Topix Questions 27: "When Have You Been in a Scary or Dangerous Situation?" & Questions 28: "What is One of the Best Gifts You've Ever Received"

Question 27/424:  When have you been in a scary or dangerous situation?

So I’ve already written about my almost drowning experience in question number 22 so I won’t repeat that one.  I’ve been a few scary or dangerous situations in my life, some beyond my control, and some partially my fault.

The first really scary situation I remember was when I was an early teenager, just turned 13 or so, and my dad had been sick, just typical flu or pneumonia.  My family wasn’t a huge fan of going to the doctor so I’m sure my dad just took some over the counter sinus medication and assumed he was good to go.  I don’t really know what all happened but one night when he was falling asleep on recliner seat of the couch like he often did, he started having a seizure (or at least seizure like symptoms) and none of us really knew what to do.  My mom had to call 911 and essentially sat on top of him to hold his head so he wouldn’t rattle his brain and my siblings and I just had to sit there holding his arms or legs trying to make sense of what was going on.  When the ambulance made it there they weren’t sure they could even push the gurney through the hallway by our backdoor which is the door we always used so there was a lot of stress and anxiety figuring that out.  Thankfully they were able to get the gurney in and just had to use the front door to get out.  I don’t think my dad was in the hospital very long, got some prescribed medications and confirmed the pneumonia diagnosis but was sent home to monitor his symptoms.

The next scary situation I was in was my first car accident at my own hand.  I was 16 and the night before I had gone to a friend’s high school graduation open house.  I hadn’t drank or smoked or anything but we did stay up way too late that night and in the morning I had to drive to my grandma’s house to help her do some chores and painting.  My grandma’s house wasn’t very far from the open house I had attended so I figured I would be fine, I got on the road around 7:30am to be to my grandma’s by 8am but about two miles away from her house I started nodding off.  I knew I was tired but I figure I was so close if I could just keep myself awake I would be okay.  I rolled the windows down, blared my radio, and started slapping my legs to keep myself awake.  Unfortunately I still fell asleep, and I woke up when the front end of my car went into a ditch, bounced out and then started going towards a pond.  I slammed on my brakes before I even really knew what was happening.  My windshield was shattered and all I could think was that I needed to get to my grandma’s before anyone knew what had happened.  Someone had actually been following me, they had noticed my weaving on the road and decided to stay a safe distance behind me so that if something happened they could call someone.  Everything worked out fine, and the property owners were very gracious (turned out they were an old family friend of my mom and grandma) and were just thankful I hadn’t driven my car into the pond because I wouldn’t have been so lucky.

I was in another car accident a few years after that one where it was December in Michigan but it was one of those winter days where the roads didn’t seem like they’d be that bad and the sun was shining so I felt less anxious about being on the road.  Around noon I had to drive about 45 minutes away to pick up my then boyfriend and his daughter.  Not very long into my trek, I hit a patch of black ice on the freeway and immediately skited left across three lanes of traffic.  I tried to correct myself and skirted right back across three lanes of traffic.  I tried to correct myself again and skirted left back across the three lanes again when I was hit T-bone style by an off duty police officer.  The impact was so intense I’m pretty sure I blacked out momentarily.  When I came to, my car was facing the wrong direction of the freeway but had been pushed up against the cement wall.  I was looking out my shattered windshield at the vehicle that had hit me and watched him assess the damage of his vehicle.  I had stars in my eyes and I couldn’t breathe, the air bag had knocked the wind out of my chest.  While that was happening I remembered that the car manual says that if you air bag deploys and you’re asthmatic you need to get out of the car immediately.  First I tried to open my door, but I had been hit on my driver’s side so I wasn’t able to open it.  Then I tried to unlatch my seatbelt but I couldn’t seem to find the plastic mechanism.  During this time I think I was still struggling to breathe.  I was trying not to panic but I realized that the seat belt mechanism had been smashed against the plastic center console and I couldn’t click the button to remove my seatbelt and I didn’t think I had anything sharp to cut it with.  I looked back out the window and saw the other driver continuing to assess the damage to his vehicle when he finally realized there had been no movement out of mine.  He ran over, threw open the passenger side door.  He asked me some questions but I don’t remember what they were, thankfully he had a tool to cut my seat belt out and all I had to do was crawl out the passenger side.  As we were standing there, on the side of the freeway watching dozens of cars fly past us, the other driver said we needed to cross the freeway to get onto a higher median.  I thought that was crazy, running across three lanes of freeway traffic, plus I still couldn’t fully catch my breath and I had pain in my back and my side, but he said we had to go.  I’m thankful he had the forethought to push me because we no sooner found our footing on higher ground then another truck lost control on the same patch of black ice, spun his car a full 180 degree spin and then slammed into my already damaged beyond repair vehicle.  He joined us on our higher ground median while we waited for cops and ambulances to show up.  I was more or less forced into an ambulance where they performed an x-ray on my back and saw nothing but potential bruising and said I was good to go.

