I hear people tell stories of miracles--people who overcame obstacles or had unbelievable luck, and they often attribute it to God or faith or I dont know what. I like to think Im not a cynic, though I am a skeptic and realist, so I dont always agree with people thinking the reason their cancer disappeared or whatever is Divine Intervention. The rationalist in me says So God allows Ghengis Khan or the Holocaust but finally bothers to intervene to stop one tragedy, or to help LSU beat Alabama, or to help little Johnny overcome his acne. Doesnt compute. And yet as a semi-Kantian I grok the need to format sensorial experiences by some kind of categories, which are often informed by our ingrained or whatever values and worldview. So whatever. If you want to interpret your acing the ACT as a gift of God, even though he lets millions of people starve in Africa, hey, whatever works for you. Anyway one of the recent stories Ive heard remound me of my own personal history. When I was 18, after my first year at LSU, I got a job for the summer doing construction at a chemical plant in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, the Agrico plant, as I recall. For spending money. As one does, who is not To The Manor Born. We were working 12 hour shifts, and on the weekends to get overtime, and I was hauling cinder blocks through small tunnels, climbing scary scaffolding over huge tall structures, all kinds of crazy things. Near the end of the 12 hour shift on a Sunday some of the guys said we have to get these 100lb gunnite bags up to the 14th floor of this metal structure, and unload them. So they decided to put them in a big metal basket hoisted by a huge crane, and to jump in the basket and ride up with them. It would save time, you see. I obeyed orders. I was frightened but assumed this is the normal way you do things. I sat on a few bags of gunnite, and we rode up. The crane operator positioned our basket next to a railing on this structure; we carefully climbed over and entered the 14th floor (or whatever it was). This was like an open metal mesh type building with pipes, tubing, etc. The guys in the basket started handing over the 100lb gunnite bags to us on the inside, to take and stack them. I was doing this, and as I stepped back one time to brace myself to receive a bag, (and hell, maybe it wasnt gunnite. It was something like it. like cement or gunnite). I put my back leg into a huge 8 or so open hole in the mesh floor that we had not seen. You see some other construction crew had removed the day before this huge 4 story vertical vessel, sort of like a huge cylindrical tube that went 44 through 4 floors of this structure. For maintenance or something But they did not put tape around it ec. bc there was no access to this floor. Except for us idiots, who came up sidelong to the building in a basket hoisted by a crane. So, miscommunication. Anyway so I stepped back and fell through the hole falling 44 through metal crap. My memory of this is gone, b/c of the trauma, but basically I landed down at the bottom after my head and limbs hit various protruding metal things. Knocked me out of course. Next thing I remember is coming to at the bottom and ER workers putting me on a gurney thing, then passing out, waking up briefly at the hospital as they cut my jeans off, then waking up again many hours later after surgery on the crushed skull parts on my forehead and the back. Turns out I had 4 vertebrae fractured and two major damages to the skull and many abrasions and bruises etc. of the legs, arms, torso, etc. It was not pretty. Luckily despite the 4 neck fractures I did not get paralyzed and the plastic surgeon did a decent job on the forehead and the other, Dr. Hanchey if I recall, did a good job patching up the hole in the back of the skull. Scars remain, but I can no longer hear the shower water inside my skull as it hits that soft spot. It has hardened. I had had a Sunday night date with my girlfriend, whom I stood up, and she was initially pissed but then visited me after learning what happened. Anyhoo, the whole summer I was in a chest-neck brace contraption and walking around bald, scabbed and scarred as I healed. Coincidentally when I was in hospital, to word it the annoying European way without the article, one of the visitors was my previous college apartment roommate, who brought along in tow his girlfriend, Cindy, whom I knew a bit but not too well just yet. I mention this b/c I eventually married her. Not the nurse that I developed a nice relationship in my extended stay. Ah, Miss Annette. Story for another post. Anyway I healed pretty much completely. I think. One coincidence is that I happened to have also be born in Donaldsonville, when my birth mother had to go there to live with her older sister b/c of the issue. So I almost died in the same city I was born in (but had never lived in. but I did briefly date a girl from there that I had met in Florida, Mary Jo something). Anyhoo--my wife had had about a year earlier a bizarre thing: she was in a van with her previous boyfriend an it went off teh road at a curb. Bad accident. She woke up sitting next to a tree, with minor injuries, the van turned over, having done serious head damage to the boyfriend-driver. Apparently they had no seatbelts on and she got ejected, but the front windshield popped out just as she was ejected, so she was virtually unscathed. Basically, She survived a crazy accident, and so did I about a year later, then a few years later, we got married. So, being somewhat religious, her theory is that God must have intervened to save us both. Too coincidental otherwise, right? But why? Well it can only be so that we would marry, and .... have our son. Who would no be possible without us. Therefore, and here is the religious mentality--our son is destined to do something Great or Important. That is why God intervened to save me and her, so that we could have our son. Of course my view is skepticism, combined with well okay, then that means he will be the libertarian uber-god and save us all. Now is that some heavy stuff to put on a kid? Noooo, not at all. Me, I still believe in coincidence. But others disagree. Thats fine.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 17:55:50 +0000
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