Is someone trying to Kill Me!
“There’s a killer on your trail!
It’s as relentless as hell.
It’s Death, Morte, Shi.
It’s Death, Morte, Shi.
Be careful who you trust,
’Cuz Death looks a lot like us.
There’s a killer on your trail.”
Yet every time I look behind me, there is no one there. I must have covered my tracks pretty well.
If I were ever to investigate my many brushes with Death, could I discover who’s beneath the Reaper’s hood?
For instance, when I was three, we lived in Navy housing in Norfolk, Virginia. These “family barracks” had been hastily constructed during WWII and later repurposed to accommodate servicemen and their families. The units were very narrow, comprised of a kitchen and living room downstairs with two bedrooms upstairs. Logistically that meant my folks slept in one bedroom, and my two sisters and I slept in the other. Tight arrangements–just ask my sisters, who had to put up with a three-year-old brother in their room.
Who is the killer on my trail?
One fateful morning, while my mom was serving my dad breakfast, I was poised at the top of the narrow wooden staircase with my Tonka Toy Trucks. My calls for help to get my toy trucks downstairs were unheeded by my brother-deaf sisters. I decided to take matters into my own stubborn little hands. I can now recollect getting my red truck and its attached toy logging trailer onto the first step. With my back facing downstairs, I attempted to wrangle my truck and trailer to the second step. As I did, my world began to do cartwheels. If a three-year-old could count, then I could have recited the fifteen times my head bounced off those polished wooden steps. By the time I landed flat on my butt at the bottom, my mom, with the coffee pot in hand, was there to comfort me. I was too stunned to cry. My dad thundered next to me, shouting at my sisters, who had failed to help me get my toys downstairs. But it wasn’t my sisters’ fault. It was some shadowy killer that lurked in every room.
But the Angel of Death is relentless as I am foolish.
When we first moved back to San Diego, we moved into a rental home in a post-WWII development called “Allied Gardens.” Our three-bedroom home allowed my folks to sleep in one bedroom, my sisters to share a bed in another bedroom, and the third room to house my two younger brothers and me. This home had a dining area with one wall checkerboarded with four large, framed windows. My chair was right in front of one of those windows. Like most eight-year old, I could never sit still in my chair. My current game was to rock back in it and balance on its back two legs. Again and again my mom would yell at me to stop that. But as quickly as she left, I would resume my balancing act. I mean, what harm could that do?
It was one summer afternoon, with my boloney sandwich half-eaten before me, that I again took up my circus routine of balancing my chair on its hind two legs. I had gotten quite good at this and found myself tettering in perfect balance on those back two legs. Now, totally full of myself for this remarkable achievement, I attempted while teetering to reach for the last half of my baloney sandwich, which was still on the table. Slowly, carefully, I extended my arm towards the table.
Then with the suddenness of a thunderclap, the chair slid out from under me. The back of the chair crashed through the four-foot by four-foot glass panes behind me. Instinctively I lunged forward to grasp the other half of my baloney sandwich while my chair crashed through the window and toppled into the backyard. That sheet of glass dropped like a translucent guillotine and sliced clean through the cushion of that chair; a chair in which I had sat just an instant ago.
Mom rushed in. She discovered me standing next to the table, holding half a baloney sandwich. She turned to see her dining chair on the back patio and a four-foot by four-foot hole where a window had once been.
And all I could think of at that moment was how much trouble I was in—never realizing that I had survived another attempt on my life.
Who had set this murderous mousetrap? Could this mastermind be disguised as someone who looked a lot like me? Hmmm.
When I was about twenty, my new craze was rock climbing. I would spend my weekends climbing the areas around San Diego. Mission Gorge was a very convenient climbing spot only about eight miles from my place. On the northeast side of the river that formed this gorge were mountainous slabs of granite with climbing routes suitable for all levels. Yet on the south side of the river, the cliffs were composed of sandstone. As a rock climber, you knew that you could trust your life to a fingertip ledge on granite. But sandstone, sandstone was the roulette wheel of rock climbing. Your next handgrip might hold, but just as assuredly might not.
And that is where I was climbing as dusk began to fall. I was approximately thirty feet up. Two more moves and I would reach a wide ledge from which I would scope out my final ascent. As I pulled myself to be eye-level with the twelve-by-ten-inch ledge, there was a shriek and a flurry as a pair of yellow, winged eyes menacingly raced at my face. Instinctively I released my nearest hand to ward off this attack. The sudden appearance of my blonde hair and blue eyes had startled a burrowing owl as it was preparing for its evening hunt. The ensuing commotion left me off balance. My sudden movement not only caused me to relinquish my grip but had caused my foothold to crumble. It was now not a matter of if I was going to fall. It was a matter of how far I would plummet.
There was a single chance I could escape serious injury. There was a four-inch ledge down about five feet down to my left. If I could redirect my fall towards that ledge, then I might save myself from a bone-breaking fall. But gravity is no slouch, so self-preservation overcame deliberation. I torqued my body hard to the left while hoping that my right hand could hold my body just long enough to guide my landing on that ledge.
I don’t remember breathing. I do remember my heart pounding out of my chest, and every muscle strung like a crossbow. With the speed of a releasing quiver, gravity tore my hand from that perch milliseconds before my boot landed on that four-inch ledge.
Only then did I dare breathe.
As my body quivered with adrenaline and expletives, I waited for my rational mind to regain control.
I then surveyed my new predicament. Would I climb down?
Nope, way too far and much too dangerous. That left me with climbing up. I devised a new route and began to climb up slowly. My new path returned me to the scene of the crime. Once I was back on that ledge, I was able to inspect that owl’s burrow casually. As I examined the skeletal remains of the burrow owl’s past dinners, I thought how my skeletal remains could have been another prize for that yellow-eyed devil.
However it wasn’t those wings of Death that stalked me; it was something much more familiar, something much more personal. I had never taken the time nor dared to see the face that lurked under the Grim Reaper’s dark hood.
And lo and behold, the face of Death was me.
It had always been me.
And so, it was time to come to grips with the Grim Reaper. To grapple with the simple fact that men live shorter lives because they often realize too late that they are often the cause of their demise.
If, by chance, you stroll into a brewpub and see me sitting alone with two beers on my table, then understand that I’m just sharing an ice-cold one with the Grim Reaper.
You see, I just am doing my best to stay on Death’s good side.
Listen to this story
Watch the story
Recent Comments