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My Life Flashed Before My Eyes

It could only have been the grace of God that saved me from having a serious traffic accident today. I was making a left hand turn at a signal light in my old neighborhood. I was turning from a direction that I don't usually travel.

The signal light changed to yellow in my direction, and I pulled out in the middle of the intersection to cross the traffic when they stopped for the red light in their direction. The traffic was medium heavy, and I pushed the accelerator, being certain in my own mind that the four oncoming vehicles would stop for their red signal light.

Their signal light didn't turn red! Two cars were within a few feet of hitting me broad side. One car honked, and neither slowed down very much. I accelerated as fast as I could, and cleared the intersection without getting hit. I stopped the car in the parking lot I had entered, and spent several minutes thanking God for my safety, and my life.

Things like traffic accidents happen in the blink of an eye. If I had been hit, it would have totally been my fault. I thought I knew the progression of the signal light change, but I was wrong because I was traveling from a different direction. I'm still thanking God that He kept me safe. I know the drivers who almost hit me had no idea what I was doing.

In the process of all this, I couldn't figure out why nobody was stopping for the red light. Needless to say, after my heart stopped beating out of my chest, I slowed down and paid better attention to what was going on around me. I'll make no more assumptions about signal lights!

Since I don't have to travel during heavy communter hours, I try to get out in the car to do my errands and shopping during the afternoon when people aren't coming and going from work. I got a later start than usual today, and I imagine some of the traffic around me at 4:30 this afternoon included people who were heading home from work. I'm so fortunate not to have to travel in heavy traffic, and it's got me spoiled.

Those people who have to travel an hour and a half to work, and the same amount of drive time from work back home in the evening, really have my sympathy. For a time in the 1980s when I was living in Houston, I had to drive across town, and it took me 45 minutes to an hour each way, usually creeping along the freeway. I was employed at an early start job too. We had to sign in before 7:35 am, which meant I had to leave the house by 6:45 at the lastest. No matter how I try to plan my getting ready time, I always end up piddling around at the last minute. I got a lot of red cirles around my name that year.

People behind a steering wheel aren't the same people they are with their friends in a social setting. They can't be. I think we all take on a "flight and fright" mentality when driving in heavy traffic. I'm a nice person generally. I try to be a considerate driver, letting a car or two in front of me if the lanes happen to stack up. Without fail, some fool will drive his truck across the grass, across the median, or somehow make his own lane of road in a situation like that. Some people just make their own rules for driving, like nobody else needs to be considered. "Get out of my way or get run over!" It just makes me wonder what those drivers are like when they aren't driving. They couldn't have that kind of personality all the time. I don't think they could. I do know of one exception. He's a jerk all the time. He visited me last night.

This old friend who was a neighbor almost 20 years ago (this jerk), and former boyfriend (during days of too much drinking and being otherwise stupid--looks counted for more then), stopped by "to catch up on things," so he said. He's moved and doesn't have a phone.

I knew he'd come by at some point in time, and I wasn't planning to let him in the door. He'd way overstayed his welcome last visit, and he never had a clue. That night I put him out, I felt like a bouncer throwing someone very drunk out of a bar. He was messed up, but he wasn't going to stay at my house. I didn't think he'd be back for a long time.

Me, being a nice person, kept my prerehearsed "What do you want?" greeting inside my head, and I let him in to visit. Within an hour I regretted it. His brain doesn't work normal anymore, if it ever did.

The poor dude has lost his sanity to drugs. He didn't have that much brain going for him before the drugs took over. He was always an uncommon sort, but he's totally lost touch with reality. If you think of the most self-centered, obnoxious, red neck you've ever seen portrayed in R-rated media, you have a general concept of this jerk.

I'm not going to let him in my house to visit anymore. We don't have anything in common to discuss. There's nothing he can do for me, and I'm fed up with doing for him. I knew he hadn't had dinner, so I fixed him a healthy meat and potato plate. He didn't even say "thanks," but he made a trip back from his truck when I thought he'd left because he had forgotten his doggie bag.

He's just not living in the same world as anybody with reasonable sense, and in some way he's going to do harm to me--whether he intends to or not. In a way he already has. He's hurt my feelings before. There's no part of my heart invested in him because he used it all up. He said what I needed to hear last night to make the decision to cut him out of my life.

He spent a good 25 minutes telling me his problems, that he's brought on himself, but he blames anyone and everyone else. When he said, "So, how have you been?" I told him about putting "Nellie" down. He let out a sympathetic peep. Just a peep. Then I continued with, "and I got some possibly bad news from the doctor," explaining about the spot on my mammogram, and that it might be nothing, or it might be the start of breast cancer.

He looked at me for a good 30 seconds, took a deep breath, looked me right in the eye and said, "I don't believe in cancer. You look healthy enough."

Even though I know this dirty rotten so and so as well as I do, just from knowing him so many years, I couldn't believe what had come out of his mouth. He says he doesn't believe in doctor's either, but he went to the hospital when he got shot a few years ago. There are just no words to express. . . .

Someone like that isn't capable of being a friend. I don't need him in my house, or in my life at all anymore. There's absolutely nothing to be gained from being around him. If I try to be Christian to him, lend a helping hand, I just end up feeling used and like a part of the filth he is. He's served his purpose as a writing research project. The research is finished, before some other blink-of-the-eye situation leaves me seriously injured or dead. That's not the way I want to go.

There's a short story in my portfolio that I started some time back, that has the name "Butch" in the title. After he left last night (Butch isn't his real name) I started writing some of the things he'd said in my spiral notebook, where my writing and thinking are hidden from public (and motherly) scrutiny.

Maybe before May I can construct a somewhat fictionalized story based on his ordeal with life, and send it in to the Writer's Digest contest. I don't particularly want to be known as the kind of person this is going to make me out to be, even just writing about it. It's certainly not the kind of story I'd want my mother to read, but it's a story with a lesson. Don't do drugs. This is a story that could be turned into a movie that I wouldn't want to see, but there's a portion of the public that thrives on that sort of story.

As I start writing more on the "Butch" story, I'm going to change the rating so that not everyone will be able to read it. I can't imagine him getting connected to the Internet and reading, but stranger things have happened. I'll need feedback along the way. It has to be a plot with a believable character, and he isn't believable. It's not going to be a pretty tale, but writing about him would certainly make me feel better, like purging my system of a toxin.