As I Remember It

This actually happened … to the best of my recollection.

I think it was Thanksgiving vacation in 1958 or 1959. My mother and I were visiting my sister and her family in Nashville, TN. As it turned out I also had a college fraternity brother who lived in Nashville and he agreed to fix me up with a friend of his girlfriend. We planned a raucous night  ... starting out by buying a bottle of Southern Comfort at a local package store  ... which we all swigged on throughout the night. I don’t remember any of the details of what we did that night until such time as my fraternity brother, feeling no pain, was driving along a country road … at far too fast a pace.

I didn’t tell him to slow down … but, overcome with a premonition, I turned to my date and said, “Excuse me,” and crouched down on the backseat floor. It couldn’t have been five seconds later when our car went out of control and crashed into a tree … after which all hell ensued. My date was screaming. (I told her to keep quiet … she wasn’t helping.) My fraternity brother yelled, “She’s not breathing … she’s dead!”… so I popped out of the car to see what was wrong. His date was face down in a drainage ditch and so I said, “Or course she’s not breathing, her head is under water!” Being sensitive to possible spinal injuries, standing in the cold water, I gently rolled her onto the ditch bank and pushed a number of times on her chest.

She then choked, spit out some water and came back to life. Both girls were full of cuts and broken bones, the details of which I have long since forgotten. But I did grab the liquor bottle and throw it as far as I could into the woods. Some passer-by must have alerted the authorities for it was not too much later that an ambulance and the police arrived. Our dates went off in the ambulance and my fraternity brother and I in the police car … I think to the hospital. When we arrived, I tried to get out of the police car and discovered that both my ankles were severely sprained and swollen.

I spent the rest of Thanksgiving both on my sister’s couch or on crutches ... thanking my premonition for not suffering worse consequences.. My fraternity brother was never charged with anything.

Both girls survived their injuries with a bit of plastic surgery and I received I think two free trips back to Nashville to be deposed and then testify in the resulting damages suit. But it was settled before the trial started.

Born to Hang

If you are born to hang, you will not drown -- Old Polish Adage

My wife and I recently attended a celebration of our collective 75th birthday for my graduating class at Dartmouth,  It was a generally joyous series of well-planned events, but with the specter of death overhanging things ... as a fraternity brother had just passed and another classmate, who had originated these celebrations, had just entered a hospice.  I myself suffer from a myriad of age-related maladies the have slowed me down considerably.

And so, a retired doctor and fraternity brother just sent me an e-mail, giving me some sage advice about how I should try to restore my cardiovascular health given my other problems.  He said, "it is a cycle: hurts to move, not move, decreased physical capacity, harder to move, move less, gain weight, lose strength and cardio condition, body does not work as well, lungs not work as well, hurts to move, harder to move, not move as much,  more deconditioning, gain more weight, harder to move, etc."  However kind and well-meaning this advice was, I know that I will have difficulty following the specifics of his suggestions.  "You cannot teach an old dog ..."

Almost 15 years ago I wrote a piece anticipating my declining years ... see: Upon Reaching Sixty.  In this forecast I pretty much nailed how things might transpire and marveled how I had actually lived so long, given that my father had died at age 42.  Yes, I want to live beyond age 80 and, I suppose, actuarial tables suggest that I might.  But I doubt that I will have the will-power and courage to do all the things that my fraternity brother has suggested that I do.

(Short story ... a man who lived to age 96 was asked how he had lived so long.  He replied that every morning he had taken a half-hour ice-cold shower.  As it turned out, this was the equivalent of spending the last three years of his waking hours standing under gelid running water.  Moral of the story -- quality of life or life style also counts.)

And so my life style has served me for all these many years ... until it doesn't.