Death Cheater

by Tom Shafer

July 17, 2019

Okay, so a reader recently commented that based on blog entries, I have cheated death a number of times in my life. I suppose I never really thought about it, but now that I have, he’s right – I am a death cheater (which is infinitely better than being a Death Eater!). Now, I would posit that all of us have been/are death cheaters to a certain degree, some instances of which we are fully aware and others about which we will never know. That latter category, missed death opportunities (MDOs), is significantly larger, and likely includes near mishaps in the home, on the road, at work, and miscellaneous other places. It’s a stat I would love to know, but I guess I’m stuck with the knowable only.

By my count, I have cheated death eight times in my life. Two I have addressed already, namely my ruptured colon in 2015 (“So You Think You Can Name a Rock Band”) and my twenty-five foot fall from a Colorado waterfall in 2017 (“To Every Stupidity There Is a Surgery”). The other six are spaced in time from age seven (in 1968) to age fifty-three (in 2014) and involve automobiles, an ocean, another national park, and wasps. I suppose I should handle these chronologically, so we’ll head back to 1968.

In my family growing up, my siblings and I were expected to perform chores around the house to earn our keep. These ranged from the mundane (making our beds, keeping our rooms clean and tidy) to the exciting (testing television tubes at Radio Shack – my fav! – and helping dad work on our cars). Being the oldest male, more was expected out of me, but I didn’t mind. If a particular chore interrupted playtime with other neighborhood kids, I might grouse a little, but ultimately I would follow orders as directed.

So, on this summer day, lawn work was the agenda item, and in particular, the trimming of bushes. This task was seemingly put off until the bushes themselves began to overtake the house. Of course, at this point bushwhacking was a better way to describe what we would be doing. We had some standard taxus (“hicksii”) that lined our sidewalk, but my eight-year-old skills were probably not best suited for the perfect pruning required (flat, even tops). Instead, I was sent to tackle the out-of-control Chinese junipers that semi-encircled the three first floor bedrooms. Armed with sharp hedge shears (due to dad’s constant use of a whetstone), I started with the first bush nearest our front door while dad used electric clippers to handle the taxus.

I hacked away at the front of the juniper, then realized that I would need a ladder to reach the top of its nearly six-foot height. After I finished the first bush (and after dad sanctioned my work), I moved on to the second. This one was wilder and thicker, with many branches pushing into the brick wall. As I moved toward the back to get at those branches, I was instantly stung in the face by a wasp. Then another. And another. And yet another.

This is where my memory of the event ends. My very next recollection was waking up at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, unable to see due to bandages wrapped around my head. I learned then that I had stirred up a wasp’s nest lodged in the juniper bush and was stung fifty to a hundred times from my head to my upper chest. By the time our local squad showed up, I had already slipped into anaphylactic shock and was vomiting uncontrollably. A paramedic promptly injected my leg with epinephrine, and my second trip to a hospital by ambulance was one that I would not remember (the first was for a compound fracture of my ankle a couple of years earlier).

I spent two nights at the Valley, but recovered pretty quickly. My swollen-shut eyes finally opened my last day in the hospital, and I was back performing chores within a few days.

After hearing this story, some have asked if I have an aversion to stinging insects – or even bugs in general. I don’t, and never have. I have always held the belief that all living things have an undeniable right to life.

When I was teaching, I conducted a special class during my planning period for three students who wanted to write, shoot, edit, and produce a film short. The final product was called Dead Ant Suit, and it explores the difficulty teenagers have growing up in a world that is inured to violence. In one scene, the lead actor is sitting in a classroom watching ants crawl across the floor. He considers crushing them with his foot, but has a change of heart as he contemplates the power of his action – this of course based on a very real discussion I conducted in my American literature classroom. Being an uncomfortable heathen with some Buddhist leanings, I don’t know who – or what – god is, but I’m certain we shouldn’t be playing Him, Her, or It with any living beings, including insects. BTW, our little film was aired at the prestigious Austin Film Festival and finished second in the young filmmakers division of the Nashville Film Festival.

