message he always said to me was, “Never give up when something goes wrong; always keep fighting even when things don’t go your way and you feel you can’t go on; and to always have a good attitude in life”! I wanted to do something to see him smile again and I wanted to help him not worry about his medical bills...5 months later I put together, with help from an Uncle, a fundraiser. Turnout was amazing – tons of people who wanted to help him because he’s such a great man! AFTER…. weeks turned to months and we can’t believe it has been a year and a half since the accident. What a long haul for him. He now has a prosthetic that is like a contact lens. It goes over the bad eye, opens the drooped lid and looks like a real eye. It’s amazing. It even moves a little. At least it made him feel a tiny bit whole again!

Dad is forever changed and not the same. Little things we take for granted he’d be happy to do again-like driving at nighttime or playing catch with me. His outlook along this journey has been nothing short of positive. He always seemed to force a smile. Always telling people, “Hey it could be worse, if the ball was a centimeter over, would’ve hit my temple and killed me”. That’s my Dad, my forever hero who I hope to be like one day!