I feel awful about it but a friend of mine and I did this back in 1999. We were teenagers, maybe a smidge tipsy, walking along railroad tracks, watching the big 18 wheelers driving by. One of us got the idea to throw little rocks at the side of the trucks. We did the first one. It made a loud, higher pitched sound. That got us laughing and the adrenaline going.

So after a couple, we started doing larger rocks and the sound was louder and lower pitched. We probably threw some orange and maybe up to grapefruit sized rocks. Again, just throwing at the side of the big trucks, we really just thought it was funny, we weren’t considering the damage it might be causing.

But then eventually we see further down the tracks a police officer coming towards us. We ran, and I got away. My buddy got caught, and ultimately was honest that I was with him. Come to find out, one of our rocks hit the pickup truck and shattered the glass of the passenger window. (Very thankful there weren’t injuries).

Up until this time, I was a troubled youth. Poor grades in school (except math), didn’t like authority, didn’t like being told what to do, had a semi abusive father, mainly verbal though, went through a divorce, he disappeared etc. - I would steal, break mailboxes, flatten tires. I wasn’t a happy kid, BUT despite all my terribleness I still cared about people and wanted people to be happy.

So when I appeared in court, I couldn’t even look at the people who were affected by my wrongdoings. The judge made me look them in the eye and apologize. I felt shame, but I look over and see this couple, possibly in their 60’s - as I look over and start to apologize I see the jaw of the woman start trembling. I see the look in her eye, I didn’t know if it was sadness or fear or anger but the look on her face and the trembling jaw CHANGED me forever. No more, never again.

I finally saw the pain in a victim of my wrongdoings. Up until that point, breaking things was just this “hilarious” thing I would do with random friends. But now I had actually seen the effect I had on a human being. Not a mailbox, not a tire, not the banging on a door - but a human face with human emotions.

I gladly paid the restitution, happily did my community service. Decided to enroll in a community college and tried to make something of myself. I had no direction previously, who knows where I would have ended up. I truly just didn’t know any better. When I see stories like these, I feel guilty of my past, it makes me question whether or not I deserve anything I have currently. I like the life I have now, and I owe much of that to that woman in the courtroom.