Moving on to the traveling vehicle category, my first escape occurred during my senior year of high school. Several of my friends (I believe eight of us total) and I were heading home from watching our high school wrestling team at an away meet in downtown Dayton. Our senior driver was wrestling with his family’s large Ford Econoline van and had almost hit a retaining wall on I-35 as we were traveling east out of the city. With the rest of our evening, we had decided in route that we were going to perform a few public services for our community by pulling mailboxes out of the ground, particularly those boxes being maintained by people we deemed nuisances to all humans. To do this, we needed to obtain some rather large chains that one of our friends kept for just such duties, so we headed to his house to procure them.

Now, I would suggest here that all of us in the van were still novice drivers (though none of us would have ever admitted it), but tonight’s incarnation was in a category of his own. In fact, a friend sitting next to me in the back pleaded with him to slow down and pay better attention on several different occasions. After the near miss of the retaining wall, he even tied himself into the seat (the belt mechanism was missing) and muttered to me that we were going to end up in an accident. Though no Nostradamus, he couldn’t have been more right.

As we were heading to a residence and its mailbox in south Beavercreek, our driver took a left curve on Grange Hall Road much too quickly, and the van took a right turn into a cornfield. It tumbled over and over, ultimately finishing on its roof when it finally came to a rest. For a long moment, all was quiet until I asked if everyone was all right. Numerous voices answered the darkness, along with some groans, and all of us started assessing one another and attempting to find a way back to the outside. My friend who had been sitting next to me was panicking somewhat because, of course, he was tied into his seat and hanging upside down. I quickly retrieved a lock blade from my pocket (yes, I was that cool) and cut the strapping that was restraining him.

Amazingly, none of us were hurt badly (a couple of broken bones and ribs, some large cuts and gashes, lots and lots of embedded glass). Three of us started to walk back down the road to some nearby homes when a pickup truck pulled up to the corner and stopped. The driver just happened to be an off-duty firefighter, so he made a quick call via CB and before long, the night was being shattered by flashing lights and cacophonous sirens. All of us were transported to Miami Valley Hospital to attend to our injuries.

To this day, I find it miraculous that none of us were killed. According to a police investigation, our van hit the curve at nearly sixty miles per hour, a full forty miles per hour over the recommended speed. All of the glass shattered as the van made three and a half revolutions through the field, and none of us (except my buddy sitting next to me) were belted into our seats. The only good working theory I have is that due to our youth and athleticism, we were able to float about the cabin and respond quickly to the various items (bench seats, other bodies, chains, tools, corn, and earth) that popped up. Until I undertook this particular writing prompt, I had not even thought about this near-death for many years. It makes me want to reach out to my fellow survivors from that evening.

A short two years later, I was driving south on Main Street in North Dayton after a hard night of drinking at a friend’s bar in Harrison Township. (Full disclaimer: the following statement is not braggadocio and certainly not something to be proud of, but I am almost certainly the best drunk driver on the planet. Many of my friends have championed this claim over the years, and I have recognized my own skills in this regrettable category.) The man who would ultimately stand next to me on my wedding day, Barney (name changed to protect the innocent), was sitting in the passenger seat, and he was a little worse off than I was.

Main Street at the time was a four-lane road with no intended turn lanes, and on many of its residential stretches, people were (and still are) permitted to park on the street. Those who travel the road know this and must be prepared for cars weaving both left and right. On this evening, I was driving conservatively (due to my condition) in the right hand lane, moving over as necessary when I came upon a parked vehicle. Up ahead, I could see a car slowing to make a left hand turn, and just as I did, I noticed a car in my rearview mirror coming up quickly in the left lane behind me. Just as he made clearance of my car, he pulled hard right into my lane to avoid hitting the car ahead turning left. On the sidewalk I saw a woman walking north and quickly pulled hard right to avoid both her and car now overtaking my lane. I aimed my car at a telephone pole and hit it dead in the middle of my hood at nearly forty miles per hour.

My car enveloped the pole with a deafening clangor, and both Barney and I were thrown violently into the dashboard and windshield. My legs were briefly pinned under the carriage, but I was able to pull some metal debris off of them and crawl through the driver’s side window to survey the damage. Barney was just coming to and slowly trying to extricate himself from the car. Now, perhaps a little brain damaged (and certainly a lot drunk), I asked him if he was okay, and assured that he was, I told him to stay in his seat because I was going to reverse the car off of the pole and drive home. At this, Barney crawled through his open window and very calmly explained that my car was now permanently connected to the pole and would not be going anywhere. Of course, my alcohol-addled mind was not convinced so I crawled back into my car and turned the ignition switch. Unbelievably, the engine screeched, and I realized that it was still running. I pulled the console lever to reverse, but unfortunately Barney was right. My car was going nowhere.

