Blessed with a Brain Injury

Whoa there!!! Slow down....I dont have a brain injury. Just hang on and let me explain.

I started my new job three weeks ago and since then I have meet some uh....how do I say it delicately....INTERESTING people. I am working in the State Department of Rehabilitation which specialized in helping people with disabilities get jobs, whatever that takes. Some of our clients need eye surgery, or a college education, or simply just on the job training. The DRS helps them schedule and pays for surgery, enrolls them in college, and helps them with job coaches and on and on. We pay for transportation, loan them computers, get them set up with motorized chairs...I think you get the point.

While I am on the subject of motorized chairs let me give you short education on the subject. It IS NOT an electric chair it is a MOTORIZED chair. An electric chair is what a criminal sits in and gets his brains fried and scrambled. A motorized chair is the chair that awesome people, who are not able to walk, sit and zip around the office tormenting others in. (These are not my words! This is the same lesson I received during my first week at work.)

Now back to my subject....One of the incredible people that I have meet is a young man (I call him young because I dont really know his age and he acts young) who acts as janitor for our building. We will call him Joe Bob for the purpose of this post. Joe Bob is always happy, joking, and basically making others smile. Oh and he is a hard worker. I mean he is a VERY hard worker. When Joe Bob introduced himself to me he looked at me with a huge smile on his face, extended his arm (that is covered in tattoos), stuck out his hand (that was covered in a surgical glove) and said, "HI my name is Joe Bob and I was blessed with a brain injury".....................UHHHHMMMMM What????? Blessed???? It did not take me long to understand what he meant.

Joe Bob was raised in a troubled home where he had little to no supervision. He raised himself and at a young age got mixed up with the wrong crowd. By the time he reached his late teens he was heavily involved in drugs and gangs. Joe Bob told me and I quote " I was on the high way to hell, but Thank God I was in a car crash and suffered severe brain damage." Now he is working two jobs, and happy to be alive. He has told me on several occasions that he is excited for January to come because he can file his taxes and get the return. I mean really!..... excited to file TAXES!!?!? But he has never had a honest job before where he had to file taxes, and dead people dont get to file either....

He came up to me today and it was obvious that something was bothering him. He told me that he ran in to a friend of his old self and was saddened because she was very obviously living the rough life of the homeless druggie. All he could think was that was the life he had been headed for. After a minuet he stopped what he was doing and looked at me, a huge smile coming across his face and he said, "Thank God for my damaged brain!"


I know that to some this is stupid but I cannot help but look at my own life and realize just how blessed I am. At twenty years old I was in college and working at a job that I loved. At twenty Joe Bob was learning how to walk and feed himself again. He is a constant reminder to me to be thankful everyday for the small things that I have taken for granted.