I’ve had a lot of close calls in my lifetime. Given that I’ve managed to reach what is cryptically called “my golden years,” it is quite remarkable that I’m still alive. I don’t take any credit for that happy result. In the end, I think it was just dumb luck, or maybe it was the patient guardian angel of naïve and unsuspecting people looking over my shoulder.
You may have read about some of these near misses in my book of memoirs, “Over the Fence, Into the Heart,” in which case you know that one of my most monumental close calls came when I contracted polio as a child. Somehow, I managed to survive with very little damage while people around me ended their lives in iron lungs.
Other close-call stories are enumerated in the book, but some are not. I don’t talk much about the latter, because they still scare the wits out of me. On the other hand, I believe that writing about what haunts you is a good way to exorcise the ghosts. So come back with me now, to my time as a student at The Ohio State University in the mid-1960s.
I was a senior coed when I met my first fiancé-to-be. We liked each other instantly and after some time passed, we decided to marry. We were too young for the state of Ohio to allow us to tie the knot, so one night we gathered our friends and drove across state lines to a place where they did not care in the least about how old we were. That was my first near-miss because we couldn’t find anyone to accommodate us in the middle of the night, so we drove home and never got married.
I count this incident as a near miss because of what happened next. My fiancé revealed his carefully hidden and violent temper shortly after our aborted elopement. One night he grew furious during what was ultimately a silly argument and attempted to strangle me. He nearly succeeded. No doubt thanks to the guardian angel I mentioned, my roommate chose to come home at that very moment and the situation was defused. But the engagement was over. I sometimes ask myself what would have happened if we married. My future life might have been extremely perilous, if I had a future life at all.
After I graduated from college, smack in the middle of the hippy era, I spent some time being a reckless youth. At one point, I took a leave of absence from my job in Chicago, cashed all my savings bonds and flew to San Francisco. (And, need I mention that I wore flowers in my hair?)
I stayed for a while with a friend of my older brother’s and then traveled south to Laguna Beach, California, where I found lodging with a girl I had struck up a conversation within the airport. I had been there only a short time when I met and began dating a benign-looking fellow named Rick. One night Rick, who unfortunately harbored the same hidden traits as my former fiancé, attempted to physically assault me. I won’t tell you how I escaped, because it’s a little too graphic for a family newspaper, but I ultimately duped my attacker, crashed out his front door and ran for my life. He immediately followed, but I was able to elude him in the heavy brush beside the road and eventually made my way to a tavern, where I encountered someone I knew. He played the part of my guardian angel that night and got me safely home. This turned out to be a life-changing experience; I was never naïve or trusting again.
After I married my husband sometime later, we were driving to a restaurant one night when a speeding car blew through a stop sign and t-boned us. We were, inexplicably, unhurt. Thank you, Angel.
The accident occurred in San Francisco and it was also there that I encountered a man I would consider a true predator. My husband was doing his surgical training at Letterman Army Medical Center and we lived in a flat several miles away. He was often on emergency duty, and because we had only one car, I had to drive him to the hospital when he was summoned.
One night a call came in at 2 a.m., so we sleepily got in our car and drove to the hospital. After dropping my husband off, I headed for home. As I was sitting at a stoplight, another car pulled up next to me and began revving its engine. I looked over and saw a large man staring back at me. I suddenly realized that the street was empty, except for me and a stranger who was behaving aggressively.
When the light changed, he pulled in behind me and tapped my bumper with his, which caused me to speed up. He kept right with me. I didn’t know what to do, so I made a series of quick turns onto some side streets. That didn’t work; he stayed behind me through every turn. I tried not to panic and to think about what I should do. I certainly didn’t want him to know where I lived so I couldn’t drive home. Worse, I was new to the area and didn’t know where to find a police station. Meanwhile, I was now involved in a high-speed car chase on the streets of San Francisco, and anyone who’s ever seen Steve McQueen’s chase scene in “Bullitt” knows what that’s like.
I don’t know how I came up with the idea that may have saved my life. As our speed increased and the danger escalated, an idea flashed into my now terrified mind. I led my assailant to my neighborhood of closely aligned homes where I knew there would be a solid line of cars parked at the curbs in front. Once I made a screeching turn onto my street, I turned immediately into a driveway and then veered onto an adjacent sidewalk that was barely wide enough to accommodate my car. I killed the lights, drove another 100 feet on the sidewalk in the dark, killed the engine and dove to the floor.
I prayed that the buffer of vehicles between my car and the street would provide enough camouflage. As I lifted my head and peered over the dashboard, I saw my assailant speed past and stop a block away at the next intersection. It was clear he couldn’t figure out how I had disappeared.
I watched him drive in tight circles around the intersection and I knew it was only a matter of time before he began walking the neighborhood on foot, so I quickly eased out of my car and made a crouching run for my front door. Only after I got inside did I realize I had truly escaped. But it was a terrifying experience to go through, and awfully hard on my guardian angel.
It is believed that a guardian angel serves to protect whichever person God assigns them. Mine was surely a hard-working one, and an effective one, as well.
Thank you, buddy.
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