What if

What if you didn’t like yourself? What if you where generally unhappy with your lot in the universe, what if something you did caused a monumental fuck up and started a chain reaction, what if is my favourite question of all time!

If you have been reading the various books/blogs you will be well aware that I am actually (ahem) a well adjusted person, and although I have one or two (hundred) issues I’m generally happy with my lot OK so I wish I was a bit (a bit hahaha) thinner and had a bit more ready cash in my pocket, but overall I’m OK with what I have and how my life has gone. I don’t mind being short or bald or even as blind as a bat, most things actually whether we want it to or not, happen for a reason. The big cosmos, God or whichever deity you believe in, I do believe in karma so if I do a bad thing I feel as though a bad thing is going to happen back to me superstitious yes! Go figure me a grown man as well, mind you with that thought in mind the amount of bad luck I have had I must have been Adolf Hitler in my previous existence.

Now I don’t play what if in regards to my own life but generally in other things, again too many thoughts in my brain to put them down onto paper, but we all do this at some point, this also occurs when I’m watching the news like what if David Cameron was to be discovered to be a human being! What if John Wayne were still alive, what if that goal keeper had gone the other way, just massive amounts of stuff floating through my head at any one time.

What if that person had lived, what if I had stayed in bed on that particular day, what if I hadn’t told that person I loved them! Those are sometimes some of the darker what if’s, that patrol the corners of my brain, now not that I want this portion to be dark and distressing well it will be a little bit, but not for me it’s about karma and how it chooses other people. Let me set the scene its 1989 I’m helping a mate called Mark (I used to drink with him in the club I knew him to say hello and he used to join the company from time to time) shift some gear he has bought from a farmhouse in Rowley a little Hamlet just outside Consett which is on the main drag from Darlington all the way up to Hexham a fast road with just a few curveballs thrown in for good measure. Mark had an old van that had a back door that used to throw itself open (because it can) at the most inappropriate times, we loaded the boxes into his van and we stop at the junction ready to pull out.

It’s at this point it’s a what if moment (or karma moment) occurs there is a gap in the traffic and just as we are about to pull out, the door pops open, I jump out and slam it shut and just to be on the safe side I find some wire and twist it around the handle and the bumper (it was an old van even then) I take my time as I’m aware that Mark has dubbed the van Christine, as like the book sometimes the van was possessed, I jumped back in the cab and although he would normally speed away at way at this point, there was a little Ford Fiesta chugging down the road and rather than pull out and force the car to slow a little bit (this is the what if moment) we held our horses and pulled out behind them, just as well as the van spluttered and coughed and we were slowly pulling away. At least we didn’t get shouted at by the guy driving the car! a guy I would say in his early fifties with his wife a similar age, who I would say had their grandchild in the back of the car (they seemed to be a bit late in life to have had kids) as they passed me and Mark both said at the same time (jinx) “that kid should be sat down and strapped in”, as it was she was stood in the back holding onto the front two headrests singing away, while the people driving took little or no notice, now we reckon they were doing about fifty because we were doing about forty and they were pulling away from us not a lot but enough, we also reckoned they weren’t from around the area because if they were they should have been braking not accelerating, there a nasty hairpin bend that’s upon you before you know (me and my mate Ath ended up in a field one winter when we got it wrong in icy and snowy conditions at the same junction and yes we were going waaaay too fast) as they hit the bend the driver must have been distracted probably by the kid and went straight on just as a Mercedes came around the corner and clipped the back end of the Fiesta. We stopped behind it Mark ran across to the Mercedes to see if the driver was alright (as it happens he had slowed right down and was unsure of the bend which probably was just as well) I got to the Fiesta as the grandparents were scrambling out, the back passenger side having taken one hell of a clip, but the little girl it was like she was asleep on the back seat. Her neck broken! she was dead and to this day I still (and not in a bad way) think of her, What if she was destined to do something great, what if she was destined to save somebody else’s life further down her silver thread, how much better would the world have been if she had been in it, I found out at the inquest that she was nine years old, what had she done that was so bad that her thread was cut that day?, why had karma chose her?, of course the rational amongst you will have said that she should have been belted up in the back of the car, and at the inquest the grandmother said that it was something she always did, but the grandmother had put the radio on (another what if moment) and the girl’s favourite song came on and she stood up to dance and sing (kids do that) I don’t remember their names just the what if’s. The Mercedes driver was cut up something rotten even though he had done nothing wrong, this was confirmed by the police at the inquest. What if though he knew the area and drove as fast as most people do who know the road, there was the potential that he would have totally wiped out their car and them as a family altogether!

What if we had pulled out and made them slow down would that have averted the accident or would karma catch up with them (final destination style) further down the road. Who knows but I still think about that girl, about what she missed, school, boys, sports, driving, holidays and all the things that we take for granted each and everyday. I still remember checking for a pulse and realising that she was dead and the hysterics going on behind me, I remember the policeman (his number 999 stood out on his shoulders) asking me for the details and the parents of the girl turning up and there was even more crying and all me and Mark wanted to do was get the hell out of dodge and away from the grief, I didn’t feel guilty about this, it was as if we were being guided by other forces, the van doors, me tying them shut Mark not wanting to pull out because he knew that the van would cough and splutter, so many variations and so many what ifs!

Why do I put this in here well it’s part of me it’s like my tattoo’s I will take it to the grave with me, it hasn’t upset me people die! I didn’t/don’t know these people, hells bells I don’t even know if Mark still lives in the area, I probably saw three or four more times after that, life as always goes on but when I have time to gaze out the window and watch the clouds (my favourite thing in the whole wide world been doing it for forty plus years and I ain’t going to stop anytime soon!) she drifts in too my thoughts and I start doing the what if thoughts all over again.

We all have a silver thread, some are thicker than others, I hope mine is as fat as I am at this moment in my life, I have a pretty good idea on how I’m going to shuffle off this mortal coil (unhappily because I don’t want to go) with the family medical history (stroke being the favourite) what if I live to be a hundred? What if I get skinny? What if we as a family get along ok so I know I’m pushing the boundaries on that one but it does make you think though doesn’t it?

what if?

Now I am aware that people are worried for my sanity (don't be)  this is the last one for a while from Buck Naked as there does seem to be a stream of melancholy running through these blogs I intend that the next one will be that little be that little bit happier (hopefully) so until then have fun play nice and erm....Toodles!