The Dumbest of Reasons

Life is full of potential ends. I have lucked out so many times in my life. From my childhood when engine powering a welder exploded, when a revolver fired without the cartridge being centered and caused the shell and bullet to explode into scrapnal.

There was the time I took out the circuit breaker to a room with my fingers. And of course there was the time I was shot with a .22 air rifle at a party and then at another party fell out of a second story window. With the exception of the 2nd story drop onto hedges and then bouncing onto the sidewalk all of these resulted in me being mostly intact. The two story drop messed up my neck and spine and did cause health issues up until my early 40's where I was finally smart enough to fix with surgery, but for other reasons, not the original injuries. And of course the .22 pellet, fortunately missed any vital areas of the body and just had to be dug out of my left shoulder.

As I got older my thirst for adventure and adrenaline decrease my odds of survival by a small amount but skydiving, flying aerobatics and helicopters, though not without some scary moments proved to be quite safe. Not so with motorcycles. I had some injuries riding dirt bikes, nothing to fantastic and never in did I fear the end at any time.

Even when I collided with a Ford Bronco on my Harley Davidson Heritage Springer Softale. The police said they estimated the impact to be 30 MPH. I hit so hard I pushed the Bronco through the intersection with their breaks on causing skid tracks on all four Bronco tires. The impact was so severe that it crumpled the rear fender mounts and parts of the tube frame of my bike like an accordion just from the G forces of the impact. I flew 3 or 4 car-lengths in the air after careening over the top of the Bronco, then bounced and skidded several more before coming to rest several car-lengths from the impact scene. At least that is what the witnesses said. I was completely unconscious after impacting the spare tire and rear window before my death defying catapult. In hind-site and only having the memory of impending, immediately before and several minutes after all this carnage. I am grateful everything in between is just lost time to me. As bad as the next 2.5 months of recovery were I can not image what the actual experience must of been like and that is time in my life I will not be doing regressive hypnosis to recover the memories.

That experience is the only time in my life I thought I would not make it through. I remember breaking hard to try and stop the bike, eventually realizing there was no way and then dropping the bike on the front crash bars and riding the skid from the drop point to impact. Even though I knew this was really going to hurt a lot right before impact, I was still busy calculating ways to not die. I squatted with my left foot on the running board and my right foot on the edge of the seat. I held that position right before impact and then push as hard as I could that put me at about a 45 degree angle pushing away from the impact and up. Quite possibly the reason I careened over the top of the Bronco, though certainly not clearing it. All this time I never thought I would die. I only dreaded the pain of what would result.

Ironically I had no broken bones, through I did loose a lot the skin on the side I skidded across the asphalt. In some places through the muscle to bone. I had quite of bit of internal bleeding. A concussion and had to cut my cell phone holder out of my leg. But other than that never finding my cell phone or some clothing I came out OK.

When I had recovered enough to ride I went to the Harley dealer to pick up my repaired bike. It was basically a new bike at that point. The mechanic I picked it up from wanted to know if I knew the person was riding the bike when this happened. I said it was me and they said no way had they ever seen anyone survive such an impact.

Even with all of this I have never felt I was close to leaving this earth, except one time in elementary school, but that was actually on purpose and I failed.

Not until this morning had I been scared this was it. All other times in my life were severe catastrophic events and during times like that you too busy figuring it out to worry about death. But when things are mostly tranquil that is when you get scared or at least for me anyway.

Now I get to the part that the title of this post is about. Not to say that dying by slamming your bike into a car, or turning the throttle the wrong way while recovering from an auto-rotation in a helicopter or starting a spin way to close the earth are not dumb ways to die, they most certainly are. But this morning was so benign. Today was a good day, things were going well at home and I was enjoying my day off. Every morning I take a bunch of horse pills. This morning like any other after eating breakfast I took my giant horse pills vitamins and amino acids, but where I normally take one giant pill at a time, this morning I decided to down the entire shot glass full. A bunch got stuck in my throat and at the entrance to my trechia there lodged a brick wall of pills. I could not swallow them, when I would drink water it just filled up my throat and mouth. I finally washed it down down a little but not sure what happened then because now I could not breath.

Panic set in as I tried to make myself barf, but could not. Still unable to breath, I tried washing this mess down, but after filling my throat up and spitting the water out, because it had no where to go. I tried to barf again. I was getting a small amount of air in, but not enough because my extremities were starting to tingle and as I set on the bathroom floor trying to make myself barf in the toilet while also trying to wash it all down or at least past the point it was lodged so it would just be stuck lower in my esophagus. Nothing was working I really freaked out when my legs and arms and hands began to change colors. I was thinking am I hallucinating this color change from lack of oxygen or is this what happens when the body starts running low on oxygen. As I was starting to get very light headed, I thought what a stupid dump way to die. People would eventually find me slumped over passed out over the toilet with water and foam all around me from the water I could not get down. In a panic I stood up to go grab another bottle of water I lost my footing, I think, fell backwards against the wall in the bath room and wow I could now breath, barely and grasping for breaths, but enough to feel a little more clear and stable. For the next half hour I was choking but could breath enough. After about 30 minutes this mess finally went down enough to just hurt where it was lodged . I thought I will happily take that for the rest of the day.

I always joke at work that I'm tired and get mad every time I wake up in the morning because I lived through another night and didn't pass, so I have to keep doing this dumb ass life I have created or destroyed, however you see things glass half full or half empty.

I've been putting off mailing a gift to my mom and had not spoken to my mom or sister in a while and had not told either how much I love them.

I made sure to mail my gift out today. I also made sure to tell both how much I love and care for them both today.

Because you just never know, when something no matter how benign, could cause you take take your last breath and take away that chance to tell those you care for in life how much you care for and appreciate them in your life.