The first time I watched a person die

Before I continue, it’s probably a good idea to inform you that I was in no way responsible for his death. It was just a horrible coincidence that I saw it happen.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I used to go to school by bus. This meant waking up at 5:15am, showering, eating breakfast, checking my mail and finishing my homework before I set out. In 2007, November the something^th, I did just that. I had a history exam that day, which was good in a way because I like history and even though I rarely received any praise for the lengthy systems analysis I put into my exam essays it is always fun writing them.

My bus stop was on the far end of a six lane road in xxxxxxx, right next to a dark green speed camera. Because this road is a gateway between the suburbs and the commercial district, drunk drivers frequently speed by at night and, caught by the camera, veer off the road so they can ram it over in the vain hope of destroying evidence of their crime. Every few months the camera would be replaced, but our bus stop shelter was left looking like so much twisted shrapnel it would make a politician look upstanding by comparison.

I arrived at my usual time, sat cross-legged against a nearby streetlight and continued to read my book (I say ‘continued’ because contrary to popular belief it really is possible to walk to a bus stop while perusing a book). I would normally be able to tell you which book this was, but I have read so many books beneath that particular lamp post my memories have blurred together.

A few personalities made a frequent occurrence at my bus stop. Thomas usually arrived at around 6:04am. I-pod College Girl arrived at 6:10am. Red-haired lady would breeze in at 6:16am, and Bag Lady would join soon after to speak to her. The bus could arrive from any time between 6:20am and 6:45am.

As I read, there was a nightmarish ‘scree-thud’ across the road. I barely saw the body go flying out of the corner of my eye, but those who did said it flew about two metres. I can’t forget that noise. I don’t picture the human body as something hard, capable of bending metal and plastic on impact. We are a fragile species, who survive only by avoiding brute trauma.

When the traffic permitted, I walked to the traffic island in the middle of the road with my phone pressed to my ear, hearing an endless ringing that may as well have been the snoring of the collective emergency services drone in ambience. Traffic was blocked off by the offending car. I-pod College Girl was nearby, putting on rubber gloves before she checked for a pulse.

The Victim stared at the sky, his jaw slack, blood pooling behind his head. I held out the back of my hand to check if he was breathing, but he wasn’t. No pulse, either. But as I watched, his head moved slightly to the side. I’ve convince myself since then that this was a trick of gravity brought about as his blood congealed.

Details stick out in my memory. He wore a white shirt with brown and tan cross-hatchings, and grey pants. He had a wad of folded papers in his breast pocket, and possibly his ID. He wore one of those fancy watches with interlocking bronze bands, and the crystal of its face was cracked, the watch itself stopped. I remarked on these things to I-Pod College girl, pointing out how the coroner would have no trouble finding out his time of death or his identity. I heard the panicked insistence of the driver, “He just ran into the road, and them I hit him.”

I stood up from where I was squatting by the body and looked at the man and his car. There was blood at the heart of a fractured web of glass on his windshield. The driver looked like he may have had a concussion. His face and that of his victim are interchangeable to me now. Both have that same, stupefied expression. Though the victim was dead, I think I pity the driver more. There was no changing the energy beating off him, screaming injustice and loss. No man can walk away whole after doing something like that, even by accident.

I returned to the bus stop, and we informed everyone as to what had happened and shared our varied perspectives. We watched as tow trucks arrived, then the police. The bus arrived before any ambulance showed up.

At school, before the exam, someone who had driven by asked me why I had gone to take photos of the body. They had seem me with my phone and assumed… that. I don’t know whether to blame their inaccurate perception of me, or of reality as a whole. Neither option is comforting.

I wrote my exam, finishing it with the words, ‘I apologise if this is not up to my usual standards. I may have seen someone die this morning.’

I didn’t get any reply from that notation. You would think a teacher would ask.

Regrettably Unregrettable

I spent this morning in bed reading Spud, a book about a kid who encounters havoc while living at a boarding school. To get the book part out of the way, it's brilliant.

The point of mentioning the book is that it drew my line of thought to way back when I was scouting high schools and had the option to board at an out-of-the-city semi-private school, to be technical only if I received a scholarship, which I didn't, but looking back if I pressed the matter and made certain concessions I could have actually gone.

When I think back to my tragic time at the local high school one short bus ride up the hill (but one very long wait for the bus) my immediate thought is that if I could do it all over I would have rather gone to the boarding school.
Firstly because although it sounds snotty I really hated taking the bus; not because I felt like a proletarian but because it was a devastating drain on the amount of time I had at home, and occupied much of my thoughts. I was involved in several extra-curricular activities which all ended at different times. Debating on mondays meant that I finished school at 15:30, which would make me miss the 15:45 bus unless I ran the two kilometres to the bus stop. The next bus usually showed up at 16:30, but occasionally a bus came at 16:05 or slightly later so I kept a constant look out in case I could catch an earlier ride home. This complicated reading, because I needed to look up every few seconds unless someone else was waiting at the bus stop. Tuesdays & Thursdays I did First Aid and finished at 16:30, the next bus was at 17:00. Wednesdays and Fridays school came out an hour earlier than any of the buses so I stayed in the library (in the early years, as a junior I dropped first aid and worked as a student librarian most afternoons) until I could walk down for the 15:15 bus, which was the earliest one with any predictable time pattern.
Needless to say most of my school career was spent waiting for the right time to get to the bus, my constant deadline. I DO NOT work well with deadlines. I get nervous thinking about the ever decreasing amount of time I have left. Rather than motivate me I tend to freak out under the pressure.


The second reason I would have gone to the boarding school is because I am a hopeless PC game addict. I can't really explain it that well... maybe it's because in computer games you actually feel like you're actions have some impact on the world you're living in. Maybe I just like to feel powerful, or brave and heroic and all those things that the real world beats the crap out of.
Yeah, that's probably it. Anyway, I spent almost every moment I could in front of my computer playing games with my brain on 'fuzz' mode. The problem with Virtual Reality, I've since found, is that it takes a vampiric hold over the real world, sucking up time and ensuring that nothing ever gets done, I never developed my social skills or really any other skills because I only really cared about the world past the flickering screen. Trouble is, I realised I didn't want to be that kind of person.
I wanted to care about this world too, and be bold and brave and powerful. Unfortunately, as I said, the real world kicks people like that in the face.


I know that I require a certain degree of forced discipline, and boarding school may have been what I needed. I would have had more time to think of my schoolwork without concentrating on the bus schedule (sounds lame, but it's true) and I would be cut off from my precious virtual reality, forced into the real world, where I might have adapted quicker. If it were that clear cut, it would have been perfect.
I would have spent my days in the library reading books, studying, perhaps even have plucked up the courage to get into a relationship. I can almost feel a happy me in a parallel universe looking back and being thankful for never chasing his emotions to a public school.


Of course, when I look back at who I was when I was thirteen I know I was an arrogant snot rag who learned some important things in high school.
What strikes me with the deepest dread is the books: what if I had never read all the books I read in public school. I'm sitting here thinking that my life would have been a ghastlier horror than Lovecraft could produce if I had never read Herbert, Hardinge, Wooding, or Scott... I would forgo the human beings I met in high school in an instant for a chance to have turned out as a more capable human being, but my books... that would be inconceivable. They shaped me. They are, as only a librarian could say, my true friends.
Anything else that occurred; such as the bus and my PC game addiction, are regrettable, yet my life as is stands as a whole is regrettably unregrettable, because I cannot regret the books I've read.