A Risk

Author: Chris Dunn

Risk… Risk is my foe - a foe who can only be thwarted with the tool of eternal vigilance. Don’t move a heavy box through a tight corridor until you’ve walked the route to clear it of obstacles. Don’t mow the lawn until you are certain it is free of uncutable debris. Turn all pot handles inward. Always cut away from yourself. And for god sake move that glass away from the edge! If you watch me long enough, you’ll see that my entire life is spent perceiving potential risks and proactively preventing them. Even when I’m not involved, I’ll run over an point out a potential hazard – one of the few instances where I feel confident to talk to complete strangers. I even set my parking break every time I stop my car, hill or no. “Why? Are you setting the break?” People ask. “You’re not on a hill.” So! Does it hurt the car to have a little extra security? No. So mind your own business nameless, faceless example person!

So far in my life this risk prevention strategy has been a rewarding practice. While it does decrease certain, potential story avenues, like skateboarding fails and skydiving mishaps, the savings in medical bills alone is well worth it. My stories tend to be more cerebral and observational – odd anecdotes about things and people misplaced or out of context. I don’t have a “hold my beer” story to wow the crowd with the time I actually survived a fill-in-the-blank. So, I come to this week’s writing practice a bit stumped. Sitting by the keyboard with a wealth of helpful advice for the would-be, foolhardy thrill seeker, but not much in the way of a tale of my own.

Then the phone rings. My friend, James, has a flat tire just around the corner. Do I happen to have a tire iron he can borrow? Of course, I have a tire iron. I have all the tools needed to deal with a flat. That’s how you avoid getting a flat tire, being prepared. By the time I arrive to assist, however, a good samaritan has lent them a much more versatile iron than my own, one with multiple size wrench heads and levers for better torque. Even so, they’re only able to get four of the five lug nuts off, and James winds up having to call AAA. “I guess you can go,” he says when it becomes obvious my tire iron is only usable as a hammer and even at that insufficient to the task. “I’ll go as soon as I can get my tire iron back.” Because that’s just the sort of oversight that’ll leave you stranded on the highway at midnight wondering what happened to that tire iron. It was just here!

With Mary on her way to pick up the kids, AAA on its way to help James with his tire, I wandered home with a sudden recollection. My first car, Scarlett, a 1992 Nissan Sentra was a tank. I drove her for 16 years and eventually gave her up just because it was time for a change. In 2008, I upgraded to a nearly new 2006 Nissan Sentra I dubbed Cobalt. Cobalt has served me well ever since, but at the outset, he had issues - particularly with his tires. Whenever I would hit a curb – even the slightest graze, mind you – that tire would go flat within 24 hours. I’d slap on the spare, take it to the shop, only to have them tell me the tire was fine, just mysteriously flat. My inner, risk watchdog told me to just swap out all four tires and start fresh, but the me who controls the finances just bought a newish car. There wasn’t new tire money in the budget. You’ll be fine. Just drive carefully, don’t hit any curbs for a while. And that’s how you find yourself on the side of I-75 during morning rush hour, your car pulled as far off the road as you feel comfortable with though still fearing it may tumble down the embankment at any moment. All your efforts, still leave your butt hanging perilously close to cars whizzing by at impossible speeds. 55 MPH is so much faster when you’re outside of your car rather than in it. Adrenaline gave my hands extra strength as I torqued off the lug nuts and swapped on the spare, all the while listening to the heavy I-told-you-so sighs coming from the judgmental part of my brain.

My old driving instructor once told me. “Don’t worry. Most drivers don’t want to hit you. If they hit you, that’s going to ruin their whole day.” Largely due to this adage, I feel, I went unstruck that day. I tossed the flat tire in the trunk, dropped my ass back in the driver’s seat, and waited for traffic to slow and let me back in. While I sat there with my blinker on, the finance guy came out and gave his report. Surprisingly, he had found a way to move a few payments around. It would eat into our cushion, but we could afford the new tires. As long as nothing went financially wrong for the next few months, we’d be fine. I decided to take the risk.