Lord, let me live up to this opportunity

It’s been a long while since hearing the Zig Ziglar motivational tape, Biscuits, Fleas and Pump Handles, so I may have botched the line I’m trying to remember. There was a young boy who’d dip his finger in a barrel of molasses each time he visited the local general store. The manager warned him against such behavior saying, “The next time I catch you stealing a finger’s worth of molasses I’m going to dump you head first into that barrel.”

Sure enough, the next time the boy swiped a finger through the sweet confection the manager grabbed him by the ankles and lowered him toward his fate. Just before his head met the surface he was heard to say, “Lord, let me live up to this opportunity.”

Sadly, there’s a story out Camden, New Jersey where a young man working near a boiling vat of chocolate fell in . I doubt he was overjoyed at the prospect of becoming covered in boiling hot chocolate.

“The unidentified man, who worked at the Camden facility, had been in the melting pot for about 10 minutes by the time rescue crews arrived, MyFOXPhilly.com reported."

"By the time he was pulled out of the tank just after 11 a.m., he was already dead.”

Industrial accidents happen; sometimes they end up becoming folklore. I remember listening to Hal Holbrook’s, Mark Twain Tonight program. He had a story about the fellow who fell into the carpet making machine and became part of an area rug.

Back when I was working for the police department a worker at a plastics wrapping facility carelessly became part of a huge roll of the stuff; snatching the victim so quickly as to make her co-workers wonder if she’d taken an unannounced coffee break. She took a break alright, a permanent break.

I don’t mean to sound cold natured about the loss of life; just that some folks leave this planet in the most unusual ways. These are different from the Darwin Award folks who place themselves in harms way by doing extremely dumb things; no, the folks mentioned here just had incredibly bad luck doing something that normally is accomplished without incident. Sure makes for interesting stories; hope they poured out the rest of that chocolate.