Almost everyone has that moment in their life, the one where they do something utterly stupid and have something to learn from it. My life is filled with those moments, and by this point i’ve stopped being depressed about it. I figure, it’s just another road bump and this is only one life. Take it, learn from it, get over it. But i’m always surprised at what lesson will come next because they are never what I expect.

Take my latest shenanigan for instance. I learned two days ago that speeding, then taking a sharp turn while pressing on the breaks is a very, very bad idea. I also learned that airbags aren’t as soft as I thought they would be. In fact, it feels like being punched in the face. I learned that insurance people are funny, because they won’t cover the fucked up suspension, or the exploded and dismantled tire, or the airbags, but they will cover the broken rearview mirror and the windsheild that it flew into because that was the airbag’s fault, not mine. But the most important thing I learned-or rather, proved-was my near death theory.

See, i’ve always believed that some authors are filled with utter shit. When a character (or if in an autobiography, themself) has a near death experience, there’s constantly this flashback scene playing in their mind or they’re thinking about someone precious to them. That just sounds too sappy to me. When your car is spinning out of control or when you’re being sucked under by a current and drowning, and you’re alone, you aren’t thinking a damn thing. It’s a beautiful and dangerous reaction called instinct that takes over. Unless you are specifically trained to handle panic situations, when you’re in danger, your body doesn’t think as much as it just does. The only thing I remember from wrecking my car is when the world finally stopped spinning and I found myself staring at a smoking airbag. If something had been shot threw me and killed me, I wouldn’t have registered it at all. I wasn’t even afraid.  And it was the same for when I was little. A current got a hold of me and I was being shoved around, not thinking anything, just kicking and flailing mindlessly until it let me go.

Not to say that this goes for all situations. I mean, if you have a gun pointed at you or if you’re dangling thousands of feet above the ground for more than a few minutes, you’ll have the time to think about everything. And even more importantly, if someone is with you when everything is spinning out of control, you’ll probably be thinking about their safety rather than your own. But besides that, I did prove my theory. Now when I read that Jimmy was thinking about his childhood when a truck was coming at him at 80 mph, I can call bullshit.

I think.

XD