Sixteen Thousand Days

Here are today’s Wonderful Words:

For now, this is what we do know. On each of the first 16,678 days of his life, Jason Dalton killed no one. The next day, he killed six people.

The Uber Killer, Chris Heath

Background

Jason Dalton is the infamous Uber Killer—the man who spent a night picking up passengers, randomly shooting people, and terrorizing the city of Kalamazoo, Michigan. It’s a wild story, and Chris Heath does a great job telling it in this GQ article.

What makes it wonderful?

Jason Dalton lived 45 years on this earth before he flipped the crazy switch and became a murderer. He did the same things millions of Americans do in their first four and a half decades. Worked a job. Got married. Bought a house. Had some kids. By most accounts he was an average guy.

Until he wasn’t.

And that’s the point the author was making with these words. 45 years is a long time. But 16,678 days seems even longer. That’s nearly 17,000 breakfasts, showers, coffees, and poops. It’s more school days, work days, commutes, and conversations than we can imagine. But for the average 45 year old, it’s simply a life history.

Thinking of a life in that many days makes it seem enormous. But the ratio is what makes it feel at once extreme and insignificant. The comparison of the myriad average days to the one unthinkable day. The thousands of days we all understand to the one we could never imagine.

I found myself thinking, “Damn, I’ve lived thousands of days too, what could tomorrow have in store for me?”

The thought these words provoke is what makes them wonderful. Heath could’ve told us Dalton went from normal to crazy overnight. He could’ve told us Dalton dove off the deep end after a life wading in waist deep water. He could’ve told us Dalton was a regular dude one day and a murderer the next.

But those words wouldn’t make me think the way Heath’s words did. Two simple sentences had me pondering the unpredictability of life. They had me flashing back over my decades, one day at a time. They had me fearing what the future might bring.

That’s what wonderful writing does. It makes you think, reflect, and feel.

Let's get technical

Heath used juxtaposition in those two simple sentences. With one literary technique, he unearthed my thoughts and fears from the dark depths of my brain.

Juxtaposition is when you place two dissimilar concepts side by side to highlight the contrast. In this case, Heath plopped 16,678 normal days next to one day of terror. Then he let our minds and memories do the work.

If you want your readers to keep coming back, you need to make them think. You need to make them feel. You need to lift their emotions from the depths of their souls until they have no choice but to confront them. There are plenty of ways to do this. Juxtaposition is one.

Happy writing,

Joe