Life's A Coin Flip

You’ll sometimes hear people say that one moment in time, one event, changed the entire course of their life.   

Here’s one of mine.  

The Dog was in the Marine Corps less than a year, and working for the Information Services Office (ISO) at Camp Lejeune, N.C.   It was a typical afternoon in the office, we were all working on various stories or projects for the Camp Lejeune Globe or some similar journalistic endeavor.   

The phone on ISO Chief SSgt. Ed Grantham’s desk rang and it was HQMC looking for a “4312 Lance Corporal” to transfer to Fleet Home Town News Center, Great Lakes, IL.   There were only two of us there, me and a guy whose name I cannot remember.   Grantham asked us who wanted to go and neither of us did.  

So Grantham pulled a quarter out of his pocket and flipped it.   

I lost the toss and shortly thereafter got my orders to Great Lakes.  It was there that I met Bill Marcotte, who years later introduced me to the woman who would become my wife and the mother of our children.   

If I had won the coin toss, I would have had a completely different life.   

I’m glad I lost.