When a policeman interviewed me at the scene about what had happened, I had almost no recall. Naturally, Barney was able to describe what had transpired, and so did the woman I saw on the sidewalk and a couple of other witnesses. All of them reported that I had purposely driven into the pole to avoid being sideswiped and hitting the woman pedestrian. Because of my lack of memory (and the fact that I smelled like a distillery), I was charged with reckless operation of a motor vehicle, a four-point violation that would lose me my license for the first time (yes, there would be others). The officer explained to Barney that he knew I was drunk, but because I attempted to avoid an accident and the pedestrian, he didn’t want to pile on with a drunk driving charge (those would come within a couple of years – and yes, I transcribed “those”) – not to mention my nearly totaled car.

As all of us stood there looking at my mangled car, a paramedic who was dispatched needlessly to the scene commented that we were lucky to be alive. Because I had squared the pole, the engine block itself had absorbed the impact of the collision and protected the driver and passenger side cockpits. If I had missed either side of center by four or five inches, one of us certainly, and perhaps both, would be dead.

Now, whether I was merely lucky or good doesn’t really matter. All that mattered was the fact that we were alive, that the actions of an aggressive driver didn’t cost three people their lives. Yes, losing my license for three months was a pain in my posterior (and the others who would transport me to school and work), but that pales in comparison to what could have happened.

Just one year later, between my junior and senior years of college (then systems engineering at Wright State University, soon-to-be English education instead), I rode a Trailsway bus and thumbed my way to Glacier National Park in Montana to visit a girl I had just started dating. I was supposed to be heading out there with a friend, but two weeks before departure, he separated his shoulder, and his discomfort just would not allow him to go. My driver’s license had just been suspended for one year (due to two DUIs accumulated in a five-month period – a story for another day) so my options getting there were limited to a bus pass and my thumb (the bus would only take me to Great Falls). So, I reserved a midnight departure from Dayton and headed west.

Frankly, we had only known each other for a few weeks, so things were a little odd when I got there. She was also a Wright State student, and was working for Park Service concessions in Glacier where her father was a seasonal ranger (okay, full disclosure, the girl is now my wife Jane, and her father Richard is the inspiration for this blog). Anyway, she was going to be working most days, so I was left to catch rides to trail hubs throughout the park so I could enjoy some of the 700 miles of backcountry Glacier has to offer.

On one particular day, I decided that I wanted to summit Red Eagle Mountain, an iconic peak that welcomes visitors entering the park from the east side. A ride was arranged to take me to St. Mary Falls trailhead which was determined to be the easiest approach, so I would climb Red Eagle then return the same way to catch park transportation (historic Red Buses called Jammers) back to ranger accommodations where I was staying.

The climb is not technical at all, but requires utmost attention due to the crumbly nature of the sedimentary rock that pervades the park. The hike that put me into position to scramble to the top was quite beautiful and marked well enough for an easy return. A drainage area made for easy access past a small vertical cliff band, and the bushwhacking that I had been warned about was quite minimal. Perhaps I had been lucky enough to follow in the wake of others who had passed through the same area I was traversing. The mountain itself sports three false summits before reaching the top, and each of them presented very rewarding views both north and south. The summit itself seemed a little anticlimactic after passing by the false ones, but it was still gratifying to reach it.

At this point, I opened my pack to grab a sandwich and drink a spot of wine from the leather bladder bag that I had been hiking with for many years. I also pulled out my binoculars so that I could spy the area around me for any animals like mountain sheep or goats. I had seen some of both high on the mountain while hiking earlier, so I thought I might see them better from this vantage point. As I was studying an area along the cliff band, I thought I saw movement. When I stood up to get a better view, I lost my footing on the edge and started to slide down the side of the mountain. As I picked up speed, I began to panic and started self-arresting techniques to slow my descent. Ultimately, I banged into ottoman-sized boulder, grabbed onto it reflexively, and held on for dear life.

