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What wonderful stories! Gosh, where should I begin?!
I’m wondering if the challenges with time management can be an advantage. Can we break-down time? Here’s a car crash story: Decades ago (I’d just turned 18), I was working as a volunteer in a very rural area in the Appalachain Mountains in Kentucky. Among my jobs, I delivered medical supplies to from the main hospital to outlying clinics and returned with labratory samples, etc. The area roads were mountanous, winding, poorly kept, undivided 2-lane highways upon which most traffic was coal trucks hauling freshly mined coal. I was driving a subcompact 2 door,
I was on my way back to the hospital when I came to a T-intersection. I slowed to make a left turn and just as I was into the turn, a fully loaded coal truck came around a blind curve into the intersection. It was one of those moments which occurred in a split second, but in my mind time spread out. I knew now matter what there’s be impact between my car and the truck. If either of us turned off the road avoid impact we’d either drive into the side of a mountain or off the road down off the mountainside. I knew as a smaller vehicle, I had all the advantage in so far as manoverability. If I didn’t turn at all, the most likely impact would involve my car going under the truck which I anticipated would result in decapitation to me and serious injuries to my 2 passengers.
I aimed for the trucks tires. A dramatic impact followed: crash then slience–except for the whine and grunt of the truck’s air brakes and down shifting to stop.
I assessed myself and my passengers. Aside from complete hysteria on the part of my passengers, we were all unhurt. I got out to assess the car: totalled. I trotted down the road to check in with the truck driver. He’d managed to stop a few 100 M down the road. He lept from his cab and ran into me and grabbed my shoulders, “How many got killed?!”
“What?”
“The crash! How many got killed?”
“None.” I shook my head with a growing sense of confusion.
“Where’s the driver?” The driver was clearly upset.
“You’re lookin’ at her.”
The truck driver’s face froze and he dropped to his knees, “PRAISE THE LORD!”
At this point–as the newly arrived Boston Yankee in Appalachia–I was wholly baffled. The truck driver then raised up and walked with me back to the car. All the way he explained how, although he’d not yet killed anybody with his truck, that all the coal truck drivers knew that the risk was high. He used his CB radio to alert the State Police, etc.
As various folks showed up on scene, I learned that these sorts of accidents were all too common in the region. Often, there were mortalities, nearly always serious inuuries. Nobody could ever recall anybody walking away–unscathed–from a similar incident. To add to my own shock, although I was wearing a seatbelt, neither passenger was (NOTE: Always make certain all your passengers are wearing a seatbelt!)
How it can take me an hour to figure out where to file one piece of paper in my office yet in a split second figure out how to avoid certain death is beyond me. While I hope Concerta can help with the filing, I hope it doesn’t mess with my ability to turn on a dime:-)
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