I don't know if you've had the same experience, but a thing I've found is that from time to time there occur moments that I recognize as turning points. The path takes a turn and something says that the winds have changed course forever. These moments come back at intervals. Just as I'm slipping sweetly into the dream world, they call to me as the sirens called to Ulysses, and they leave me flopping around in the sheets like a halibut in a dragnet.
One of these life-changing events took place in my teenage years when my best friend James Robert dared me to coast my bicycle down the Shady Grove road--a steep, S-curved, and a heavily banked strip of asphalt--from Clift's Grocery to the Baptist church, without braking the entire way. You will understand the extent to which I had gotten my self-confidence up my nose when I tell you that I took the first leg of the course, down to the first curve, riding with no hands.
It was a weekday morning and traffic was scarce to non-existent and so at the second curve, I moved to the deep inside so as to not be flung into the ditch by centrifugal force. This tight maneuver shot me into the final straightaway at maximum warp.
Now fully confident that the risks were behind me and that it was all peppermint from here to the finish line, I was standing on the pedals, flying through the wind. I wouldn't be surprised to remember that I was the living embodiment of personal mythology, the knight errant charging into the fray at Aix or Ghent or whatnot.
This is of course the point where drama enters the story, stage right. So keenly focused on the present moment was I that I completely missed the fact that since passing by Aunt Maggie's, I had been chivvied in the strong, earnest but silent manner of Pat's mixed-breed terrier, Snowball.
There I was inhaling the exhilaration of winning the dare, and there was the terrier, all whiskers and eyebrows, shagging hell-for-leather. Had there been an innocent bystander, the scene may have resembled one of those great moments in Greek tragedy, where the hero is stepping high, wide, and handsome, while Nemesis is aiming an arrow at his heel.
As everyone knows, when performing on a bicycle, concentration is of the essence. The mere suggestion of a terrier getting entangled in the wheels spells catastrophe and so it proved. It was as spectacular a stinker as I've been privileged to witness if privileged is the word I want.
One moment merry and bright. The next in the ditch, through the blackberry briers, with the bicycle resting on my back. The terrier stood on the shoulder of the road looking down at me with an expression of complete satisfaction.
As I picked my way through the brambles, the girl I had often admired but never found the courage to befriend, dismounted from her bicycle at the very spot where I had achieved escape velocity.
"What on Earth did you do that for?" she said, then remounted her bike and peddled away.