With a continuing fall of about a thousand feet below me, this was no place to assess the damage done – though I was feeling pain all over and knew that I was bleeding from several places. Stepping gingerly, I created my own switchbacks to the summit where my pack and gear were awaiting me. After several painful minutes, I was back where the incident had begun and performed proper triage. I had multiple cuts all over my body and bruises to match, but that was the extent of my injuries. I had expected a broken bone or two – or worse. But I had gotten lucky. The scree at the top was small and loose, and there were few rocks bigger than the size of a football. This helped minimize the damage, but also allowed for my quick tumble. In fact, where I fell, the one boulder that stopped me was the only one to be seen. If I had not caught it, I would have been propelled down the entire scree field that stretched at least a thousand feet. I suppose I could have survived it, but I’m glad that that challenge ended much higher on the mountain.

I finished the climb down and hike back without incident but had much explaining to do to my future wife and father-in-law. For the remainder of my stay, I was forbidden to do any trekking alone, and instead started hiking with friends of the family and other park service personnel. It’s hard to know whether this was an MDO or not, but I have to count it. At the time, adrenaline told me that it was a very close call. Even today, I can remember it like it happened yesterday.

Now to the ocean. Just after we were first married, my wife got a very nice job at a printing company in downtown Dayton. The pay was decent and she received several perks, including use of nice condo in Siesta Key on Florida’s Suncoast. For fifty bucks a week, employees could use the condo one time during the year, so we took full advantage of it. To make it even better, we would dovetail two weeks together with another employee (and his girlfriend or wife) who was a good friend of ours.

Being young and energetic, we filled these vacations with many activities and fully enjoyed all that the Gulf of Mexico had to offer. The girls tended to stay in and around the pool area, while I would gravitate toward the gulf. On this particular day, I had decided to swim out to a sandbar that was several hundred yards from shore. I had seen many people standing on it the day before, so I thought it would be fun to do it myself. Being a private beach area, no lifeguards were there to serve and protect, and I didn’t notice any restrictions at the water’s edge — though later, I wasn’t sure I had looked at all.

As I started stroking through the water, I found the going quite easy. It seemed I was being helped along, so I was making very good time reaching the sandbar. And, I got there much quicker than expected – which should have surprised me because I have never been a particularly efficient swimmer. As I stood atop the bar by myself, I could feel the ocean pulling strongly below me. I was having a difficult time just standing there and suddenly realized this was a very strong undertow. In fact, as I looked back toward the shoreline, I noticed that few people were in the water, and if they were, they were standing knee-deep only.

I immediately recognized the trouble I was in. Apparently, I had missed a warning about strong rip currents and now here I was, several hundred yards from shore, with no lifeguard and no one who knew I was there. I realized then that I needed to come up with a plan to get back. I noticed that the current was pulling out, but also down the coast, so I knew that I could use that to my advantage. I was going to have to conserve energy as best I could, even though I fully understood I was going to be expending an awful lot. I would work my way back to shore by swimming with the current and cutting toward land as I did so. My last thought before beginning was simple: there will be no panicking.

So I started, and was immediately being pulled out toward open water. I repelled the urge to panic and enacted my plan. Though I couldn’t necessarily tell if it was working, I noticed that the land wasn’t getting smaller and was sort of holding its own. I was being pulled rapidly down the coast but at least I wasn’t being pulled out. I continued stroking slowly but strongly, and I knew that I was now moving back toward the land. This continued for almost two hours until I could finally stand up in the water and walk to shore.

I immediately sat down on the beach and plopped back into the sand. I was completely exhausted – and more than one full mile from my starting point. After a couple of minutes, I looked for and found a public drinking fountain and took my fill. I then started the long walk back to our condo and found the girls still poolside, enjoying the day.

What I found most interesting about this experience was the fact that it happened very publicly. When I reached shore finally, I didn’t exalt about beating death. Anyone who walked by me wouldn’t have known the close call I had just dealt with and overcome. I mean, what do you say anyway? I had stupidly put myself into that situation, then used my very good brain to keep it – and myself – alive. In fact, when my wife reads this entry, it will be the first time she has ever heard it. I knew that I would be in trouble with her, so why did she need to know? In fact again, this is the very first time I have ever articulated this story to anyone. It’s nice to finally get it out!

The last MDO that hasn’t been depicted occurred in the fall of 2013. At that time, my plate was so full that I didn’t even know the plate existed. It turned out to be the last of my thirty years of teaching (a retirement that I hadn’t planned for and hadn’t expected), and I was dealing with a cancer-stricken father, an Alzheimer’s-tormented mother who was trying to care for him, and a drug-addicted brother who was stealing from them both – and who would die from his addiction just a couple of weeks after my last day of teaching.

