I just realized that, basically, this is what I do for a living:
We need you to sing a song.
"Iiiii....want to rock and roll all niiiiiiiight...."
No, we meant a slower song. Something slower.
"It's a little bit funny.....this feeling insiiiiiiide..."
No, a show tune.
"When you're living in A-mer-i-ca at the end of the millen---"
From the 70s.
"When the moooon is in the seventh house....."
You know what? We're not sure we should sing after all. We're not getting a good reaction to singing, and the songs aren't working well. We're changing it to whistling. Whistle for us.
Etc.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Wreck
From my office window I can just about see the spot where the car hit the pole. My son and I had just pulled out of the driveway on a mission of ice-creamy emergency. We were no more than 50 yards down the street when I half-saw it happen. It was one of those moments when a cluster of images that aren't quite right rush together before understanding comes. Smoke. My head registering something being where it shouldn't. A car in front of me swerves. Another, facing this way but not facing this way as it pivots around the spot where its front end squarely hits the pole, lifted, thrown, slamming down into the middle of the street, angled oddly, the nose now a broken scream of metal, a tire attached but horizontal. I pulled over and got out, dialing 911.
Do you need police, fire or....
What city or town....
One moment please.
Busy signal.
A kid's face in the passenger side window. Twenties. Conscious, lucid. Can't get the door open. People on their cell phones on both sides of the street. Glass everywhere. Someone says, "Are you okay?" and someone in the twisted, irreparably folded car screams back, "No we're not fuckin' okay!" A black Rothko swath of oil painted from pole to engine, hood wrenched open. There's a lady trying to pull the back door open but it's been wedged against the front door, the two of them meeting in a way they weren't designed to. I tell her I'll get it and step in. The kid wants out. I want him out. American steel bends pretty easily when you're determined. He climbs out. I get him to the sidewalk. Sit down, I tell him. He wants to stand. The driver's in the car. Someone's hunched over him, holding his head still. Blue lights coming up the street. Red lights. I look at the pole. There's a good six-inch hole where the force of impact shoved it backwards. The thick wood is splintered and angled.
Later my wife will ask me, "How did he lose control of the car?" It occurs to me that this is a question even he may not be able to answer. But it's a question that sits in the center of what is and will be a defining moment--for the driver, who had to be helicoptered away and given "advanced life-saving techniques," to quote the paper, as well as the passenger who was able to nimbly climb over the back seat. Because everything changed in that moment. No one's the same. The driver will never be quite the same physically. Probably won't drive the same, if he drives at all. Won't look at life the same, having been that close to death. The friendship between him and the passenger won't be the same. Closer, maybe, for having survived. More distant, maybe, if one was responsible for them having nearly not survived. I'm not the same. I've never wrangled a car door to help someone before. Never been the one who stopped to see if everyone was all right. I did what occurred to me in the moment.
Moment.
Everything, always, unavoidably, comes down to a moment.
The point of difference. Left versus right. Attention versus distraction. This versus that. Control versus lack of control. And in that moment, change.
Do you need police, fire or....
What city or town....
One moment please.
Busy signal.
A kid's face in the passenger side window. Twenties. Conscious, lucid. Can't get the door open. People on their cell phones on both sides of the street. Glass everywhere. Someone says, "Are you okay?" and someone in the twisted, irreparably folded car screams back, "No we're not fuckin' okay!" A black Rothko swath of oil painted from pole to engine, hood wrenched open. There's a lady trying to pull the back door open but it's been wedged against the front door, the two of them meeting in a way they weren't designed to. I tell her I'll get it and step in. The kid wants out. I want him out. American steel bends pretty easily when you're determined. He climbs out. I get him to the sidewalk. Sit down, I tell him. He wants to stand. The driver's in the car. Someone's hunched over him, holding his head still. Blue lights coming up the street. Red lights. I look at the pole. There's a good six-inch hole where the force of impact shoved it backwards. The thick wood is splintered and angled.
Later my wife will ask me, "How did he lose control of the car?" It occurs to me that this is a question even he may not be able to answer. But it's a question that sits in the center of what is and will be a defining moment--for the driver, who had to be helicoptered away and given "advanced life-saving techniques," to quote the paper, as well as the passenger who was able to nimbly climb over the back seat. Because everything changed in that moment. No one's the same. The driver will never be quite the same physically. Probably won't drive the same, if he drives at all. Won't look at life the same, having been that close to death. The friendship between him and the passenger won't be the same. Closer, maybe, for having survived. More distant, maybe, if one was responsible for them having nearly not survived. I'm not the same. I've never wrangled a car door to help someone before. Never been the one who stopped to see if everyone was all right. I did what occurred to me in the moment.
Moment.
Everything, always, unavoidably, comes down to a moment.
The point of difference. Left versus right. Attention versus distraction. This versus that. Control versus lack of control. And in that moment, change.
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