What I saw looking down the barrel of a gun

Last week a teenage boy stuck a gun to my head. The peach fuzz on his face was still not mature enough to make a real beard, but the gun was all too real.

As I stared down the shiny black, cold-steel barrel of the gun, I wasn’t as scared as I was shocked — that a boy this young could be so desperate and so willing to destroy life.

It was just after dusk, when I parked my car at the edge of the parking lot at a local restaurant in Central Phoenix, only a few blocks from my home.

I emerged from the car and only made it a few steps before a young, wiry youth, donning a black-hooded sweatshirt pounced on me, pointing a small caliber gun in my face and screaming at me.

I had just given a teen talk at a local church a few nights earlier, and as strange as it sounds, the first thing that popped into my head was that he reminded me of one of those kids. Was this for real? Could this be some badly conceived prank? But the gun was no joke, and as I hesitated he became more irate.

I pulled a wad of five singles from my wallet and threw them at him. The flying cash distracted him long enough for me to make it into the restaurant and call the police.

Within minutes the place was swarming with cops, and half an hour later they had three suspects in custody down the street.

As a police cruiser drove me a few blocks away to where they were being held, I reflected on the whole event for the first time. I wasn’t as angry as I was sad. As I thought about the years of jail time he would receive for armed robbery, I wanted to sit this foolish boy down and drum into his brain exactly what he had done, and what he jeopardized.

What might have been

I thought about my mother who recently had a stroke and depends on me. I thought about my friends and the rest of my family who would be so extraordinarily traumatized by the event if this kid would have shot me.

I thought about his family and what they would lose if I were armed and shot him.

I thought about all the people this young man could help in the future.

I thought about the children I would never have, he would never have and all the ways the world would be deprived of one or both of us.

I know how much I have to offer; he obviously had no idea how much he could give, and he was willing to throw both of our lives away for a few dollars.

I wanted to tell him all of that and more as we neared the sea of flashing lights sitting atop the caravan of cop cars surrounding the suspects. The cruiser stopped 20 feet away, and three suspects were dragged from the back of an SUV and paraded in front of the headlights. None of them were him.

My heart sank a little. I could never look this misled youth in the eye and tell him why what he did was so insane!

But I am still here to help and to make a difference. And maybe there still is a way to get to him, by telling you to share this story with every young man and woman you know, so that they never make the same stupid mistake.

So that maybe eventually every one of them will know what he didn’t — that God created us to live, to let live, and to revel in the love that surrounds us no matter how much we have or don’t have everything we want. And that blessed mission is priceless.

Chris Benguhe is a columnist for the Catholic Sun of Phoenix Arizona. His latest book is Benguhe’s latest book “Overcoming Life’s 7 Common Tragedies: Opportunities for Discovering God,” examines the positive potential of tragedy to bring people closer to each other and to inspire them to realize their ultimate purpose. He also pens a regular column for the Catholic Sun in Phoenix, Ariz.