On this beautiful October day, my wife, my mother, and I decided to attend a fall festival in Enon, Ohio, after visiting my father in his rehab facility in Fairborn. His cancer had weakened him to a point that we couldn’t care for him properly any longer, so we convinced him to enter this particular nursing facility so that he could build up his strength to return home. We knew that we were stretching the truth with him (and I think he knew as well), but given mom’s condition and the fact that I was working, it really was the best place for him.

My father had been getting weaker over the last couple of weeks, and during a care conference it was suggested that we change his status from rehabilitation to comfort care instead. I balked somewhat, more concerned about how he might react to this modification in care, but eventually agreed that the change was needed.

We had a good visit on this day, but I was struck by his deterioration. Though I was seeing him every day (usually with my mother in tow), he seemed to be degrading right before our eyes. I know my mother couldn’t see it, but then at times I was aware that she didn’t know who dad, her husband, was.

The Apple Butter Festival in Enon was (and is) quaint and enjoyable, and perfect for my mother (and wife) because it was much smaller in size than the raucous Yellow Springs Street Fair being conducted the same weekend about four miles away. However, I was having a difficult time brushing aside our earlier visit with my father.

As we were taking backroads through the country to our home, I know I was distracted by those thoughts. I was even mulling over the idea that perhaps I should be contacting friends and family to let them know that they should come for visits with dad sooner than later. As I approached a stop sign at Yellow Springs-Fairfield Road, I was more concerned about traffic traveling west from the Yellow Springs festival than vehicles traveling east. I’m sure I looked both ways, perhaps perfunctorily, but clearly I wasn’t seeing.

Just as I pulled into and through the intersection, I was t-boned by a white work van traveling eastbound at close to fifty miles per hour. Our Subaru Forester was pushed violently into a fence and telephone pole, and inside the cabin, airbags were deploying from all directions. As soon as realization of what had happened slapped me squarely, I turned to my right and asked my mother if she was okay. She said that she was, then I asked the same of my wife sitting directly behind her. She assured me that though she felt a little sore, she seemed to be okay as well. The car’s front end had struck the pole, so I was able to open my door with effort to get out and check on the occupants of the other vehicle.

They were just emerging from the van (two brothers and a young daughter of one of them), and they seemed to be fine – and were much more concerned about my passengers. Both passenger side doors were crushed, so we helped my mother and wife out through the driver-side doors. Both of them had some bruising from the airbags, but no other visible injuries.

Fire and rescue responded fairly quickly (as did state highway patrol), and paramedics felt it best to transport my wife and mother to the hospital to check for internal injuries. I felt fine, so I refused transport, and instead finished my interview with the patrolman (I would eventually be charged with – and plead guilty to – failure to control a motor vehicle) and then contacted my insurance company. Ultimately, my car was trailered to an auto repair shop for appraisal (and amazingly it wasn’t totaled but instead fixed to the tune of almost $19,000!). I exchanged information with the other driver, then waited for my brother-in-law to pick me up and take me to the hospital.

As I stood there with the other driver (his brother and daughter had been gathered by his wife), he couldn’t believe that we were alive, let alone not hurt at all. As he walked toward my car after the accident, he had convinced himself that it would be a grizzly scene, based strictly on the violence of the collision. He had not slowed at all as he approached the intersection, and was shocked when I pulled out right in front of him. I told him about my distraction with my father – and mother – and commented that Subaru’s safety record had been a consideration when we purchased one of their cars.

Put simply, the Forester saved our lives. All ten airbags had deployed and cocooned us from harm. The three of us suffered a few aches from the bags themselves – but considering what could have happened, I don’t think any of us minded. As a postscript to this accident, my father passed away the following Saturday. Though he had been suffering his cancer for almost five years, his death was still sad and unexpected.

So, by my count, those are the eight times I have cheated death. If, like a cat, I have but nine lives to live, I’d better be more careful than I’ve been. But then again, do I actually get that last life, number nine, or does the Grim Reaper show up then? I guess I’ll have to consult my cats Mookie, Cricket, Boots, or KiKi about this – and perhaps get a little advice.