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I'm not entirely sure whether it's a sign of pragmatism or just an advanced stage of whistling in the dark, but as I get older I seem to be having a lot more conversations that begin with this: "If I died tomorrow..." Actually, that's not quite right. Other people put it that way. I like to be more folksy. I always say, "If I stepped in front of a bus tomorrow..."
Which almost turned into a prophecy on a warm afternoon some months back, when I very nearly did just that. I damn near stepped in front of a bus.
It wasn't the bus that almost killed me, at least not at first. It was the panel truck that the bus blocked from my view. I stepped off the curb of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-third Street, certain that I could cross against the light; certain that I'd gauged the speed of the M3 bus correctly and, with just a slight jog, I would be on my way to the subway that much faster. Somewhere between being right in front of the driver and having cleared the bus entirely, I realized my mistake -- and I stepped backward as the truck blew past me. I stepped backward into the path of the bus. There was a horn; I can't tell you whether it was the truck's or the bus's, or whether it was just the noise adrenaline makes when it's being pumped to one's every extremity at once, because I remember only the sound. And I remember the sound only because it somehow wove itself into the intense and immediate sense of panic I felt. I don't even recall looking at the bus driver or how my legs got me back to the west side of Fifth Avenue. I know only that the bus kept going, missing me by a very little bit, and I got back to where I started.
Here's an interesting medical theory: If the heart races to five trillion beats per minute, short-term memory ceases to function. Maybe it's a problem of blood flow.
However I avoided becoming a part of New York City's asphalt, the important part of the story is not that I was lucky (and how!) nor that I was incredibly stupid (guilty as charged, Your Honor), but rather that my goose was very nearly cooked. This was suddenly for me not some lofty conversation about how I would like to be remembered, this was"OhmygodI nearly widowed my wife and left my children fatherless." This was also the first time I could ever recall feeling the need to do a little inventory on that part of the soul where regrets are stored.
And you know what? I couldn't find any. While there were plenty of things I felt bad about, and even more that still make me flush with embarrassment, there was nothing that had any urgency to it. Nothing that I hadn't done that would've caused me to lose