Extra Minutes, Extra Seconds
When I was sixteen years old, I had a car accident. I turned left in front of a 1967 Chevy van, who then hit the passenger side of my 1987 Yugo. That’s right, a Yugo. Needless to say, it was totaled.
The impact of the collision knocked the tennis shoes off of my feet. My shoes lingered in what remained of the floorboard while I unbuckled my seat belt, climbed out of the crumpled tin can that had once been an automobile, and wandered around disoriented and barefooted, until a witness sat me down and waited with me for the paramedics.
When help arrived, the same witness picked up more than three hundred dollars in cash bills that were flying about the side of the road and stuffed them into the pocket of my blue jeans. (I had been paid the day before in cash and was on my way to the bank to make a deposit.)
I believe most people are good people.
Just after my wreck, I boasted a perfect diagonal bruise across my chest and midsection where the seatbelt held me in place. For days, I scratched at my scalp and head only to (very literally) remove dime-sized pieces of glass that the emergency room nurse warned me would work themselves out of my system. I had headaches and cuts and scratches and was very sore for what seemed like weeks. But I walked away.
Just before my wreck, I had dropped off my girlfriend who had stayed the night before at my house and was supposed to spend the day with me. She had permission from her father, which was a rarity, but at the last minute, she backed out. As we passed her street, she said that she shouldn’t push her luck with her dad, and that I should just take her home. So I did. And less than half a mile and three minutes later, the grille of another vehicle inserted itself into precisely the place she had been sitting. There is no way she could have survived.
When I tell people this, they tend to freak out.
I believe some things just happen and they don’t have to be connected and they don’t always have to make sense, at least not in my little brain.
If my friend had stayed in the car with me, if I had not taken the extra time to drive the hundred yards down her street, paused to let her out and say goodbye, and then resumed my way, wouldn’t we have been three minutes closer to the bank and long through the fateful intersection by the time the van sped through it? Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows how the timing of these things works. But there is a timing involved.
This past Sunday, less than half an hour before the car accident that we witnessed, we stopped at a convenience store for a coke. We waited in line behind a very gregarious hearing-impaired woman who made conversation with the attendant long after her transaction was complete. I stood there, waiting, smiling a slightly forced smile. I implicitly reminded myself internally that we were in no hurry, that this kind of chatter was part of the charm of small Texas towns. All told, we probably lost about thirty or forty seconds to her chitchat.
There’s a part of me who wants to believe that things make sense, that things add up, a part of me who tries to connect the hearing-impaired woman to my own destiny. At the moment of impact on Sunday, Jonathan had to work to maintain control of our car. He had to immediately manage the situation and get our car off the road without hitting the (only one) car that was between us and the car that lost control. But we were far enough away from the action to be for the most part, out of danger.
Now, so predictably, I ask myself: would anything have been different if we were thirty seconds ahead on the road? When I stood behind that woman at the store, painstakingly forcing a smile and searching my belly for patience, was she inadvertently prolonging my life? It’s a ridiculous question. And there’s no answer. Some would say it’s useless to ask it. But I wonder nonetheless.
And what if it had been the other way around? What if we had been hit or injured? Would I somehow blame the woman for taking up precious time that put us at exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time? I’m not saying it’s right, but I might. We all need scapegoats from time to time.
The truth is, when it comes down to it (violent crimes and deviant behavior notwithstanding) regardless of the extra seconds you give to or take from any situation, it’s really no one else’s fault when it’s someone’s time to go.
I believe when it’s your time to go, it’s just your time to go. Extra minutes, extra seconds be damned, you’ll go. And that will be the end of that.
The impact of the collision knocked the tennis shoes off of my feet. My shoes lingered in what remained of the floorboard while I unbuckled my seat belt, climbed out of the crumpled tin can that had once been an automobile, and wandered around disoriented and barefooted, until a witness sat me down and waited with me for the paramedics.
When help arrived, the same witness picked up more than three hundred dollars in cash bills that were flying about the side of the road and stuffed them into the pocket of my blue jeans. (I had been paid the day before in cash and was on my way to the bank to make a deposit.)
I believe most people are good people.
Just after my wreck, I boasted a perfect diagonal bruise across my chest and midsection where the seatbelt held me in place. For days, I scratched at my scalp and head only to (very literally) remove dime-sized pieces of glass that the emergency room nurse warned me would work themselves out of my system. I had headaches and cuts and scratches and was very sore for what seemed like weeks. But I walked away.
Just before my wreck, I had dropped off my girlfriend who had stayed the night before at my house and was supposed to spend the day with me. She had permission from her father, which was a rarity, but at the last minute, she backed out. As we passed her street, she said that she shouldn’t push her luck with her dad, and that I should just take her home. So I did. And less than half a mile and three minutes later, the grille of another vehicle inserted itself into precisely the place she had been sitting. There is no way she could have survived.
When I tell people this, they tend to freak out.
“What made her want to go home? It’s a miracle! She must have had some kind of intuition, some kind of premonition. Thank God you dropped her off…”I don’t know what made her want to go home. But I’m very glad she did. I don’t know that it was a miracle. I don’t know that she had any intuition or premonition. I do know that she had good common sense and she knew her father well. And I do thank God that she chose to go home. She seems to have escaped death. But did she really?
I believe some things just happen and they don’t have to be connected and they don’t always have to make sense, at least not in my little brain.
If my friend had stayed in the car with me, if I had not taken the extra time to drive the hundred yards down her street, paused to let her out and say goodbye, and then resumed my way, wouldn’t we have been three minutes closer to the bank and long through the fateful intersection by the time the van sped through it? Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows how the timing of these things works. But there is a timing involved.
This past Sunday, less than half an hour before the car accident that we witnessed, we stopped at a convenience store for a coke. We waited in line behind a very gregarious hearing-impaired woman who made conversation with the attendant long after her transaction was complete. I stood there, waiting, smiling a slightly forced smile. I implicitly reminded myself internally that we were in no hurry, that this kind of chatter was part of the charm of small Texas towns. All told, we probably lost about thirty or forty seconds to her chitchat.
There’s a part of me who wants to believe that things make sense, that things add up, a part of me who tries to connect the hearing-impaired woman to my own destiny. At the moment of impact on Sunday, Jonathan had to work to maintain control of our car. He had to immediately manage the situation and get our car off the road without hitting the (only one) car that was between us and the car that lost control. But we were far enough away from the action to be for the most part, out of danger.
Now, so predictably, I ask myself: would anything have been different if we were thirty seconds ahead on the road? When I stood behind that woman at the store, painstakingly forcing a smile and searching my belly for patience, was she inadvertently prolonging my life? It’s a ridiculous question. And there’s no answer. Some would say it’s useless to ask it. But I wonder nonetheless.
And what if it had been the other way around? What if we had been hit or injured? Would I somehow blame the woman for taking up precious time that put us at exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time? I’m not saying it’s right, but I might. We all need scapegoats from time to time.
The truth is, when it comes down to it (violent crimes and deviant behavior notwithstanding) regardless of the extra seconds you give to or take from any situation, it’s really no one else’s fault when it’s someone’s time to go.
I believe when it’s your time to go, it’s just your time to go. Extra minutes, extra seconds be damned, you’ll go. And that will be the end of that.
Comments
Interesting post!