I’ve been a few other scary situations, a few other car accidents not all at my own hand.  A few scary drives through blizzards.  The whole story about looking for and finding my dad deceased which was broadcast across local news when I was 17.  Getting scary phone calls from loved ones about terrible things that have happened and having to show up and be there for them.  But I think I’ll leave this particular post here, I have a feeling some of these questions will be revisited in the future as well.

 

 Question 28/424:  What is one of the best gifts you’ve ever received?

As a young kid some of the best gifts that I ever received were homemade.  My mom build me a Barbie house out of painted plywood, leftover roofing shingles, and carpet and linoleum remnants and even put the whole house on wheels and cut out big bay windows on the side.  It was a two story house with an attic and it was so huge that it was a lot easier to play with Barbie dolls in my homemade house than any of the store bought ones my friends’ had.  I loved that dollhouse, and over the years she even put in some additional cardboard walls for me.  That Barbie house was a staple in my room growing up, even years after I had retired from playing with dolls.  It also made a lovely cat bed over the years when I would sneak our outdoor cats inside for a few hours.

When I was a little older and slowly transitioning away from Barbie dolls and more into horses, I desperately wanted a fancy horse barn like I saw in the catalogues.  My parents liked them, but simply could not justify the cost.  My dad decided instead he would build his own.  I had no idea, even when I woke up on Christmas morning and saw my four piece barn set with different style doors on each floor (it could be stacked vertically or set up horizontally) I honestly thought it was store bought because of his intricate the detail was.  The fact that my dad had build it made it even more amazing, and I remember looking at some of the ways he had fastened things together or made the sliding doors work and was just in awe of how he could figure out how to do something like that.

As I got old, a lot of my favorite gifts were just getting the DVD box sets I desperately wanted but couldn’t afford or getting books from a series I was obsessed with at the time.  In relationships, I did have a boyfriend who gifted me a PS3 one year and PS4 the next which I did appreciate even if it seemed like an excessive gift at the time.

To date though, my favorite and most thoughtful gift I’ve ever been given was a copy of Summer Sisters by Judy Blume that a group of my friends collaborated on editing for me.  Summer Sisters is a book that for many years I would buy copies of anytime I saw them second hand and would hold on to them to gift out to anyone who might have even the slightest interest in reading it.  It was just one of those books that spoke to me and stuck with me from the day I first read it.  When this group of friends decided to find a copy of this book, they then went through and picked a certain number of pages of each person, and then they each took turns with the book.  Some pages people just doodled or added stickers to.  Some pages people blacked out words and sentences and only left found poetry or words or phrases that they found pertinent.  Some people would black out or highlight certain words and then add notes to them like “Remember you are worthy” or things like that.  Some pages even paid homage to friends we’ve lost along the way and how some of the things we remember them by can be referenced in his book I read years before I’d met them.  Then on the opposite pages they attached photos from over the years.  Some people even just wrote song lyrics right on top of the pages to drive a point home or to reference something from within the book.  The group of friends that put this together all have different connections to me.  One of them is a friend from literal childhood, we’ve been friends since we were 7, and another is a friend I only made about 3 years ago, right after the pandemic, then there were a handful of other friends who all fall in between those two lengths.

It's funny, people always say that I’m a good gift giver, and while I appreciate the ego stroke and I like to think I’m pretty good at gift giving, I think gift giving is as much about listening and paying attention as it is about the purchase or the giving.  After receiving that book for my 30th birthday (albeit a little belated because some friends took more time than others to complete their pages) I don’t know if I can accept the title of best gift giver anymore because I don’t see how anyone can possibly beat such a thoughtful and creative gift.