John a nineteen year old lay on a bed in my home smelling of alcohol. He had been driving home late at night from a party when his car ended up in a ditch near my home. He had not been knocked out. He appeared uninjured. He was shaking and frightened.    

“Is my dad coming?” As he asked this he shuddered.   

“I don’t think he knows as yet John. Are you scared of him?” I asked him.   

“Well, it’s his car I’ve pranged. I can hardly imagine him being happy about it. Can you?”   

“No, I suppose not. However he might focus on the relief of the fact that you are alive rather than dead. Do you want me to phone him?”  He shook his head. 

“I’ll get you a cup of tea”. I came back and sat him up. He began to drink the tea. But I had to take the cup from him as he started to shake.   

“Close your eyes a minute”, I told him. “Tell me, what you see?”   

“Shit, I am driving down Whakararoo road, It’s dark. I’m crying and I am hitting the steering wheel. I see a tree and I am saying to hell with it. I’ll hit the tree. This will show her. Jesus, I have driven the car off the road and I’m heading straight for the tree. There’s some steerage.  Thank god…. I’ve missed the tree”. 

He shook his head and opened his eyes. His shaking stopped. 

“Do you remember what you just told me?”   

“Yes, I do. It’s hard to believe, but it looks like I drove the car off the road on purpose. I’d only had one beer. I can’t put it down to booze”   

“Why do you think you might have done that”? I asked.  

“My girl friend and I’d had a row. She was flirting with   another guy at the party. She said there was nothing in it and I shouldn’t worry. She was just having some fun. An hour later she wasn’t in the house and I went looking for her. I found them in the garden lying on a bank. He had his hand up her skirt and she was moaning and giggling. They were laughing and rolling about. She didn’t know I was there. 

‘He’ll never know’, she was saying to him. She unzipped his fly and put her hand in. 

I pulled them a part and began to hit him. She threw a glass of beer in my face. People pulled me off him and she told me it was all over. I jumped in the car and drove off. I was mad at her. We had decided to go steady only a couple of days before. Jesus!” He paused for a moment.   

“I have just tried to kill myself. Oh my god! No woman is worth that. Shit!” A few moments of stillness and insight was followed by laughter arising from his gut. I laughed with him.  

“We’d better ring your dad”. He agreed.

His dad arrived. He’d seen the car on the way. He came in fuming.   

“You stupid little bastard. You stink of alcohol and you have pranged my car. That’s the last time you ever borrow a car of mine”. He raved on for a few minutes, stomping about the room and hitting himself with his clenched fists. 

“Hang on a minute dad”, John interrupted his dad’s rage.”It wasn’t the booze. I did it on purpose.” 

His father stopped in mid stride. “You what”? 

John told the whole story. Dad’s jaw dropped further and further as the story unfolded. When it was finished, he walked over to his son and picked him up and sat him on his knee. 

“Look boy, forget all I’ve just said. I love you. Thank God, you are all right”. He gave John a long emotional hug. 

As they left, he said, “You’d better lie on the insurance claim.”   They walked off down the drive arm in arm and they were both laughing.   

“Well, good riddance to bad rubbish I’d say son”  

 “Yeeer !              

commentary   

How many accidents aren’t really? 

If John hadn’t been in my home that day and felt safe to cry, let go and discover the shocking truth, he probably would have forgotten he’d done it on purpose, that he actually aimed to harm himself, to get back at his girl friend.  His sensible rational self would probably have been unable to accept this.

A teacher came into my office and asked for six weeks off from teaching. She wanted me to lie for her and invent a sickness. I suggested she come back the next day and tell her own lies. 

She came back two days later. She’d snapped an achilles tendon playing basket ball. She ended up with seven weeks off and finished her thesis. Did she do this on purpose? No of course not, not consciously; but it makes me wonder? 

“I hate my work. I need to make a clean break. Problem is they need me. The place will fall a part without me. I keep resigning and then, when they plead with me, I always go back. I can’t walk away. I always go back.  I resigned again last week. They phoned me on Saturday. I was once again conflicted. Soon after the call, later in the day, I fell off my bike and broke my ankle. It’s almost as if this was the only way I could get away from the place!!   

“Well, you’ve sure made a clean break of it”.  She smiled.   She was wondering too.

One day between getting up and lunch time I hit my head on two door sills. I slammed the car door on my foot. I fell down a ditch and had a near miss in my car. I parked the car on the side of the road, took a deep breath and asked myself what the hell was going on? I realised I was angry and in a huff with Tish, my wife. The rest of the day went well.

A man in his twenties, a patient of mine, had notes a mile thick. He was never ill but he was always having major accidents. How come it was he that was up a power pole that was rotten and fell over, resulting in a broken leg? How come he was in the way of a runaway car? How come a chainsaw jumped up and hit him? No minor cuts for the Compo King, as he was known locally. His many accidents were the real deal. How did he know which power pole to climb or where to stand so the car hit him? Beats me but he had a real skill at it. He was accident prone, why?    

How many times have you had an accident and known a few seconds beforehand that you were going to whack your thumb with a hammer? How many times have you slowed your car down, found yourself wondering why you slowed down and then something happens in front of you? Boy that was lucky you say. Is it really luck or an awareness can can protect us, an awareness which when we are ‘stressed out’ we can not tuned into?

How many accidents are due to lack of attention due to internal distractions? How many are due to driving too fast, too close behind others and or to too rapid lane changing; and then blaming the other who was technically at fault. How many happen when anger is flowing? How many happen on purpose like John when in emotional turmoil. 

Can our subconscious arrange an accident for us without our rational self knowing? It seems so to me. Is this a silly thought?  Can we in the heat of the moment make self harming decisions we have difficulty remembering or acknowledging soon after? What do you think?