In Retrospect

Despite what I think most of the time, I really have been fortunate in my life. My physical maladies and injuries have been few. I have no lingering health problems. I think it makes doctors angry that I can be so overweight and yet be so healthy.

I've had the usual scrapes since childhood. A broken foot. Badly sprained ankles. Some cases of road rash when I fell off my bike a couple of times. All in all, well done, me for not being more of a klutz and managing to be in the right place most of the right times.

There have been some close calls, though, some circumstances that would have proved painful, if not deadly. Or really, really inconvenient.

Four or five years ago, a friend had invited me to drive into the city with her to pick up her daughter and go out for dinner. I don't remember why I declined, but it turned out to be the night of a massive blackout in New York City. I think it took her until one in the morning to get home.

On 9/11/2001, I had been scheduled to be at my then-company's Wall Street offices for training. There was a change in my job duties, so the training was canceled two weeks before.

Then much further back, there was the impromptu trip I turned down with my parents. I was going to college in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. It was a gorgeous spring day in March. My mother was recovering from hip replacement surgery and she wanted to get out and about. Although they lived about two hours away from where I was going to school, they called me and asked if I wanted to go for a ride with them.

It was so tempting. Really, really tempting. But I'd done badly during my first semester and was working like mad to rescue my GPA. Despite how gorgeous the day was, even though at first, I said yes, when I looked at the stack of books on my desk, I knew I had to spend the day at the library, studying.

They called me four hours later. They'd been rear-ended by some drunk going 50 mph while they were going 45 mph. Luckily, my parents were unhurt, although I think it set back my mother's recovery a little bit.

The car wasn't driveable so they got my aunt to come pick them up and had the car towed back to town.

Later when I went home for spring break, I saw the car.

I saw where I usually sat. The drunk's car had pushed the trunk forward to the point where, if I'd been sitting there, I would have gotten hit hard (if not smushed). It would have hit me a little below the waist.

At the time, I thought, my legs would have been broken. My knees would have been smashed.

I think that would have been the least of it, really.

Set forward, who knows what would have happened to my mother?

And what damage would have been done to me? Specifically, my spine.

I'm grateful I wasn't in the car that day. The physical damage would have been the least of it. If I had caused injury or worse to my mother, that would have been nearly impossible to live with. If she had survived intact, what would have followed would have been years of unbearable dependency on them. My mother's attitude would not have been good.

The house they lived in was completely inaccessible. I know I would have wanted to go back to college as soon as possible, but would have found that campus inaccessible.

Now I would like to think, maybe it would have forced the issue sooner for me to be out on my own. Perhaps I would have moved to the West Coast, found a college there. And likely would have stayed there.

There are so many points in our lives where we don't realize that we're making a life altering decision. Taking this road or that, going for a Sunday drive or staying at school to study.

I wish there was a machine to let me see what that one decision, reversed, would have meant to me.