Twinkling Of An Eye

Yesterday morning, I did something I rarely do. I stopped for breakfast on the way to work.

I’ve been feeling less-than-stellar lately, mostly because of work-related stress. I try to heed my body’s promptings, and yesterday was one of the times I sensed a clear prompting. I usually don’t eat breakfast during the week, and then I enjoy my wife’s breakfast-brunch feasts on the weekends — I just function better this way. But when I awake feeling puny, I do eat a bite in the mornings in order to fuel myself for the day. So I went through the drive-thru at a locally-owned joint that serves first-rate sausage biscuits. Got me one of those, and an order of cheddar rounds, which are bite-sized hash brown nuggets with a bit of cheddar mixed in.

Back on the road, headed to work, and the thought came into my mind, “The bag felt very light when she handed it to me…wonder if she forgot the cheddar rounds?” I pulled the bag to me and peeked inside. Both the biscuit and the cheddar rounds were there. Good deal. I looked up again.

The bicyclist whom I pass every morning was right there on the shoulder of the road. And I had drifted to the side in the two seconds it had taken me to glance in the bag, and I was heading straight towards him at 50 miles per hour.

He either saw me in his mirror or sensed me. His head turned to the left and down, as if looking down at his left shoulder. I could see his face clearly — late twenties, scraggly facial hair, good-looking kid, eyes the size of saucers as he realized that he was about to be flattened by an inattentive driver.

I honestly don’t remember jerking the wheel to the side, but somehow, I slid right past him with perhaps four inches between us, then back into my lane. I instinctively hit my brakes, but saw that a truck was right behind me, so I accelerated again. I looked in my side mirror and saw that the bicyclist was still pedaling, but much slower and far over onto the shoulder, almost into the grass. By the time I got control of myself, I was a few hundred yards away. Should I go back? Should I pull over and wait for him? Finally, I decided to just drive the remaining half mile to my office and collect myself there.

Pulled into my parking spot beneath the tree. The crows and birds were already there, watching for their benefactor. I killed the engine and sat there, lifted my hands to my face and watched them shake like leaves in a breeze. Took several deep, deep breaths. Thought some hard thoughts.

Just that fast. In the twinkling of an eye, as the old book says. I could have ended that young man’s earthly sojourn and changed the course of my own life forever. And all because I just had to see if the drive-thru attendant had cheated me out of $1.95.

I didn’t tell my wife about the incident when I got home last night. I brooded on it all evening, though, and my sleep was thin and restless. Near-misses usually have this sort of post-traumatic effect on human beings. Even now, reliving it through my keystrokes, I feel my chest tighten and my throat constrict. Certain facts can never be evaded, and here is one for me: I almost killed another human being. Not in self-defense. Not in rage. Not at the behest of my government. Not as a result of a personal vendetta. I almost killed another human being because I looked down for two seconds, two completely unimportant, non-urgent seconds.

The real kicker is that the young man I almost killed is the same young man I pray for every time I see him. This is what continues to rattle my soul. What wreckage I would be this morning if I had actually struck him with my vehicle. What a horror-show my mind would be if I had to sit and contemplate the fact that the object of so many morning prayers was now gone from this earth because of a momentary lapse of judgment.

I feel ancient today, and fragile, and unworthy. I am unsure if I should attempt to speak to the bicyclist the next time I see him…pull over onto the shoulder and wait for him to reach me, and then offer an apology and an explanation? I don’t know. The feeling of disaster narrowly averted is unsettling. My spiritual sense is unsettled as well. My morning prayers before leaving the house, lifted while standing out in the cool, dewy grass while Dixee the dog did her business, included petitions for protection for my loved ones. Was the young bicycle rider included under that blanket? Was anything changed, anything averted because of my prayers? Did the incident occur because I prayed badly, or sloppily, or as inattentively as I piloted the vehicle?

I feel ancient today, and fragile, and unworthy. So much could have changed in the twinkling of an eye.

And my heart is uneasy, because I know that so much can change today in the twinkling of an eye.

This is a great heaviness.

~ S.K. Orr