What happened to me? Well, it was Sunday, around 11:30 am. I was mowing the front lawn with the good old 4.5-horse Yard Machine, just back from its annual sharpening and tuneup.
The next thing I knew I was struck by a car and landed fifteen feet away.
This requires some explanation.
Our lawn runs right to the edge of our neighbor’s driveway. To finish a row of mowing and start back the other way, you have to push the mower onto the driveway and turn it around. I’ve been doing this for years without incident.
Sunday was different.
Our neighbor’s driveway is always in shade, thanks to the proximity of the two houses and a thick canopy of trees. It’s a long driveway, and when the kids clamber aboard the Honda SUV for a Sunday morning of soccer, the car is parked well up the driveway, deep in the shade.
The Honda is a very quiet car, virtually silent, and the lawn mower is, as you would expect, loud.
I’m setting the stage. Fortunately, we are good friends with our neighbors, who are wonderful people who felt terrible about what happened. My neighbor later told me he looked out his sideview mirrors, didn’t see anyone in the driveway, put the car in reverse and took his foot off the brake.
The next thing he heard was a loud thump. He slammed on the brake, put the car in park and went running down the driveway to where I lay in a semi-fetal position near the sidewalk.
He was relieved to hear me groaning and saying I was alright.
There is no way to photograph the experience of oneself being hit by a car. But I can tell you it was visually unforgettable. It’s also hard to describe.
I had just turned the lawn mower around to head back across the lawn when a swiftly moving wall filled the left side of my vision. That was the rear of the SUV, which is dark blue, but strangely my memory of it is yellow.
It was already so large and close when I first saw it that I had no time to react, no time to feel fear or panic, only an instant in which to realize I could not get out of the way.
I also remember the moment of impact and the sound of my body bouncing off the tall, flat rear end of the car. I do not remember any pain.
I do not remember traveling through the air or across the ground, only taking stock of my situation once I found myself on the ground. Apart from a throbbing pain in the back of my head and various scrapes and bruises, I gratefully realized I was in one piece and pretty damn lucky.
It seemed to me the police showed up within seconds, as did my wife, who was inside the house. Seconds later the ambulance squad arrived. They found and treated a bleeding cut on the back of my head. Then they fastened an immobilizing collar around my neck, gently rolled me onto a rigid foam board and lifted me onto a gurney, which they slid into the ambulance. I’ve always been intrigued by the system of hinges and stuff that allows them to do that.
I was lying flat on my back, and strapped in so I couldn’t move my body or turn my head. It’s disconcerting not to be able to see where you are going. I had never heard the blips and bleeps of an ambulance from within the ambulance. Strange, because you’re used to the sound approaching you and then receding, not being at the source of the sound, having it always with you.
The ambulance attendants were having a conversation about something–skiing, I think. I was stuck staring at the ceiling of the ambulance, which had a black ventilation channel down the center and white lights on either side. My camera was in my backpack, which my wife was bringing, following the ambulance.
But I suppose only a crazy photographer would have felt disappointed that–even if I had my camera and my arms were not strapped down–I could see absolutely no way to make an interesting photograph of that ambulance ceiling, which nonetheless I had to keep looking at.
I’ll continue the story tomorrow with two more pictures.