Final destination

Again, I almost died yesterday, adding to my already impressive collection of close calls which include, in chronological order:

• Electrocuting myself as a toddler by sticking my saliva-coated index finger into an electric socket.
• Nearly drowning in the community swimming pool at age four. Luckily, I was fished out by some mysterious old lady.
• Getting hit by a motorcycle during the first grade because the crossing guard wasn't doing her job. The collision threw me ten feet across the street, landing me sickeningly hard on the curb. I don't remember why we didn't sue anyone. After a day at the hospital, my mom had to wake me up every hour that night and quiz me about my identity, to make sure I didn't have amnesia. Seriously.
• Falling two stories off a balcony and shattering my L1 lumbar vertebrae in a compression fracture. I used to be 5'10". Now I'm 5'9".
• Being thrown off of an ATV at high-speed in the middle of the Nevada desert and landing head first into the sand with so much force that my helmet flew off of my head.
• Accidentally going on a black diamond slope while snowboarding and feeling like a chihuahua in a drying machine as I tumbled downhill for about 1500 yards.

So, how did I manage to almost die yesterday? I had an eye exam. My morning appointment ended up taking much longer than it should have because, well, you know that contraption that you place your chin on and look into an eye-hole and then they shoot puffs of air into your pupils and it scares the bejesus out of you? Well, I was stuck on that damn machine for a half hour because I couldn't stop blinking/flinching. And can you blame me? Who in their right mind really wants to look down the barrel of a gun, whether the bullets are made of air or not?

As soon as I leave the eye doctor I'm panicking for two reasons: 1) I'm late for an important meeting at work, and 2) my pupils are super dilated from the examination, which means that light entering my eyes feels like lightning entering my eyes.

So I'm running to work, as fast as possible, and it feels like I'm staring into the sun everywhere I look. Even squinting, it's like my eyes are being stabbed at by a skewer. As soon as I reach Wacker I can't take it anymore, so I do the only thing that makes any sense. I CLOSE MY EYES COMPLETELY SHUT AND RUN ACROSS THE STREET, WALK SIGNAL BE DAMNED.

And it's there that I finally understand why Stevie Wonder never goes jogging.

By the time I make it a third of the way across the street, a car starts honking repeatedly. I open my eyes to find, closing in fast, what looks like a speeding taxi cab illuminated by the piercing bright light of a wrathful God. And, like all taxis, this one isn't slowing down for pedestrians.

And all I can think is, This is it. I am going to die. I won't get to see the Cubs win the World Series. I won't get a chance to publish a novel. I won't get to unravel certain mysteries in life that have always perplexed me, such as "Who shot Nice Guy Eddie at the end of Reservoir Dogs?", or "How do women stop having their periods when they step into the shower?"

But obviously, because you're reading this sloppily written blog that for no good reason toggles between past and present tense, I didn't die yesterday. I simply pirouetted a few times to dodge the taxi, then Froggered my way across the rest of the street, my eyes barely a crack open the entire time.

For those of you keeping score at home, it's Pete 7, Grim Reaper 0.