Victory Was Ours

Today, January 17, he took inventory. He did this every year. His Chief Officer had cancelled his appointments. He slept in, but finally got out of bed for coffee, leaving his wife on her side of the bed.

January 17 wasn't his birthday. It wasn't anyone's birthday. Not his wife's, nor his children's. It wasn't even an anniversary — his marriage or his business incorporation. Not a day of any personal historical significance, except that the comic, Popeye the Sailor, had debuted today.

He did this annually because on January 17 his parents had met. They had died young, and he still mourned. But he and his wife had their children. And of course, his vocation, running his company which had changed the world: it had developed the first vaccine against the novel virus that had emerged from its original SARS variant. Having raged worldwide for 12 years, it had killed almost a billion people.

When he thinks of the lives saved, he couldn't help but think of those lost. This is the real reason he took this day to himself every year. Those lost, mainly children, meant countless progeny who would never be. Offspring never realized — who would never fall in love, never have their own chidren and grandchildren who would further change the world.

What a waste! A pyramid of waste atop countless generations — Nobel Laureates, Presidents, inventors, great discoverers and their discoveries. He wept.

His parents had first met in Miami on this day in 1971, at Superbowl V. Both diehard Baltimore fans, they found themselves sitting in adjacent $1,500 seats. Before long, they talked, drank, and cheered together. Even kissed after each score.

Had they not met, none of that would have happened. He himself would not have been born. This happenstance had changed the world, responsible for so many lives to come.

They had married four months later. They had to.

The world would change the night of Superbowl V: he was — existed — only because of that field goal. He wondered how many others had come to be only because the Colts beat those damn Cowboys in the last five seconds.