During the summer between my Junior and Senior year of high school, I was driving to the family cabin on Rush Lake. I rear-ended another car at speed while driving north on Highway 65 a couple of miles south of Cambridge, Minnesota. The Green Barn produce store was just ahead on the right and there was a flea market on the left. I glanced to my left to see the flea market and when I looked back ahead, the car ahead of me had slammed on the brakes. I slammed on my brakes as fast as I could but rammed into the back of his car pushing that car into the car ahead of it.
My head shattered the windshield. The Highway Patrol said the accident likely would have been fatal had the sun visor not absorbed some of the impact. When the patrolman drove me to the hospital to get checked out, he said: “Kid, by the time the lawsuits are over, you will wish you had died in this accident”.
They asked for $175,000 and declined the insurance company’s offer of $18.000. My life was much changed during the almost two years between the accident and the full jury trial. For almost a year I heard nothing, then various legal documents would randomly arrive in certified envelopes. By then my dad had died. Mom had no clue what to do. The insurance company told me to do nothing, they were handling it. I was working parttime making pizzas while being a full-time student at the University of Minnesota. Mom was working as a salad lady at Midland Hills Country Club.
For that entire two-year period I was pretty nervous. In the end, the jury awarded the plaintiffs $1,750 and the insurance company was happy the settlement was for one-hundredth of what the plaintiffs asked.
Avoiding death is not the moral of this story. The moral of the story is, the worst you can imagine is almost never what actually happens. Even when the worst does happen, life goes on and the best you can do is to move forward as best you can.
Many people talk about life-changing moments. Looking back, shattering a windshield with my head was not a life-changing moment. The highway patrolman was wrong, the lawsuit that followed the accident never made me wish I had died in the accident. I wish the highway patrolman would have told me, there is nothing you can do to change what just happened. It was bad but could be much worse than it is. The best you can do now is move forward the best you can.
We had to give a 3-minute speech in freshman year English class about some event, real or imagined, in our past. The speech needed to have a beginning, middle, and end. Some comment was made by the teacher about how moving the class to cry or laugh out loud would be a good thing. I bet my buddy Harry that I could make some of the girls cry.
I started out by telling the class about how when I was in sixth grade, I was riding my bike on County Road B just about to cross Snelling Ave on my way to Har Mar Mall when a car on Snelling failed to stop and T-boned a car crossing Snelling on County Road B about 30 feet in front of me.
A four-year-old girl was thrown from the car and smashed into the pavement. She screamed for her mommy with blood flowing from the side of her head and one arm was twisted obviously severely broken. Suddenly she stopped screaming, looked at me and quietly said “help me” as she breathed her last breath. I went on to describe the scene in detail. Tangled metal, steam rising from the engine compartment. The pool of blood, a mother trapped in the car unable to get to her dying daughter. How at first except for the girl’s screams it was silent. Then there were sirens and people gathering. I even described my terrifying nightmares that followed.
Several of my classmates and the instructor teared up. I won the bet. I confessed at the end of the speech that I made it up. There had been a fatal crash where a young girl was thrown from the car but by the time I arrived on the scene, it was like an hour later. They were towing away the cars. I never had nightmares about that accident. Back then kids didn’t wear seatbelts. I did not witness the accident but it is totally plausible I had. If I had witnessed the accident, it might well have haunted me for the rest of my life.
It might have haunted me but it might not have. The reality is, even when we are at the center of the event, it is not possible to know the impact of that event on the rest of your life or even the rest of the week.
When I drove up to the cabin on that Saturday I did not know I was about to come close to dying. It took almost two years to know the actual result. The little girl really did tragically die an hour before I rode my bike through that intersection. I had no idea it was going to get me an A on a speech several years later.
We are often advised to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. However, I am here to say what is worst and what is best is often only clear in hindsight and even then it is debatable. For sure things will be different. For sure some very bad things will happen to some very good people. For sure there will be unforeseen consequences. However, there is no telling what will be the exact impact of a bad event.
When we are in the middle of a crisis, knowing the future is not possible. Assuming the future will be bad is not helpful. The trick is to do what it takes to survive the crisis and move on to make your future as good as possible. The best we can do is the best we can do.
The closer you look the more you see.
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