Give Us This Day Our Occasional Near Miss

There’s an old saying, ‘once bitten, twice shy.’ It means that when we encounter something unpleasant or hurtful, we tend to avoid it in the future. Think of these occasional near misses as unsolicited gifts. Sometimes we don’t appreciate them, especially when they land too close, but they can teach us a great deal.

There have been a steady supply of these over the years.

When I was in high school and driving the delivery van for the dry cleaner I topped a rise and skidded backward across a ditch, coming to rest backward between two trees. Since that day, I have driven very cautiously in slippery conditions.

As a college student, someone pulled without looking through an opening in a divided highway. I stood on the brakes, but totaled a friend’s dad’s car. Because of that accident, I watch cars entering a highway very carefully.

On a hot construction site in the summer of 1980, I started guzzling Pepsi instead of water. After a few days of this I developed a heart arrhythmia from too much caffeine and sugar. It made me careful about proper hydration ever since.

When I was six, I nearly drowned when I slipped off a mossy pier in a northern Indiana lake. Since that day, I haven’t been anywhere near a mossy pier or a lake without a life jacket.

Back when I was in high school, a driver hit my vintage 1937 Plymouth in the side as I drove to school one morning. I delayed for a bit, but then took an insurance settlement from the driver’s company before I knew what it would cost to actually find thirty year-old parts and repair the damage. It was the last time that ever happened.

When I was plying my orchard renovation skills in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan there was a new Stihl pruning saw, hollow ground, that cut on the pull stroke. Wearing leather gloves on both hands, I pulled the saw off a cut and just tapped the base of the glove’s thumb with the saw points. Those things are incredibly sharp. When I finally got the bleeding stopped I decided I’d be very careful from then on. Since then I have only cut tree branches, not digits.

Similarly, not so long ago I just barely touched my knee with the chainsaw chain as I pulled it out of a cut. I shut the saw off and staunched the flow of blood. Next day I bought a pair of logger’s chaps. I’ve worn them every time the chain saw started since then and they have no cuts on them.

In the 1980s I rear-ended a pickup truck on wet pavement, but only damaged my own truck. I leave more space when it’s raining. I also leave more space when it’s not raining, so there was a double benefit there.

Also in the 1980s I saw my old hardware store mentor’s bandaged hand when he came back to the store one day. “What happened,” I asked. He said, “Well, I was making a cut on the table saw when I ran that hand up into the blade and almost cut my thumb off!” That lesson stuck with me without bleeding or going to the emergency room, and without surgery. Working on a table saw, the world just has to go away until the cutting is safely done. No mistakes allowed.

I’ve loved cereal since I was about four years old, so I’m embarrassed to admit that it was only about four months ago when I wanted a nice bowl of cereal before bedtime. I filled a bowl, pulled out a spoon, and went to the fridge for the milk. The carton had a ‘reduced’ sticker on it when I bought it because it was near the expiration date. It didn’t smell too bad, so I decided to fool myself. “It’s no different from buttermilk,” I said confidently to myself, and besides, I had some from the same carton just a couple of days ago. Yeah, right. So about 2 AM I woke up in a sweat, but allow me to spare you, dear reader, the rest of the details except for the vertigo. That was fun. I went to the Rapid Care place twice. My advice, which I follow myself now that I’ve recovered, is that when it smells, I toss it.

Back in the UP of Michigan I became interested in buying logs and sawing timber. There were lots of old Finns and Swedes who had spent their lives in the woods. I always paid attention when they talked about taking care of equipment and moving logs. It became a habit to notice their hands, and there were quite a few of them who were missing half a finger or two here and there. If a log weighs six hundred pounds, and if it decides to roll down the pile, nothing except a skid steer operator can stop it. If it can move at all, don’t put your hand up there. I’m grateful to still have all of my fingers in the right places.

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When I was about five, a stray dog came on the place that seemed about the right size for me, so being an aspiring cowboy, I decided to take a ride on its back. That was not a well-crafted plan. The dog pulled out from beneath me, turned, and bit me on the face. Duh. My fault. After shots and several doctor visits, I resolved to avoid riding anything unless there was a saddle already in place and the assistance of someone who knew what they were doing

There’s one more hardware store story from the 1980s. We had a rechargeable grass clipper at the checkout counter that worked like electric sheep shears. Rechargeable battery tools were fairly novel at that time, and a grizzled farmer came in one day for some bolts. While I wrote his purchase on a charge ticket, he looked down at the clipper which sat fully charged in front of him. Before I could even notice what he was doing, he picked them up held out his thumb, and pressed the trigger to see if they would actually cut something or not. A slice of thumb meat a little better than 1/8 inch thick landed on the counter. He sat the shears back down on the counter, uttered an oath, grabbed his bag of bolts with the other hand and walked out the door. I have not been tempted to repeat that experiment since that day, whether the shears were new or old.

There are more, and you probably have some of your own, but you get the idea.

Every now and then, we are blessed by a scare or a near-miss in our own lives or in the lives of others. In recognition of these lessons, here is a prayer or meditation to direct to our Higher Power.

We are arrogant and forgetful creatures, often thinking we self-guide more than the facts warrant. We need perspective and we need prudence. When it comes our way, we must try to accept it and learn from life experiences that do not take our lives. Please give us our occasional near miss. We solemnly swear that we will take these lessons to heart, pay attention, and live our lives differently as we go forward, so help us God. Thank you for your mercy. Amen.

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