Stay Out of Trouble
One that stuck with me: I was young, 21 maybe, and I had a nice old man in my ambulance. He had his hair slicked back and he was wearing a nice shirt. I honestly don’t remember what was wrong with him, or the other stuff that we talked about, but he stopped abruptly at one point and told me, almost kind of sternly: “Hey kid, stay out of the slammer, trust me.”
Now, I wasn’t really in danger of going behind bars the time, although I wasn’t that far out of danger either, but it stuck with me. Here was this guy who realized he could be a perfectly decent human being. He could be of value to people. But he could only do that if he wasn’t stuck rotting away in a cell. He must have wasted years of his good, precious, life in there and he didn’t want to see me do the same.
I realized I’d be an old man too someday, and I didn’t want to risk time just to make a few extra bucks as a starving college kid.
Story credit: Reddit / EngineeringNeverEnds