Feels Better After Facing-Down Fear

I saw brake lights beginning to flash ahead. First one, quickly followed by a whole string of them. Instinct told me to find a way out. Fast! Experience told me to be careful. In a fraction of a second I checked the rear-view and side mirrors, determined there was no one chewing on my tailpipe or pulling up on the right, so I hit the brakes, swerved into the righthand lane and slowed it down. I had just avoided being the fifth member of a four-car pileup.

Lucky, I thought to myself as I lost speed and steered clear of the debris. I’d had enough time to react and avoid becoming a participant in this Sunday afternoon demolition derby. I remembered my son’s parting words as I was backing out of his driveway in Columbus. “Mom, these things (my truck) have a history of turning over rather easily. Don’t stand on the brakes and cut the wheel at the same time.” I waved and kept on backing.

In less than 30 minutes, I’d just done it all, everything he’d warned me not to do. Later, it gave me the creeps. But right then, something else was bothering me. It was the realization that within a matter of three or four seconds I had seen smoothly moving, 55 mph traffic come to a crashing halt as a line of cars in front of me collided, jackknifed, and finally came to rest like discarded toys, still shuddering and steaming. And I hadn’t heard a sound. Nothing to drive home the reality of the debris scattered on the highway.

It was like television with the mute button activated. Unreal.

For the remaining hour-and-a-half of my drive home, I thought about it. About how close I had been but how uninvolved I was able to remain. I think “insulated” was the word that came to mind. Windows up, public radio playing Strauss, I was locked securely in my own little world and liking it.

But I haven’t always been this way.

One night in 1961, I was different.

It was a warm summer’s evening and my young husband and I were walking home from the movies in the little town of La Grange, a Chicago suburb, when we heard a scream. Across the side street and around the corner, a block behind our apartment building, in the light of the street lamp we saw a woman being pulled into a car by two men while a third stood on the sidewalk beating her.

“I’m going over there,” my husband called over his shoulder as he broke into a run. “Call the police.” There was no way I was going to go looking for a phone leaving him on his own with the muggers. As I ran after him, thoughts of what I could possibly do to help raced through my mind. I could scream. I could kick. I could scratch. At 5-feet 3-inches and 100 pounds, there just wasn’t much else.

But I remember feeling indignant and shocked. After all, even though we had just happened on the scene, we were still a part of the outrage. There was no way my husband and I could have walked on home, pretending not to have heard the woman’s scream.

We were lucky. The thugs took off when they realized they’d been spotted. My husband helped the woman up from the ground and sat her down on a bench. I found a phone in a nearby laundromat and called the police.

A couple of hours later, after answering the officers’ questions and hearing the woman refuse to press charges since one of the hoods was her boyfriend, we lay in bed recapping the night.

“What else could we have done?” my husband asked.

“Nothing,” I assured him.

“We could have been killed.”

“I know.”

“Do you think we’d do the same thing again?”

“I hope so.”

Young and foolish? Maybe. But we liked ourselves and knowing that when the chips were down, our instinct to help was greater than our fear.

Over the years we would read of people being beaten and killed while neighbors looked on, too frightened to leave their homes or apartments, and we would feel lucky. Lucky that we didn’t have to live like that and lucky that when our time had come, we had done the right thing - the thing we could live with. We had gone to help.

As I rapidly threaded my way through the debris that followed the collision, I told myself: Keep moving. Traffic’s coming up pretty fast behind you. If you stop, you’ll cause another wreck. You don’t have a car phone, but someone behind surely will. He’ll call for help. Besides, if anyone is hurt what can you do?

Five miles down the road, the truth hit. I had copped out. Frankly, I liked me a whole lot better that summer’s night 36-years ago when I didn’t stop to think. When I just reacted to another human being in need.

xxxx