I’m pretty sure my last words will be, “Oh, shit…”
I’ll realize, in those last seconds, that I have done something stupid, and there’s no way to get around it.
I may be aware, at that moment, of how many times I’ve been spared in my life after having done something dangerously thoughtless.
I once decided to dismantle the bunk beds in the room my daughters shared, and set them up as twin beds. Without anyone there to help me, I climbed onto the bottom bunk and lifted the top bed off. It was then – standing on unsteady bed springs, with a twin-sized bed frame, springs and mattress suspended over my head – that I realized what I had lifted was far too heavy for me. It was also far too much weight for the bed I was standing on. I couldn’t move. I could not step off the mattress. I could not get the top bed lined up to place it back where it came from.
“Oh, shit…”
I sat in the driver’s seat of my car one day, waiting to pull out of the community college I was attending, into four lanes of traffic. At rush hour. Three of us sat in the front seat. I was watching out my side, to the left. I spotted a clearing, and said so. “Yes, it’s clear this way,” my passengers told me. With only a narrow opening, I zipped out onto the highway…to find that they had been looking in the same direction that I was, and that no one had been looking to the right, where two full lanes of traffic were coming at me.
“Oh, shit…”
I could give a dozen similar examples, where foolish actions and lack of care put me in peril: near choking, near drowning, near losing an arm while trying to wave to someone from the open cockpit of a bi-plane traveling at over one hundred miles per hour…near lost forever in the woods…
I don’t understand it.
I’m one of the most careful people I know.
I am cautious to a fault, afraid to take chances, fearful of the unknown.
I miss out on good things just from being nervous about what I haven’t experienced.
Until I’m not.
On those rare occasions when I do something perilous, challenging or outrageously life-threatening, it’s not for adventure.
It does not come from a sense of daring.
Pure and simple, it comes from foolish lack of forethought.
I’m sure I’ll pay for that some day!
Thank you Cindy for your terrific insight into your world. I could not help but smile as I related to your near misses.
We all do it, don’t we? The universal blunder. Thank you for reading, and for taking time to comment!
funny! yes, we sometimes are so tapped into right brain that we act first and think later…. z
Exactly! One moment too late! Thanks for reading, Lisa, and for your comments!
Did you say BIPLANE???? Someday you have to share the entire story!!
I did! And I will share that story, before the month is out. Thanks, Karen!
All I can say, Cindy, is thank you! Thank you for making me smile and thank you for surviving. Keep up the good work!
You’re so kind, Kate! Thank you for your encouragement and support!
I’ve said that very “oh sh–” many times but don’t we all have close calls at some time or the other?
And I hope and pray that we don’t suffer the consequences ever.
I liked this post. It does induce some anxiety about being careless at times.
I should be anxious about my carelessness, but it seems I just blunder on, unaware until too late…thanks for reading, Yvonne, and for your comments!
You have a guardian angel…
I must!