Close Calls
Sometimes, when the reality of my diagnosis hits me hard, I can’t help but feeling gypped out of time that I “deserve.”
But then those dark thoughts are tempered by others. Like the miracle that any of us are ever born in the first place. So many things have to be just right for a birth to occur. It’s the longest of long shots, really, a matter of timing, chance, physics, biology, spontaneous events, random decisions, and about a gazillion other things.
And then to think that such a long shot had to occur to every single person in our ancestry in order for you or I to be sitting here is a bit mind boggling.
Here’s another thought that hits me when I begin to feel cheated out of time: not too long ago, only a few hundred years back, no one expected to live as long as I have. To make it to forty was incredible. Indeed, there are places on this earth where famine and disease are prevalent and where folks would take a 45 year lifespan in a heartbeat. That would be a very good deal.
And then, I can’t help but think of those I’ve known who checked out before the age of 45. Tom T. Charley. Karyn. Donya. Marti. Sherrie. Their names float around in memories, as if waiting for someone to recall their lives.
But the main reason I have for knowing that time has not ripped me off is the memory of close calls I’ve had in my life. For the truth is, I’m living on borrowed time. I’m lucky to be here at all.
On two separate occasions, when I was too little to know any better, I ingested an alarming amount of medicine that tasted a bit too much like candy. (I guess I had a sweet tooth.) As a result my parents had to rush me to the emergency room twice to have my stomach pumped.
Another time my bed caught on fire after I’d brought a lamp under the blankets to read. The book was boring, I guess, so I fell asleep. My mom saved me that time.
Another time I got hit by a car while riding my bike to elementary school. And I’ve already told the story about how I used to climb to the very top of the tallest tree in my neighborhood. Had the branch snapped, it would’ve been all over.
As a teenager, I came up with this crazy idea to attempt to body surf through a flooded drain. My friends would hold my hands and lower me down to the drain, which was actually under the creek’s water. When I squeezed their hands, they would let go, and the force of the water would blast me through the drain to the other side, where other friends were waiting to grab me before I was thrust upon rocks further down the creek.
In high school and college, there were two knife incidents. The first occurred at a high school party when someone who was apparently stoned tried to kill me after I’d replaced his Lynyrd Skynyrd record with the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack as a joke. He didn’t think it was funny and was soon chasing me with a weapon. Friends rushed in and saved me. A few years later, in college, my future brother-in-law tried to break up a domestic dispute outside some apartments as we were walking toward Eskimo Joes. The angry boyfriend pulled a knife and had my future in-law cornered. I jumped on the guy from behind, holding his weapon-bearing hand, while somehow sucessfully talking him out of the murder.
Whew!
There were three car incidents. The first happened in high school when I was driving too fast to negotiate a turn, ran up a curb, and just missed a tree. The second time, a friend was driving and wanted to demonstrate how fast his car would go. At 115, the road veered ever so slightly, and I could feel the car beginning to slide. It somehow didn’t, but I knew we’d had a close call when I saw that my friend’s face was white as a ghost.
The third happened when a friend was driving a group of young marrieds home from a gathering in Norman. He was turning west onto Highway 9 (a notoriously dangerous two lane stretch) from a residential area, out in the Lake Thunderbird area. There were no cars coming from the east, i.e., our left, so he should’ve been free to turn into the highway’s westbound lane. But he hadn’t thought to look right, where an eastbound car was passing another. Thankfully, there was a bit of shoulder he’d turned onto, and we had the nearest of near catastrophic misses. (I won’t get into the boating incident we had with him a few years later.)
So you see, I’ve cheated death over and over again. I’m lucky to be here at all. Each day is truly a miracle and a gift.
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Comments
What I wanted to leave as a message, but I was too retarded to type in the words below, Jim, was that when my broher-in-love Gary decided he couldn’t live another day, and he climbed into a great big tree in Texas and hanged himself, it was a book given to my husband by another man in his office that really helped him cope: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Books are wonderful gifts when wonderful people know when and to whom to give them.
After reading this and other stories from your growing-up years, I’ve decided your mom deserves an award. Whew!
Each day is truly a miracle and a gift. Beautiful.
Great perspective. We act as though we’re entitled to everything from a good parking place to a nine decade existence. You’ve probably already seen this but your post made me think of it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGYx35ypus