Post by Dark Beauty on Dec 11, 2008 21:05:23 GMT -8
Okay, so I am interested in what you all have to say about this. I have come to notice that it's the times when I should be panicking that I am the most calm and reasonable. For example, when I was in Utah a little while ago I had a near death experience and I have never been more robotically calm in my life. The short story: my cousin's car lost control when she avoided a car coming into our lane, and we ended up fishtailing until we hit the barricade on the side of the freeway at 70 miles an hour and then were flung back out onto the freeway, spinning until we were "horizontal" on the freeway, taking up two lanes. (Thank heaven there wasn't much traffic at that specific moment in time!) She then pulled over to the shoulder to check the damage, which was incredibly infinitesimal.
The reactions:
1). The thought, Huh. The car shouldn't have lost control that easily... I wonder if there is something wrong with the alignment of her steering...?
2). The thought, ...Hmmm... I could die very easily.
3). Ritualistically taking hold of the bar on the door, bracing myself for impact (since we were going to hit the passenger side headlight on the barricade)
4). Thinking That was really odd... I should be dead right now when the car, at the last fraction of a second, turned so that we hit the back bumper.
5). Thinking, Really? We should be finished now... when we kept moving and ended up in the middle of the road.
6). Being extremely calm and wondering why I was when we pulled over. I never did go into shock or get panicked.
Today, the nearly-6-year-old Kitty burned her entire left forearm and hand on the glass door of our wood-burning stove. Silent, the Ostrich, and I were all babysitting, since Mom was shopping and Dad was at work. Again, I was extremely calm, though my heart was quite literally hurting to hear her screams. We knew as soon as we saw the expanse of white that it would be a second-degree burn. That information in mind, I calmly put her arm under softly running coolish water (because cold water only makes burns worse) and we loosely bandaged it with soaked paper towels. As the others tried to quell her screams and keep her burn cool, I called mother's cell phone (again, ritualistically) and told her the situation, asking if it was okay if I took the Kitty to the hospital, since I knew that keeping her at the house would do nothing to help heal her arm. What ended up happening was she told me to keep her there and do what we were doing until Dad came home (about 40 minutes later).
Calmly (though Kitty still screamed), we filled a bowl full of the cool water and had her keep her arm in it, changing the water every so often so that it would stay relatively clean. When Dad came we took her to the clinic (only because we feared the hospital would be too busy), and she's well now.
My main discussion point is that calm in the time of should-be-panic. Those are not the only two instances where that's happened. Is that normal? Do any of you guys get that? I'm interested.
The reactions:
1). The thought, Huh. The car shouldn't have lost control that easily... I wonder if there is something wrong with the alignment of her steering...?
2). The thought, ...Hmmm... I could die very easily.
3). Ritualistically taking hold of the bar on the door, bracing myself for impact (since we were going to hit the passenger side headlight on the barricade)
4). Thinking That was really odd... I should be dead right now when the car, at the last fraction of a second, turned so that we hit the back bumper.
5). Thinking, Really? We should be finished now... when we kept moving and ended up in the middle of the road.
6). Being extremely calm and wondering why I was when we pulled over. I never did go into shock or get panicked.
Today, the nearly-6-year-old Kitty burned her entire left forearm and hand on the glass door of our wood-burning stove. Silent, the Ostrich, and I were all babysitting, since Mom was shopping and Dad was at work. Again, I was extremely calm, though my heart was quite literally hurting to hear her screams. We knew as soon as we saw the expanse of white that it would be a second-degree burn. That information in mind, I calmly put her arm under softly running coolish water (because cold water only makes burns worse) and we loosely bandaged it with soaked paper towels. As the others tried to quell her screams and keep her burn cool, I called mother's cell phone (again, ritualistically) and told her the situation, asking if it was okay if I took the Kitty to the hospital, since I knew that keeping her at the house would do nothing to help heal her arm. What ended up happening was she told me to keep her there and do what we were doing until Dad came home (about 40 minutes later).
Calmly (though Kitty still screamed), we filled a bowl full of the cool water and had her keep her arm in it, changing the water every so often so that it would stay relatively clean. When Dad came we took her to the clinic (only because we feared the hospital would be too busy), and she's well now.
My main discussion point is that calm in the time of should-be-panic. Those are not the only two instances where that's happened. Is that normal? Do any of you guys get that? I'm interested.