First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
Illustration by April dela Noche Milne
I saved a young man’s life recently.
More neutral observers might suggest that fate or karma or the traffic gods played a larger role, but I like to think the initial request was mine.
If you’ve ever encountered some lane-changing idiot who’s bobbing and weaving through traffic at ludicrous speed, you too may have muttered something along the lines of, “I hope they have an accident soon – preferably of the single-vehicle variety, so no one except them gets hurt.”
The details of your specific rage fantasy may vary. For instance, you might include details such as a flaming wreck, or a funeral at which all the guests are shaking angry fists – but you get the general idea.
That was me a few weeks ago, trying to avoid an idiot on a black motorcycle.
For the better part of four kilometres, he tailgates my boring-but-safe Toyota along a twisty road, air-guitaring so much that I’m not sure how he steers. The guitar soon morphs into a drum, followed by a precipitous lean-back that has him completely and terrifyingly prone, both arms pointed upward at the sky.
Even Mother Teresa, were she safely buckled into the passenger seat next to me, would have thought, “Geez, that kid needs to learn a lesson.”
But just as I start to curse, a memory from almost a quarter-century ago stops me, and I do what I don’t always do, even if I know I should: slow down, move to the right and get out of his way.
Ahead, the road becomes a highway, and as he roars into the distance I glance upward. “God,” I whisper, “let that kid stay alive.”
Fifteen seconds later, my prayer is acknowledged, as traffic chokes up and two southbound lanes become a sea of red brake lights. With sickening clarity, I can sense what I’m about to see: the black bike, twisted and lying in the centre of the road.
Once I do, I start scanning for the other thing, the image that I know will haunt me forever.
But instead of a corpse, there is movement, and 20 feet away a shaky figure rises from the left-hand-ditch, staggering forward. He removes his helmet and stares, eyes wide, at the scene around him. He clearly doesn’t understand what’s just happened, just as he probably hasn’t noticed his shredded T-shirt, the blood streaming down from the open wound in his shoulder. Instead, he bends over, shaggy blond hair cascading past his face, and begins picking up pieces of what look like plastic – a phone or bits of … whatever.
It’s too early for sirens, but I know they will come. Good Samaritans are already running full tilt toward him, vehicles abandoned at the roadside, doors open.
The rest of us, those who cannot help, stay in our cars. Slowly, we line up single file and pick our way through the debris as best we can.
When it’s my turn, and the rubbernecking is mostly done, I want so badly to lower my window and extend my middle finger, or at least mutter something profane and judgy: “You stupid so-and-so. You idiot!”
But I can’t. Because I’m not certain who it is I’m mad at.
Twenty-four years ago, I was roughly half my age and livin’ la vida loca on the other side of the world. I was young, free, invincible. I was also self-centred as hell and unwilling to acknowledge the consequences of just about anything, especially my own actions. Motorcycle was a language I spoke fluently.
Have a bad day at work? Jump on the bike and race through the streets of Beirut.
Have a good day at work? Do it again, faster, with no helmet because, well, duh.
The bike was my ticket to freedom, to coolness; it was my id, my way of expressing myself, how I got girls. I couldn’t have torn myself from its allure any more than I could have pretended I was a 51-year-old man who shopped for the best mortgage rate and drove a boring SUV.
How I survived those days is a mystery to me – a double one.
The first time, naturally, is my own fault. I’m driving at speed in the half-light of a Beirut dusk, taking a wrong-way shortcut down a one-way street – efficient, I tell myself, because it gets me home sooner, with more time to shower before a hot date.
I don’t see the young man stepping out of the taxi, or at least I don’t have enough time to avoid him.
I do recall the sensation of skidding headfirst along the pavement, arms outstretched, the wheels of oncoming cars looming impossibly large, their drivers honking in anger or terror – or both. I remember too the look on the kid’s face, later, at the hospital, when the doctors have told me that somehow I am fine, but that he needs to stay in bed for a few days – that his leg will eventually heal and that, by the way, there are two police officers waiting outside to speak to me.
The details of my second accident are fuzzier. All I have is what trauma therapists call snapshot memory: a blue car, heading toward me and inches from my front wheel. My arms are raised to ward off impact.
Both accidents should have killed me, or at least somebody. The reason they did not probably has something to do with fate or karma. Or maybe somebody else saw and whispered, “God, let that kid stay alive.”
And I’m not saying either of us was wrong to want to ride our motorcycle. Like I already admitted, it’s a seductive feeling, but at 27 I simply couldn’t handle it. I mean, what kind of an idiot needs to be told by the universe twice?
Today, my passions are different. Maybe I’m just older and my youthful wildness has faded, or maybe, as my wife would put it, I’m smart enough to recognize what’s good for me, and what isn’t.
Until my encounter with the young man on the motorcycle, I hadn’t thought about either incident in years.
Now, though, I can’t stop thinking about it all. What happened to the young man with the blond hair and air guitar ambitions? Was he drunk? Had he just been dumped by a beautiful girlfriend? Bad day at work? Or was he just – like I was, once – 27 and indestructible?
I rode so stupidly, then. So carelessly, so wonderfully. I remember those days as some of the greatest of my life, even if I was an idiot.
I hope that young man gets the chance to remember his, too.
Kleo Mitsis lives in Chelsea, Que.