Realiperception

By my count I should have been dead by now.  Three times at least.  Maybe a fourth existentially. Let's start with the first one and how I avoided being kidnapped, raped and killed.  In the age that I am now looking back at my 13 year old self, I avoided the situation from a predator.

In 1983 and it's the first day or couple of days before my first ever high school football practice.  A day I had long been looking forward to.  I'm riding a 10-speed bicycle back from my high school weight room.  About 8 miles away from my house.  So round trip of 16 miles. Not a big deal at all. 45 minute ride.  At most an hour.  On the way there is a one lane bridge overlooking a creek or lazy river.  Home to otters, river clams, birds, fox, rabbit, squirrel, catfish, blue gill, carp.  I stop on the bridge road edge and watch cars go back and forth.  Wave to people I know and stare at people I don't trying to see if I do.

A truck pulls up beside me.  I know the man sort of.  He is the older brother of a girl from my high school.  A girl 2 years older.  So maybe 30.  Later on he would appear again at my school for an advanced biology class. He wants to know if I need a ride.  Throw your bike in the back and I'll give you a ride.  I say no.  I'm good.  He says 'All right.' and drives away.  Creepy to me then.  Creepy more to me now in hindsight. On my bike and I take a different route home.  And crash. Wipe out hard on some loose gravel.  Down I go and gash my shoulder.  Blood coming out and you can see down to the bone. 

Along comes the same truck.  Same guy and the same questions.  Question now is was he following me?.  Same answer as I try and hide the blood under my shirt. I'm dead if I go right?  I'm there to play football.  Ever.

Take 2
It's Christmas eve in 1992.  I'm driving downstate from Naperville on I-55 near Coal City.  It's not snowing or raining.  Cold but it's December. Driving a circa 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera.  Passed down for now.  Future it would buy me my first ever bought and paid for on my own vehicle 2000 Jeep Wrangler at 30 years old. Digress. Right lane at 75 mph and I spot the speeding car lights barreling down.  Move over to the left and face forward. Look back and now no time to switch because this guy, he's not gonna ram me is he? He's going to get over right?  I'm in the left lane.  He can go around m....Smash in to the back of my car at 75 mph.  But I don't skid.  He doesn't fly off the road.  Nothing.  We both pull off to the shoulder and see the damage.  His car is totalled.  Can't be driven any more that I can see. My car?  Not a scratch. Not a dent.  Nothing that says this car has been in a violent collision.  The driver doesn't speak English but we communicate that he also doesn't have insurance or a license.  Don't call the insurance company he wants us to do. So I don't.  And I leave and get back on I-55 toward family.  But I also leave a dead body back on that road side.  There shouldn't have been a family christmas in 1992 that was happy. The cart should have gone flying off the road and flipped over with the passenger ejected from the front seat because he never wore a seat belt.


The buck
I've never seen one in the wild before.  Many does but never a buck. As I'm walking through the woods thinking there might be a cougar just laying in wait in the tall grass near the river, I see the giant animal.  At first I think it is just a large boulder.  But the boulder moves and I know it's a deer.  But not just any deer. A giant stag.  Not afraid of anything and certainly not me.  In fact, he stares me down as I take a picture of me.  Keeps eating grass and stares me down as I walk further down the path.  Back toward the Jeep.  Back away from the calmness and toward the noise.

As I get closer, I remember Victor

Viktor's bridge
In 2008 I was dating a teacher in Chicago with two sons.  Viktor was one and don't remember was the other one.  Don't remember was the one I actually met but Viktor was the one I heard the most about. She took me with not-Viktor out to the woods on a Saturday morning with garbage bags, coffee and excitement.  We treked through the forest and came to a stream we needed to cross.  Mom looked at not-Viktor and they both ran toward the stream.  'Mama.  Mama.  Look!  Viktor's bridge is still there.'  And part of it was.  Three logs going perpendicular to the stream but the bridge needed to be fixed. We couldn't cross easily so not-Viktor and Mom found another log, lay it down amongst the others and fixed the other ones tight like a raft.  We walked on, took out garbage, found a turtle, didn't think about cougars and finished our coffee by the end of the walk. 
Viktor's bridge is still there today.  The stream is gone, the dirt built up.  Maybe Mom and not-Viktor still show up week after week to keep it that way.  Maybe Viktor himself comes along now. I've never met Viktor in person. Don't know what he looks like or sounds like but he has a bridge in the middle of a Chicago woods and giant deer go across it every day.


Take 3
Six years old.  Maybe five.  At a cousin's A-frame house in East Central Illinois with a pond. Pier at the end that is underwater before footsteps. I walk out to the end, fall off and start to drown. I can see figures standing on the end of the dock through the cloud of the water but no one is helping me out.  I'm going down and a hand comes down and grabs me out of the water.  Believe her name was Beth. This memory only exists for me.  No one else has a recollection of it or thinks about it multiple times like I do. So there it is.  3 times shoulda been dead.  Maybe I was. Because the 4th time I wished I had but had to live through divorce.