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rockandsun · 2 years

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There’s this one line in a Cormac McCarthy novel which goes, “You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” I remember being seated cross-legged in the middle of the road where I landed after getting hit by a car several years ago. People running up to me with their mouths moving but I couldn’t hear a thing. Construction workers in bright blurred vests. Cars with their doors open, their drivers stood behind as though protecting themselves from me or from what had happened to me. The way time turns fast to catch up after slowing down. Then the woman who had hit me leapt out of her SUV and screamed, “Oh God, I’ve hit a child.” I heard that. My ears broke open and I let out a laugh. I liked it. To be called a child. It felt important and it made me feel full. But as she ran towards where I sat (cross-legged remember, ha, like a child), bleating on hysterical repeat — more to herself than to me — “You’re all right. You’re all right. You’re all right” all I could think of was that line. Something from somewhere hit me much harder than the car had (really) and in the profundity of a moment of deep human knowing, I understood that if I hadn’t been hit by this woman and this car, I would have been hit by another just down the road and it would have been the worse luck my bad luck had saved me from. I think I would have died. Whether it’s true or not, well it doesn’t really matter. It’s simply a way of looking at things. Or rationalising them. And it makes the bad stuff easier. Which is no small thing…. Anyway, I was thinking about that line the last few days and it’s been a good one to have stowed in my back pocket all these years. Might want it in yours.

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