Close calls don’t count, do they? A near miss and life goes on. I’m not aware of anyone who hasn’t had a close call at some time in their life. An amateur baseball catcher may just barely miss getting hit with a bat being swung by an amateur batter. Inexperienced climbers may take a wrong step and barely miss falling off the cliff. Starting to list “near-miss” examples, such as those above, made me realize that I do not want to start naming all the ways we have close calls. What made me think of this subject was a near miss my wife and I had, this very day. We were driving down a very busy primary avenue in our home city, the speed limit for that avenue is 40 miles per hour but the average speed of drivers on that street is more like 50 miles per hour. We had just had our car washed at an automatic car wash and was preparing to pull out onto that main avenue. After several cars had passed, there was one coming toward us approximately a half block away. Ordinarily, I would have had plenty of time to pull out and get ‘up to speed’ before it was close. I pulled out and as I was accelerating I realized that the car was closing in faster than normal. Too, the car in front of me was slowing down rapidly in order to stop behind a string of cars that had stopped for a red light. Even though the light was at an intersection almost a half a block away the cars were backed up that far. I stopped about five feet behind the car in front of me. I looked in my rearview mirror and I could tell that the driver of the car behind me was not slowing down fast enough to avoid hitting my car. Fortunately, I had left enough room behind the car stopped in front of me, giving me room to pull over real fast to the right of and alongside that car, just before the speedster came screeching, brakes locked, right where I had been stopped and up to the bumper of the car that had been in front of me. By the time he was completely stopped, he was where my car had been. Yes! That was a close call. Several cars behind him also had to screech to a halt in order to avoid hitting him. As I looked over my shoulder to see the driver, both his hands and his forehead were on his steering wheel. His body language was saying, “O my gosh! what a close call, I’m lucky to be alive.” We, too, are lucky to be alive because it was a very close call for us, as well. Fortunately, as a mature person and after 85 years of life, I knew what to look for. When you have life’s experiences you know the things that cause ‘close calls’. You expect and even look for things in life that cause ‘close calls’. I honestly believe that I may have saved a few lives today by my experience and quick thinking, at the very least, some hospital time for several people. One morning just a few months before the above experience, we were driving to the Family History Center, in Ogden. As we made a left hand turn on 23rd, a car pulled out from the curb on our right and made a U-turn right in front of us, not even 50 feet from the intersection that we turned left from. I slammed on my brakes as the female driver drove by the front of my car and missed me by less than an inch. I could see the veins in the whites of her eyes. She was oblivious to the world around her, if she is still alive today, a few months later, it is because other people in her world have steered around, braked or in some other way saved her in order to save themselves. Close calls are more frequent than we remember and too often quickly forgotten. “No big deal, we’re still alive.”
I rather doubt that anyone gets through this life without experiencing ‘close calls’. Too, there are many, every day, who do not survive the ‘close call’, because the ‘close call’ was just a little ‘too close’. We are vulnerable human beings and that is why parents have to be so cautious with their children, at least until they get to the age that you can no longer make choices for them. We all must be aware of the ‘close call’ syndrome, and recognize that ‘close calls’ are just around every corner. That doesn’t mean that we should become paranoid but rather we should all be cautious, expect ‘close calls’ from time to time and be ready to avoid them when possible. As we mature and begin to feel comfortable in our own skins, that is when we become too confident and are more likely to throw caution to the wind. That is the time when we become regular “close callers” and put ours and others lives at risk on a regular basis.
From a funeral home advertisement: “Be Honest, Be Kind, Listen Well, Share the Floor, Presume Good Will, Acknowledge the Differences, Answer the Tough Questions, Give Credit Where Credit is Due, Speak Only for Yourself, Keep Private Things Private, and Keep your dang eyes on the road.”