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I have always disliked Florida, long before the rest of the nation discovered Florida’s inadequacies during the 2000 elections I already knew. I have nothing against the citizens of Florida I have a lot of friends from Florida, hell I lived in Alabama for twenty years and you can’t change the government or blame it on the citizens at large..
Being a Liberal Democrat with Socialists leanings in Alabama will win you no popularity contests parents would grab their children off the streets lest you be contagious. To me Florida has always been nothing more than Alabama with a beach and a good PR man.Even before the accident I felt that way after the accident I have always entered the state with trepidation.
Funny isn’t it, how I can blame an entire state for my failings and errors but it’s not just that. It was April and we were headed down to Panama City on Highway 231 we were drinking a few beers and having a good time in my buddies new MG with the top down. He had traded his Ford Torino for it and the difference in steering between the two vehicles had as much to do with the accident as the alcohol.
I was young single with money in my pocket, it was a warm and beautiful spring day and I had a wonderful sense of well being right up until two wheels of the car left the road. Being used to driving the heavy Torino he jerked the steering wheel to pull the two tires back on to the road but this was an MG with rack and pinion steering and half the weight of the Ford. I remember the car fish tailing and thinking, “Were not going to get out of this.”
My next recollection was black, I was someplace dark and I was there but I wasn’t there physically. I had no recollection of my body or any feeling or any pain save a desperate feeling of loss, detachment and separation. There was no tunnel or light to move towards for all intents I was alone then a voice or a presence or a feeling expressed to me, “You have done nothing.” I felt the saddest remorse I have ever felt, there were no excuses or explanations no justifications, this feeling or presence knew me and I had been judged and found wanting.
It has always reminded me of a TV tuner, here we are living our lives on channel five and in an instant we are changed to channel six and we no longer have any connection what so ever to channel 5. A voice or a presence I have no idea if it was the same one or a different one told me. I don’t like to say it said to me because it wasn’t speech in the sense that we are used to but it told me, “You can’t stay here.”
In my next recollection my eyes were still closed but I could hear a radio like a police radio and I began to hear people talking. I opened my eyes and I was in the back of an ambulance. They were working on my friend and he was barely recognizable. I asked, “How is he?” The Paramedic turned to look at me and said, “He’s bad he’s real bad.”
“Is he going to make it?”
“I don’t know,” he answered.
I always remembered his candor in that moment not placating me by telling me everything was fine. I tried to sit up and felt pain in my shoulder, I was in restraints and was struggling to get up. I don’t remember any more of the twenty-five miles to the hospital I woke next in the emergency room a doctor was taking my vital signs.
As I came around the doctor asked how I felt, I explained my shoulder hurt and he answered “Your collar bone is shattered into seven pieces but other than that your fine adding, pretty amazing all in all.”
I asked about my friend, “He’s in intensive care and we don’t know if he will make it but the odds are against it. They had put my arm in a sling and released me and explained to me my friend’s family was on the way. One of the nurses asked, “Are you up for visitors? There are some people who want to meet you.”
I wondered who? I didn’t know any one around there when she ushered the paramedics in. I was grateful to them and thanked them for their service to me and to my friend but they both stared at me like I was a curiosity or a celebrity and I was confused by their actions. Then one of them asked, “Do you know what happened?”
“I remember the two tires leaving the road and the car fish tailing,” I explained.
“The car flipped five times and ejected you,” he began, We picked you up over three hundred feet from where the car came to rest.” The other paramedic said, “When the nurse said they had released you we couldn’t believe it. We had to come see for ourselves and you’ve just got a broken collarbone? That’s all?” I nodded yes, the first medic said, “You gave the state trooper a hell of a time. You were mumbling on the gurney at the back of the ambulance and he was trying to find out how many people were in the car, he was asking two or three? You yelled three and then bolted off the gurney running down the highway the trooper chased you down and we had to restrain you.
The troopers were out there for an hour looking for another person, I explained I had no recollection of the event, I guess I was just afraid we would leave someone behind. “Sure,” he answered “You know the trooper was a mile behind you when the accident happened and they estimated the car was doing eighty.” The conversation dwindled down to uncomfortable and they went on but I’ll always remember more than anything the way they looked at me.
Without a doubt the most harrowing and frightening day of my life one of my many Florida experiences. I have never forgotten the kindness of the strangers or the miracle of survival. I don’t claim this as a near death experience as my injuries wouldn’t justify it but it’s close enough for me. When I watch a baseball game I realize that were I a baseball I had traveled far enough to score runners from third base and yet got up and walked away.
I had been ejected from an open car at eighty miles an hour and suffered no permanent injury and I have always wondered why?
As I left the hospital I noticed the shoelace on my right foot was broken and pulled tight all the way up to the knot and four or five inches of shoelace was dangling from both sides at the bottom of the laces, my salvation perhaps? I have looked at MG’s in the following years trying to find what could have snagged my foot. But I have never found it and I have never forgotten my admonition “You have done nothing” Cryptic but direct, “You have done nothing.” So now I am doing something, I’m telling you the same warning given to me, “You have done nothing.”
The problems we face today have a solution, but we have to do something because it’s not just a request it’s expected of us.
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