Yesterday I ran home during my lunch hour, to grab some food and start a batch of soup in a slow cooker. I was in a hurry to chop and saute the veggies before tossing them in the pot, and in the process I got a little careless. At the end of the leek, the knife slipped and came down on my left pointer finger. I redirected as soon as I felt the bite of the blade and waited for the wave of pain. Oddly, it didn’t come and so I put the knife down and looked at finger. I had managed to slice my fingernail down to the quick and shaved off a single layer of skin, but managed not to draw a single drop of blood. I took a moment to let my heart rate return to normal and then continued to make the soup.

Half a hour later, the soup was in the slow cooker and I headed back to work. The parking garage in our building has been under construction for the last five months, getting the four stories of concrete ramp replaced. They recently put scaffolding up in the back of the building, where I walk at least twice a day (and sometimes more) as I come and go to work and home. Yesterday, just as I walked out from underneath the scaffolding, a hunk of concrete the size of a baseball fell from one of the levels of the garage. It missed my head by about half a second. I stood there and stared at it for a moment, adrenaline racing as I realized how nearly I was hit by it. I spent a moment imagining the pain I could potentially be feeling and playing out the possible scenarios – concussion, bloody head, a trip to the emergency room or even worse.

I looked around, to see if anyone else had seen how close I had come to being clocked on the head by a falling piece of cement, but there wasn’t a single person who had been a witness. I glanced up, to see if anyone was peeking out from the parking garage, to see where that errant piece of stone had gone. Then I realized I was just fine and headed back to work.

It was interesting to have had two moments within the period of an hour where I came so close to being injured and yet was totally fine. It made me appreciate the integrity and health of my body, as well as the inherent frailty of being human.