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CINCINNATI -- It was a moment just like any other.

AJ McCarron's dad and a friend had just purchased a pair of new WaveRunners. Anxious to take theirs out for a spin one hot August Sunday in their native Mobile, Alabama, Tony McCarron, his 5-year-old son AJ and one of AJ's cousins dropped the watercraft into nearby Dog River, a Mobile Bay estuary that features a series of sharp turns and low-built piers, and jumped on board to see what it could do.

Minutes later, little AJ was floating face down in the river with his left eye dangling out its socket, and other parts of his face crushed by the impact of a sudden, high-speed collision.

His life appeared to be ending just three weeks shy of his sixth birthday.

"Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like."

Early sixth-century Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu is purported to have said those words. They describe the way AJ McCarron has attacked the past 20 years of his life. Whatever obstacles he has had to overcome -- whether it was clinging to life, or dealing with the misguided taunts of kids who made fun of the deep scar on the top of his head, or becoming an adult who made it out of an area where drugs ruined so many lives -- he's found different ways past them.

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Bengals quarterback AJ McCarron still bares the scars on his head from a childhood accident that nearly killed him. Joe Robbins/Getty Images