Appreciating loan on life in an instant (06/28/06)

It was Friday morning, and I was running late.

There's nothing unusual about that. Friday is trash and recycling day at our house, which always takes a few extra minutes.

But it was probably 7:45 a.m. when I backed out of the driveway.

I backed out carefully, having learned to watch for traffic from a nearby alley that can come as a surprise.

As on most mornings, I wasn't 100 percent awake. I'd guess I was about 90 to 95 percent, with the caffeine just kicking in.

I drove to the corner, and turned right on Pleasant Street. (What could be more bucolic than that? I was raised on Pleasant Street, and I'm well aware that it sounds like a thoroughfare in Mayberry.)

Heading south, I passed the first few houses and was just about three seconds from the intersection with Race Street when a blue pick-up truck flew by.

It was westbound on Race. It was going roughly 40 mph. And it had completely blown the stop sign.

In that instant, my morning changed.

I thought about the three seconds.

What if I'd been moving just a little faster? What if I'd taken more of the recyclables out to the street the night before? What if I'd forgotten to kiss my wife good-bye?

Three seconds, and there would have been a pick-up truck charging into the driver's side door of my car at that intersection.

I played out the accident in my head. If the pick-up hit early or late, my car would have spun around. Damage would have been total according to the insurance estimates, but I would have survived. Had it connected in the middle of the car, I would have been killed instantly.

Like an idiot, I started wondering who would put the paper out that day. Mike Snyder was at a Newspaper in Education meeting. Who would step into the gap with him gone and me reduced to a headline?

And then I thought of my daughter Sally, who was driving the same street behind me a minute or two later.

What if there happened to be a blue pick-up truck blowing the stop sign when she passed by? How would her mother and sisters and I handle that?

I was rattled by the time I pulled into the parking lot at the office.

It's all so fragile, I thought.

So fragile.

Every day, we trust the other guy not to do something stupid. We trust people we don't know to drive their cars sensibly. We trust airplane mechanics to make sure the jets are working properly. We trust doctors and nurses to be conscientious as they go about their jobs. We trust countless engineers to do their math right and stay awake in the most boring classes imaginable so that our bridges function and we don't go plunging into the river.

So fragile.

Looking for wisdom later, I turned to poetry. I often do.

For about a year now, I've been delighted by the work of a Polish woman by the name of Wislawa Szymborska.

It's the nature of poetry today that you've probably never heard of her, even though she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996.

In a single line, she summed up what I was feeling that Friday morning.

A memorable opening of a memorable poem begins this way: "Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan."

Trust one another. Be careful. Drive safely. Appreciate life.

And remember: "Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan."[[In-content Ad]]