My Life Flashed Before My Eyes

A bird flew into the side of my face today.

Actually it didn’t, but it would be interesting and humorous (definitely more retrospectively, but I imagine there still would be plenty of humor).

I was walking out of the house taking out the trash, and this huge black bird swoops down only inches in front of me. Had I not stopped and complained to my mother for doing all the chores in the house and been a few seconds faster it would have flown directly into the side of my face. Don’t get me wrong now; I am delighted it didn’t hit me. But looking at it from the onlookers’ perspective, it wouldn’t be too bad if it did.

Immediately from the experience I imagined this huge hole shaped gash on my cheek. People would be all concerned and asking what happened, and I would reply nonchalantly that a bird flew into me. I mean really, how often does that happen?

That or, I could picture myself in the emergency room. Somehow the avian creature managed to wedge its beak so deep into the side of my face that I assumed I shouldn’t take it out myself without the doctors properly giving me a dose of anesthesia. So I would be slouched in one of those overstuffed couches in the waiting room, you know for four hours of course, just tweedling my thumbs with a bird sticking conveniently out of side of my head, while people came in gushing blood and seizure-ing. It would be kind of funny.

Actually, the unfortunate bird would probably be alive through all of this. Provided that birds don’t pass out from shock or anything, the new vision would be of me, tweedling my thumbs in the waiting room, with a bird lodged into the side of my head flapping furiously trying to get away. Would it get tired of struggling say for after 3 hours? Probably. I would probably be lying on one side because I would have a headache from the beak wedged into the side of my head for 3 hours. So I’m lying there. And the bird is lying on the side of my face. The bird is tired because it’s been flapping for hours.

Oh god. What happens if it ends up dislodging itself in the waiting room? I can see that too. The bird somehow gets free, and starts to fly away. I would spring up in enormous pain because the bird just extricated itself and now there is blood spurting out of my head Kill- Bill-style. In the meantime, the bird having used up all its energy trying to dislodge itself from me can’t exactly fly so instead, it falls to the ground and just kind of flaps around the ground like a fish. That might not be as funny.

I am thankful for those two seconds that didn’t bring us together, and I think I am slowly dipping into this isolation induced insanity since those flashes of what would have happen happened in the 20 feet walk between my house and the garbage can. Hooray for spring break.