Tuesday, December 28, 2010

A pessemist in optimist's clothing

I like my life as a pessimist - I wouldn't trade it!  When life is (insert adjective) hard, unfair, dreary, mundane, challenging, bitterly disappointing, as it often is, the expectations of a pessimist are exceedingly lower than those of the optimist, thus the outcomes of many situations are really not that bad, generally speaking. I expect the worst in a situation, and when something less than that is the the actual result, it is 'bonus; free game; play again'. Optimists have much farther to fall when it all falls apart.

Two weeks ago I was involved in a violent collision on a ski hill.  The irony is that, while it was my first time on skis in over 22 years, I was in perfect control and looking pretty hot on my trick skis. It was the student, who, having lost control and rocketed straight down the hill like a bullet, hit me and sent me flying like a rag doll. I landed on my back, head pointing down hill, and didn't move for several minutes because I wasn't actually sure if I was alive or dead. It was not immediately apparent to me whether the bright light beckoned me to the great beyond, or if it was just the sun shining on me. Clearly by virtue of the fact that I have written this it turned out to be the latter.

So, the pessimist in me thinks this really sucks.  My ski season is over. I had chosen to embrace a winter sport to pass the time until the return of motorcycle season.  Now it is just going to be a cold, miserable winter wherein I will impatiently count down the days until spring.

However, I have also come to the alarming realization that as painful and slow to heal as the fractured and dislocated radius may be, and how cumbersome and restricting the cast is, and how slow and frustratingly onerous every normal task has become, the timing of the crash could have been altered by a split second and I could have snapped my neck instead of my forearm. I could be paralyzed. Or dead.

So in the grand scheme of things, the pain, this awful cast, and the excruciatingly long countdown to spring don't collectively seem so bad.

But please don't call me an optimist. I still believe life sucks and then you die. I just borrowed the optimist club jersey..... it is damned cold out there!