Close Call

I’ve had two close calls this week where, had things gone just a little differently, my life would have forever changed.  

Two days ago, I was running errands and throwing down a quick snack of grapes while in the car. Ever since I can remember, when I eat grapes, I peel them with my teeth first and then eat the meat of the fruit and the skins separately. I swallowed wrong and a flap of grape skin fell over my windpipe. I coughed, knowing something was amiss and trying to correct it, but to no avail. 

With no beverage on hand, I felt all of my internal sensors sounding alarms almost immediately. My heart rate increased, my head started hurting, and I felt my lungs futilely trying to get new air, all within a millisecond. Since I was driving, I was faced with having to make a decision, perhaps my last on this earth. Should I just allow myself to black out and then wreck the car? I didn’t want my family to have to deal with me, in whatever state I was found, and have to deal with a broken car. I also didn’t want to crash into and hurt someone else in the process. I considered just slowing to a stop in the middle of the road and hoping someone would stop to check on me. I considered running off the side and slowly crashing into a fence, thinking I would get some attention while keeping the damage to someone else’s property to a minimum. 

I wanted to scrawl a note to my family and maybe the paramedics saying, respectively, “I love you” and “skip all of the preliminary checks and look for a grape skin on the victim’s windpipe.” But who has that kind of time? In the meantime, I kept driving, even running one last yellow light just for good measure and in an effort to keep traffic moving. A final,  hard, scratchy cough dislodged the grape skin and I was able to swallow in several big gulps of air. Save for a scratchy throat the rest of the afternoon, I was spared. But it definitely makes you think.

Then, today, I almost took out a bicyclist. They’re not my favorite. I won’t lie. I know we’re told to “share the road” and that we should applaud these folks for “keepin’ it green,” but, frankly, they get on my nerves. I know you shouldn’t stereotype a whole group of people, but I feel it’s more the norm than the occasional instance for them to disregard both traffic laws and social convention. They make lanes where there aren’t any, run red lights, park illegally, and dart in and out and in between moving cars. They insist on riding on narrow, shoulderless, two-lane roads, forcing me to slow down in preparation for passing to a below-safe speed, and causing myself and other drivers to have to swerve to miss them. This could be a whole, other post. Saying all this, though, I would never hurt anyone, hippie cyclist or otherwise, on purpose. 

I was driving down this road today and passed a little farm. Out front in their idyllic pasture, was a beautiful, old barn, some pretty, tall grass replete with wildflowers, and three cows -- a mama and two calves. As I was taking this all in, the two calves took off running ahead of mama and it was just the cutest thing I saw all day. I had only looked over for a half second, but it was long enough for me to come upon a biker before I knew it. At this exact moment, he had gone to take a drink from his water bottle, tipping his head back, and swerving out into the traffic lane from the shoulder. A quick correction on my part saved the day. And his life. But, again, it’s one of those things that makes you think. How much different could the rest of my day (and my life) have been in the matter of a split second? What would my afternoon have looked like if, instead of leading my final Girl Scout meeting today, I was at the police station giving a statement?

I’m not saying I would have done anything differently in either of these circumstances. I will always peel grapes before eating them and I hope I’m never too busy or distracted to take pleasure in something like two baby cows romping in a pasture. If anything, it caused me to be grateful...both for the near misses and the absolutely, positively, couldn’t-have-Smurfed-that-up-more-if-I’d-tried times.

"When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it:  admit it, learn from it, and don't repeat it." 

 -- Bear Bryant