Owning Up to the Avalanche: Responsibility

Skip the B.S.

By Skip Eisiminger

“I never should have taken those kids across that thoroughfare without their mother’s explicit permission, even if the kids did look like orphans and it was their birthday. Hindus say, ‘Call on the Gods, but row away from the rocks.’ There were alternatives ‘away from the rocks’ that I never considered, but should have.”—Skip Eisiminger

“The buck doesn’t even slow down here.”—Anonymous

“Shoulder your small part with a fragrant grace—/every rose petal holds the moon in place.”—The Wordspinner

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—3/10/2014—In the summer of 2011, a woman in El Paso County found my 94-year-old father with a fractured kneecap and shattered wrist on a remote section of her ranch.

It’s a long story that I won’t tell here, but she called 911 on her cell phone as soon as she comprehended my father’s rapidly deteriorating condition. Then she provided shade and comfort, but no water, as she’d been directed. The call was crucial, according to the EMS personnel: another hour in the triple-digit temperatures probably would have killed him. Indeed, the Samaritan’s initial reaction was to turn away. She suspected that Dad’s red Cadillac belonged to a drug dealer, but something drew her along the unpaved road. Though she had responsibilities of her own, she stayed by his side until help arrived.

Responsibility, however, has a way of taking some people by surprise and, at times, I’m one of them. Occasionally, I remind myself of the fundamentalist farmer who turned away three rescue vehicles in a flood. After drowning, he grumbled, “Why didn’t God rapture me off the rooftop; I kept the faith.”

“Don’t blame me,” said God. “I sent two boats and a helicopter.”

When the triplets who live across the street asked me to take them on a bike ride, I thought I was doing my neighborly duty by them. At the school where I volunteer, I’d seen them earlier in the day, and they’d told me it was their seventh birthday. “Mr. Skip, can we go for a bike ride?” they begged, like starved nestlings. I agreed to take them: it was their birthday after all, their father was in Afghanistan, and they promised me cake.

After a spin class at the recreation center that evening, I drove home and saw two of them riding their bikes in front of their house on our dead-end street. Recalling the promise I’d made at school, I drove into the garage and went to get my bike, glad that I didn’t need to go inside for my shorts and hard-soled shoes. Michael, a fraternal triplet, rode up as I was putting on my helmet and said, “Mommy said we can go with you, but it has to be a short one.” A short one was fine because these three on bicycles are a trial, and it was getting late.

A couple of months earlier, when we were riding on their school’s campus, I saw a car approaching and yelled, “Move to the right!” One triplet went left and stopped, one tumbled into the grassy median, and the other sped past me on the right. Fortunately, there was very little traffic that Sunday, and what there was was moving slowly. After the ride, I asked them to raise their right hands, and two raised their left. Since that little quiz, I hoped they’d learned to distinguish one hand from the other.

The triplets’ mother was indoors, and the ride I had in mind was two miles or less, so I gathered my fledglings and said, “Now look, Boy and Girls, I’m the boss, so listen to me when I tell you to do something.” I asked them to knock on their helmets with their left hands, which they did. I was reassured, but shouldn’t have been.

Off we went down Blue Ridge Drive, weaving and wobbling like drunken bees. Our initial destination was “Wolf Street,” a name we’d given Karen Circle, where an arthritic German shepherd barks at squirrels and kids on bikes. The “wolf” was indoors, so we made a right onto Karen Drive as I yelled, “Get on the sidewalk!” Michael as usual was 20 yards ahead of his sisters, so I shouted, “Stop at the next stop sign and wait for Maryanne” (who usually rides 20 yards behind to avoid being sideswiped by her siblings).

When I reached the intersection of Karen and Berkley Drive, Michael and Margaret were straddling their bikes, looking at the sunset. As I joined them, I looked over my shoulder and saw their sister coming down the hill on the right side of the street. I began looking and listening for any approaching cars at this blind intersection and, as I glanced to my right, Maryanne sped across four lanes of asphalt without a trace of indecision.

Thank my lucky stars no cars were coming.

Finally locating my voice, I yelled for her to wait for us on the far side of the road. When we reached her, I was trembling. “I told you to stop. Didn’t you hear me?” A long silence ensued as I caught my breath. “Listen, Sweetie, dry your tears on your sleeve, but you must know that crossing this street as you did is very dangerous. You might have been killed. Drivers cannot see you on this curve.”

I reviewed the rules of the road for the kids and reminded myself that, while self-interest precludes perfect charity, the essence of wrong is self-interest. Back home, I told their mother what had happened, but she was expecting a Skype call from her ex. Perhaps not comprehending the gravity of the situation, she just said, “OK, I’ll speak to her.”

As Stanislaw Lec observed, “No snowflake in the avalanche ever feels responsible.”

Though I’d been a solitary flake, as the largest and oldest, I did feel responsible. Had a truck been rounding that bend, one or perhaps two of us might have died. That night, I dreamed I placed my young wife on the handlebars of an old Schwinn with a radio fuselage and went for a ride in a bad neighborhood. Someone on the radio was singing “Daisy Bell . . . I’m half crazy . . . on a bicycle built for two.” Then, my front wheel dropped into an open manhole, pitching my bride headlong under a passing car. In a noirish courtroom, I sued the city for their carelessness and Schwinn for their failure to warn me about sitting on the handlebars. I awoke in a sweat.

Had there been an accident in reality, of course, I would have been financially, morally, and perhaps criminally responsible, and this realization still congeals the contents of my stomach. I never should have taken those kids across that thoroughfare without their mother’s explicit permission, even if the kids did look like orphans and it was their birthday.

Hindus say, “Call on the Gods, but row away from the rocks.”

There were alternatives “away from the rocks” that I never considered, but should have.

The airlines say that when oxygen masks fall from the ceiling, you should attend to yourself first. This experience with Maryanne has convinced me otherwise.