Talk About Luck....

So I bumped into this kid I used to play summer league baseball with, while walking back to my apartment earlier. We got to small-talking; you know, the usual "where do you work now? how's your family? the real world sucks, right?" bullshit that we all do with old acquaintances. Totally washes over you once you've parted ways, and typically amounts to nothing more than 5-10 wasted minutes of your precious time. Who hasn't seen an old face from high school at a bar once and decided to take the long walk to get a drink, circling the perimeter of the venue all while keeping tabs on this unaware nuisance's location? I sure as hell know I have, probably less than two weeks ago, even.

But what made this particular "reunion" of sorts register for me more than usual was a certain story dude brought back to mind. It's a pretty scary one, and I hadn't thought about in a long ass time but now I am and it still sends chills down my spine.

This must've been back in like 2001 or so, my last summer of playing baseball before I officially hung up the first baseman's mitt and concentrated on my writing thang. It was a particularly uneventful game, we were beating some scrub team by some runs. All was going well. But see, there was this lip of grass right by the first base bag that curled up, and if you didn't stand in front, odds were that a hard ground ball would shoot up at your face once it reached the lip. For some stupid reason, I was standing like directly behind this lip, and a lefthanded batter hit this frozen rope of a grounder my way. Before I could even react, the baseball jumped right into the left side of my throat, like less than a hair away from my Adam's apple. I fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes, pretty much in shock. The game was stopped, I was rushed to the hospital, and I couldn't utter a word out of my mouth.

The ball had bruised a prominent vocal chord near my throat, and there was a visible burise even. I couldn't talk for like a day and a half. But the scariest part for me was when the doctor said, "You're one lucky guy. If that ball had hit you less than an inch to the right, directly on your Adam's apple, it would've been lights out." Meaning, in all of his sensitivity, I would've died. On the spot. And as I thought back on it, I remembered how I did in fact turn my head ever so slightly, as a reflex reaction.

Crazy, huh? At least I think so. It must've had some effect on others if the dude today brought it up without hesitation. So yeah, I came this close to buying the farm about seven years ago. If not for less than an inch, I'd have never experienced the wonders of the publishing game, Baby G & Lil Nicky, the many fun things I've done with family and friends, living in Hoboken, and other shit I've done since then. Sort of morbid, yes, but unavoidable to ponder. But that's the past, and I haven't even touched a baseball in eons. So all is right in my world.