If they are fortunate, the average person will celebrate seventy-five birthdays, say a blessing over seventy-five Thanksgiving meals, experience seventy-five winter holiday seasons, and turning the calendar over at midnight in celebration of the new year. But during all that time on this little blue ball we call Earth, chances are they’ll also do something else…at least once.
Experience a brush with the Grim Reaper
Last month, former President Donald Trump dodged a bullet – literally. As disturbing as his brush with death is, it gave me a writing idea. No, don’t worry, Dear Reader. I’m not breaking with my twenty-four-year promise never to write about politics. (Although even I must admit this year, politics has become very interesting to watch.)
Instead, this story is about life or death. But, unlike Trump, I’ve faced the Grim Reaper more than just once. Looking back over my life, I’m surprised I’m still here.
One — the wave
The start of this story actually has its beginning a long, long time ago on a familiar beach not so far away – a beach located at Jacksonville, Florida. I was only six-years old when we went to the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, but I’ll never forget that vacation.
Dad had bought five floats that morning and spent an hour blowing all of them up. My three brothers, The Sister and me played in the ocean, riding waves, and building sandcastles on the beach for hours. Just before noon, our parents called us in to go to lunch.
Bad decision
I decided to catch one last wave. Unfortunately, the wave was the largest of the day, and caught inside of it, I tumbled around like I was in a dryer. Next thing I remembered was opening my eyes to see Dad leaning over and shaking me to wake up.
Two – Cliff Condos
After my brothers and I spent three years digging into a sandstone cliff, our four-room “condo” was finally finished. We wanted to spend the night in our condo, but Dad said, “No.” After my parents had gone to bed, I was determined to sneak out and still sleep in one of the rooms, but when I got to the front door, I heard a little voice in my head warning me not to go. Luckly, I listened to the voice and went back to bed.
The next morning, we went back down to our dig, only to find the ceiling had completely caved in. Right where I was going to sleep was a huge rock the size of a car. I would’ve been squished and then buried. No one would’ve found me.
Three – 30 feet under Flamingo Street
After being chased into a drainpipe that went under Flamingo by Down the Street Bully Brad, I kept crawling on my back to get further away from the rocks he was throwing in at me. As I crawled, his voice got further and further away. Then I realized I could no longer move. I was terrified and started to yell for help. Big Brother James heard my frantic pleas, crawled into the pipe and helped push me out the other side. If not for him, I would probably still be stuck in that pipe.
Four – The Mop
A water balloon battle inside the house wasn’t allowed. Still, that didn’t stop us when Mom went to the grocery store one Sunday afternoon. After landing a barrage of balloons on Older Brother Richard, the chase began. I ran outside to the little kitchen porch, and Richard followed with his balloons. To escape, I quickly climbed over the railing, held onto the post and was gonna slide down to the concrete driveway below. Unfortunately, I had grabbed not the post, but rather the large mop handle. I fell fifteen feet onto the concrete below.
Five – the straitjacket non-escape
Harry Houdini I am not, and I proved that fact while performing an escape early one Saturday morning at a county fair. Dangling by your ankles from a burning rope, thirty feet up in the air, while struggling to get out of a straitjacket isn’t the best time to reconsider that what you are doing probably isn’t the safest thing.
That would’ve been just before the rope was lit on fire. The rope burnt through, and I fell. Luckily, I was able to flip and landed on my right side instead of my head. I was injured quite badly but survived.
Six – flying cars do exist
While in my first year of college, in an ill-fated attempt to win back the affection of a girl, I’d driven three hours to Birmingham, Alabama. Alas, she had not only dropped out of school, but also out of our relationship. Distraught, I drove back to school in the pouring rain late that night. The rain and lack of streetlights made it impossible to see, and I should’ve pulled over, but no. I just centered my car and followed the reflective markers placed down in the middle of the road. Just before the sharp left-hand curve in the road is where the workers had stopped placing the markers that afternoon.
My car ran off the road and went airborne before landing on the driver’s side and sliding right through the front doors of an ice cream store. No, when asked what I was doing, the police didn’t think it was funny when I said, “Ordering ice cream to go?”
Seven – Finally, the FAA building fire
As a rookie fire fighter, I found myself three stories below ground in the sub-basement of the FAA building fighting a fire when the bell on my air tank started to ring, signaling that I was out of air. Following the hose as trained, I climbed my way back through the smoke but completely ran out of air before reaching the exit.
Disoriented, I found myself two stories above the ground in the stairwell. Somehow, and I still don’t know how, I made my way back down the steps to the ground floor, collapsing, just outside. I shouldn’t have made it out of the building.
Eight – the life-or-death situation this morning
It’s not every morning that you wake up and before you even get out of bed, there’s a life-or-death situation directly in front of you, but that’s exactly what happened this morning. As soon as the nightstand light was switched on, the decision had to be made… just how to dispose of the large spider that was crawling across the ceiling directly above our heads.
Not gonna tell you who screamed, but it was the same person who’d have to repaint the ceiling if he squished said crawling spider with a broom. The Wife convinced me it was much better to capture and release the arachnid outside. She said, “If you stand on the bed trying to swat it with a broom, you might fall and get really hurt.”
Death by spider — not the way I want to go out of this world. Besides, at my age, I might not survive another fall — even if it is just out of bed.
[Rick Ryckeley has been writing stories weekly in The Citizen since 2001.]
