So I nearly died on Sunday
2012-Oct-16, Tuesday 17:53![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
Well, okay, I might have just been injured instead.
Anyway, I went out to get a haircut, since it had been over a year since scissor went anywhere near my hair and it definitely needed it. It was sunny out, and a bit windy, but I didn't think anything of it because hey, Chicago. I was about halfway there and just nearing a corner when a sudden gust of wind came out from around the building and a tree almost fell on me.
They say that time slows down in situations like that, but it didn't really happen for me. The wind whipped up to a howl, I heard a loud CRACK, then a crashing sound, and when I looked two feet to my right, just around the corner, there was a pile of branches and pieces of trunk where the upper part of the tree had broken off in the wind and fallen to the ground. If I had needed to turn that corner instead of going straight...
Even now I tend to look back and think, "It wasn't that bad, it was only part of the tree, it had already cracked into pieces," etc., but if I think about it in any depth I know that's just perfectly natural post-disaster delusions. Some of those pieces were as big around as my upper arm. If they had hit me end-on in the head, I would definitely have been seriously injured, and might have died.
There was a woman walking with her baby, so if I had been hit she (hopefully) would have called 911, and as it was she asked me if I was okay--which, oddly, I was. I wasn't bothered by it at all, and I'm still not, even when I think about it. I mean, I guess that's a useful adaptive strategy, because freaking out over the essential randomness of the universe is not really a course that's conductive to long-term mental health, but it seems like it should bother me more than I may have narrowly escaped death. It has made me a lot more worried about something terrible happening to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
softlykarou when she's out of contact, though. :p
So, yeah. Don't go to bed angry, don't sweat the small stuff, and make sure you tell your loved ones you love them. You never know what'll happen.
Anyway, I went out to get a haircut, since it had been over a year since scissor went anywhere near my hair and it definitely needed it. It was sunny out, and a bit windy, but I didn't think anything of it because hey, Chicago. I was about halfway there and just nearing a corner when a sudden gust of wind came out from around the building and a tree almost fell on me.
They say that time slows down in situations like that, but it didn't really happen for me. The wind whipped up to a howl, I heard a loud CRACK, then a crashing sound, and when I looked two feet to my right, just around the corner, there was a pile of branches and pieces of trunk where the upper part of the tree had broken off in the wind and fallen to the ground. If I had needed to turn that corner instead of going straight...
Even now I tend to look back and think, "It wasn't that bad, it was only part of the tree, it had already cracked into pieces," etc., but if I think about it in any depth I know that's just perfectly natural post-disaster delusions. Some of those pieces were as big around as my upper arm. If they had hit me end-on in the head, I would definitely have been seriously injured, and might have died.
There was a woman walking with her baby, so if I had been hit she (hopefully) would have called 911, and as it was she asked me if I was okay--which, oddly, I was. I wasn't bothered by it at all, and I'm still not, even when I think about it. I mean, I guess that's a useful adaptive strategy, because freaking out over the essential randomness of the universe is not really a course that's conductive to long-term mental health, but it seems like it should bother me more than I may have narrowly escaped death. It has made me a lot more worried about something terrible happening to
softlykarou when she's out of contact, though. :pSo, yeah. Don't go to bed angry, don't sweat the small stuff, and make sure you tell your loved ones you love them. You never know what'll happen.
