“Opening the driver’s door I attempted to roll out, Starsky & Hutch-style. It didn’t work.”
It’s interesting how, when one is younger the yarns of close calls with mortality seem far funnier than they do when you’re older.
When I was younger I used to revel in recalling death defying stunts; such as my “Little Huia’ incident”…
I lived at Little Huia, way out in the Waitakere’s when I was 21. On this particular glorious sunny West Auckland day, I was driving a group of friends into Grafton in Auckland City, en route to a champagne breakfast.
The mood was upbeat. We were wearing Hawaiian shirts and muumuus, travelling in style in my burnt-orange Marque 2 Ford Escort.
Driving up a long, long steep hill overlooking a large reservoir, the mood changed abruptly. A burning smell, strong and acrid, filled the car. As we neared the top of the hill, thick smoke started billowing from the engine, followed spectacularly by orange flames on a burnt orange bonnet.
I pulled over. Everyone but me got out as my brake pedal went straight to the floor.
The car was rolling backwards, I put it in park; it kept rolling backwards.
Survival instinct flooded my system as one thought flashed into my frontal lobe: I don’t want to be in a burning, backwards rolling car.
Opening the driver’s door, I attempted to roll out, Starsky & Hutch style. It didn’t work. I rolled out okay, but my right hand was entangled in the seatbelt.
Yes, the mood had definitely changed – from skipping along to a champagne breakfast listening to Ultravox on the radio, to getting dragged down a long, long steep hill towards a reservoir by a burning, runaway car.
Time slowed, as friends ran beside me, making futile attempts to free me. As I looked around I saw one of them had lost hope, kneeling on the road, thumping the tarmac, saying “No, Jonny! No!”
Luckily the car veered off the road and down a bank, with me flapping next to the front wheel. As the car stopped, I bumped into a tree stump biting my tongue – miraculously, my only injury.
It could have been worse, much worse.
I started scrambling up the bank, convinced the car was going to blow up. Me emerging from the undergrowth, hysterically screaming, “Get out of here, it’s going to blow!”, with an appropriately dramatic bloody mouth, must have been a horrifying vision.
I’ve had a few close calls to say the least. How many? Hmm, probably getting close to nine, but sometimes counting your blessings can be counterproductive. Recalling such memories now with my old pals tends to result in much grimacing, shaking of the head and rubbing of the face in disbelief at our stupidity.
Maybe when we are younger we treat close calls as a trigger to celebrate youthful resilience. Yes, a sense of being able to protect oneself and navigate life’s tricky paths does often reside within a person who has experienced a close call.
Some clinicians would call it Post Traumatic Growth.
Nevertheless, what we often miss as a young person is the understanding we are not immortal. That risk taking by ourselves or others can and does have dire consequences. That life is fragile and to be cherished.
So yes, I would say to my younger self: adversity can fortify us and grow our resilience. But let’s not be stupid about it.
Downloadable pdf here:
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