Dying: Part 2

My first near-death experience is also one of my earliest memories. The exact year (and my exact age) is a bit fuzzy, but I know that I hadn’t yet started school. Growing up I was a very clean child. I didn’t like to be dirty, I still don’t in fact. Hand washing was something that my parents had no problem cajoling me into doing.

Still, I was a child and somehow one day, while washing my hands—I got a bit of liquid Dial soap into my mouth. I was probably touching my lips, which were always causing me problems as a child. My lips are big, they always have been big. In fact, they’ve always been the size they are now. So my huge pillow lips got in the way of my hand washing and I somehow got soap into my mouth.

The taste was bitter and clashed with the viscous sweetness the Dial projected. My nostrils and my tastes buds were flashing my little child brain conflicting messages. Was this Dial something nice or something awful, putrid even?

I quickly lapped up some water and swished it around in my mouth—but the damage was done. This part of the story is also a bit fuzzy, but for some reason I felt (with much certainty) that I was going to die. Dial soap went into my mouth, now I was going to die.

A timeline was also somehow involved in my eminent death: I was convinced that I’d die at the end of the day. Going to sleep would somehow magnify the poison of the soap, allow it to choke my heart and silence my lungs.

Despite the fact that I was facing such a dire predicament, I felt calm, relaxed even. I spent the rest of the day “saying goodbye” to things that I would miss once I was dead.

The crabapple trees outside in my parents front yard.
The sun.
The gray chain-link fence that surrounded our back yard.
The sky.
Clumps of grass.
The oozy leopard-print slugs that slowly crawled along the concrete outside our door.

Strangely, none of the things I said farewell to were people—like my parents or my sister Amber (whom I loved dearly). For some reason I was only preoccupied with bidding farewell to all the small, inconsequential things. The things I rarely gave even a passing thought.

At the end of the day I told my family goodnight (again, not “goodbye”), then I went to bed. I was somber, but not devastated. I wasn’t blubbering like that inmate you see in prison dramas—you know the one on Death Row who acts all tough, but then when he’s being dragged to The Chair he cries like a total baby.

“Oh! Oh! Oh please Warden! I’m sorry.”

I folded my arms over my little-boy chest and shut my eyes. I got bored waiting for death (which doesn’t always come when once expects) and ended up falling fast asleep.

In the morning I awoke!

I was alive!

By some miracle that I didn’t understand, the Dial soap had failed to kill me. And though it made no sense to think that I was going to die in the first place, I find it even MORE absurd to think that because I had survived the night I knew that I wasn’t going to die. To this day I’m astounded by the rules I’d given “Death By Dial Soap.”

Much like anyone who brushes up against the icy shoulder of Death, and lives—I was elated. I ran around the house, flapping my arms like a bird. The sky was clear, the air was crisp, and my hands were clean. I was elated to be alive.