Second Chance

Sometimes you never get a second chance at anything you do. If one day you do, embrace it and never let it slip through your fingers or it will never come to you again. Now this is my story of the two second chances that I got and how I embraced them without regret. The story begins half a century ago when I was a teenager. I was a very shy boy and my friends were very few, especially where the girls were concerned. No friendships grew there and all too soon they were gone without me ever saying a word to them as I left and set sail for a far distant shore. Their faces remained with me through the years in photographs. The years slipped by so quickly from teenager to adult hood, but still those photographs kept the past alive to me. Always hoping one day, I would be able to see them over again. More years slipped by and the chances of that happening became just as remote as could be, or so I thought. Then on the 15 December 2006, I had an internal message on classmates.com and that is where the first of my two second chances began. The second came shortly afterwards when this classmate introduced me to her friend, whose encouraging words made me take the second of my second chances and on the 19th January 2007 I lifted my pen to paper after six or seven years and never looked back since then. Since that date, I have written one thousand four hundred and twenty eight poems, a novel and published my first book. All because of the second chances, I got. If you are given a second chance at anything at all, grasp them with all your might, never letting them go because you will probably never get them again. 22-23 November 2008