near death experiences

You'd think, having lived under the specter of death for the past few months, that nearly getting squished into a pancake by another danged SUV in the parking lot would not bother me. But I'm still shaking.

Didn't I just write about this only a few days ago? Anyway, it happened again, only this time I wasn't a pedestrian. I was sitting in the passenger side of my mom's car, trying to pick up my child from school, and we were in the school's parking lot. You'd think other mothers would have a certain amount of sensitivity for the fact that there are lots of small children running around in school parking lots, and most of them can't be seen by merely looking in your rear-view mirror (not that these mothers ever do that, either). Elementary school kids are short. But they don't. They are oblivious, and, like all people who think the world was invented for them alone, very dangerous.

And so it was that a big old SUV came speeding in reverse out of its parking spot, straight toward me in the passenger seat. This woman came--quite literally--within a inch of flattening me. I screamed. It took me an hour to stop shaking--that's how close she came.

But what was of interest to me was my own reaction. I've become so accustomed to the thought of my own mortality in the last two months that I didn't think it really frightened me. I think about death all the time now, and I've gotten used to it. In fact, in some respects I've found the thought of finitude rather empowering. It just puts everything else into perspective. None of the little things really matter all that much--being late, even though you've tried your best to hurry; taking a nap because you're exhausted instead of preparing for class; eating a bowl of rice pudding even though you're not supposed to have sugar at all. When you're living with the idea that you could very well die in spite of it all, nothing else really has any power to frighten you. You just cock that one eyebrow up and remark, "Puhlease."

But here comes this close encounter and all that goes out the window. What's up with that?