Caitlin Woodward

A bird almost flew into the side of my face today. I was walking out of an open doorway on the school campus, and this huge black bird swiped down and inches in front of me. Had I been a few seconds faster or it had been a few seconds slower, it would have flown directly into the side of my face. Now, don't get me wrong, I am very glad it didn't hit me. But looking at it from the other perspective, it wouldn't have been too bad if it did. It would be interesting, and funny (definitely more retrospectively, but I imagine there would be plenty of humor at the time). Immediately I envisioned just this huge hole shaped gash on my forehead or on my cheek. People would ask what happened, and I would reply nonchalantly that a bird flew into me. I mean, how often does that happen?

Or, I could see myself in the emergency room. Somehow the bird managed to lodge its beak into the side of my face, and it was too deep that I thought I shouldn't take it out myself.  So I would be sitting there in the waiting room, you know for three hours of course. People would be coming in with gun wounds and missing limbs, and I would be sitting there with a bird sticking out of side of my head. It would be kind of funny.

Oh, wow. I just realized that the bird would probably be still alive for all of this. Provided that it didn't pass out from shock or anything, the new image would be of me, sitting in the waiting room, with a bird stuck into the side of my head and flapping around like mad. Would it stop trying to flap after a couple hours? What would happen if it dislodged itself in the waiting room? I could picture that too. Two hours have already passed. I'm lying down in the waiting room chairs because I have a headache now since the bird has been flapping, well, because there is a beak lodged into the side of my head. So I'm lying there. The bird is lying on the side of my face. The bird is tired because it's been flapping for hours. Every ten minutes or so the bird flaps around sort of lazily, but to no avail. But finally, the bird manages to get free, and starts to fly away. I shoot up in immense pain because the bird just dislodged itself and now there is blood spurting out of my head Kill- Bill-style. Meanwhile, the bird used up all its energy flapping, so it can't really fly. It falls to the ground and just kind of flaps around the ground like a fish. So. That might not be as funny.

Perhaps, after all, I am thankful for those two seconds that didn't bring us together.