I was at an intersection waiting for the light to change when it happened. On the other side of the intersection, a tiny woman rode a bicycle into the left turn lane. She looked no older than twenty-five. She was losing control of her bike, which was too big for her. Just as she put a foot on the ground to steady herself, a blue Hyundai entered the intersection from her right. The car turned left. The angle was too tight and I knew what was going to happen. The car wasn’t going that fast, but it knocked the girl’s bike out from under her and onto the curb. Her body rose in ten-foot arc before hitting the concrete a few feet away from her bike.
“Oh my God!” I screamed in a guttural voice that I’d never heard before. I pulled to the side of the road and dialed 911. My hands were shaking and I misdialed twice before getting it right. The operator told me that three other calls about the accident had already come in. I didn’t leave until I heard sirens, driving home more slowly than ever. I was all but certain that I saw someone die for the first time in my life. You hear about people surviving terrible accidents, but, from what I saw, it seemed unlikely.
I was preoccupied with the accident for a month. The frailty of human life became more real to me than ever. My own recent, miserable experience with back surgery had undone the myth of my own invincibility. Now, I had witnessed how quickly things can end for us. How oblivious we are to our own vulnerability.
After a few weeks, my defense mechanisms started working again. I still prayed for the woman and her loved ones, but my own dismay began to fade. That’s when I became curious about the words that exploded from my mouth when I saw the accident. I never say, “Oh my God.” Don’t get me wrong—in the right company, I swear more than 1980s-era Eddie Murphy. That’s part of why I was surprised. I have an entire arsenal of profanity at my disposal for situations of shock, fear, and frustration. Why didn’t I reach for one of my typical four-letter words or, better yet, concoct a creative swearword stew? Before the accident, if you’d ask me to predict what I would say in this situation, I would have given two to one odds on the s-word, three to one on the f-word, and even more money on a colorful combination of foul language. Never, however, would I have imagined saying, “Oh my God.”
