"The story goes
Or the way that I was told
There was a king that always felt too high
And then he fell too low
And so he called
All the wise men to the hall
And he begged them for a gift
To end the rises and the falls
But here's the thing:
They came back with a ring
It was simple and was plainly
Unbefitting of a king
Engraved in black
Well, it had no front or back
But there were words around the band that said:
'Just know, this too shall pass.'"
—Danny Schmidt, "This Too Shall Pass"
I remember everything except the moment of impact. It was a clear, cold morning, and I was walking past the playground of my old elementary school—a simple paved lot that's served as the blank canvas for a million ephemeral, adolescent dramas. I was on my way to catch the bus to get to class at Fordham, where we'd be studying the legal framework of the U.S. Constitution, a 220-year-old document enshrining certain bedrock principles that 20-year-old me thought were inviolable, no matter who was in charge.
Things get a little hazier from the time I got to the corner. I saw the Access-a-Ride out of the corner of my eye as I began to cross. I saw it driving through the red light, coming at me fast enough that I knew it couldn't stop in time. I waved my arms to get the driver's attention. And then—
No pain. Not at first. Just gray. A gray blur, and a deafening grinding noise, as if I'd fallen between the gears of an enormous machine. It could have lasted a few seconds or a century. I had no sense of where I was or what had happened to me. And I thought that would be the end.
But then the gray grinding stopped, and there was light: the daylight shining under the wheel well, where I was stuck beneath the van, broken and bloody, cold and burning. I couldn't move. My leg and shoulder were broken. My hand and my back were melting. And despite everything, I was alive.
"Oh, shit," I thought. "Oh, shit," said the driver, as he got out of the van and looked under the wheels.
You know the rest of the story. (If you don't, I've written it down here: http://vanniversary.tumblr.com/…/77238328827/he-heard-a-dump Or I'll tell it to you if it's late enough and I've had a couple of drinks. You probably can't stop me.)
As of today, it's been nine years since the accident. My life has changed in countless ways since then, mostly for the better. Sometimes people ask me if I learned anything from the experience. The flippant answer is that traffic lights won't save you.
The real answer is that everything can change on a dime. When I thought it was over, my biggest regrets were the goodbyes I wouldn't get to say. All this — the life you love, the people you love, can slip through your hands before you even realize you're losing your grip.
Hold fast to them. Let your friends and family know they matter. There are things we don't get through or get over. But anything we can get through, we get through together.
And if you see an Access-a-Ride drive by, shout something nasty at it.
