When I was little we didn’t use seat belts. I’m not sure if our cars even had them when we were little. On our trips between Pittsburgh, PA and Blackfoot, Idaho we had cushions that laid in the back of our station wagon and we three little girls bedded down all snug and comfy while Mom drove through the night. We didn’t have car seats for my first two babies. I carried them home from the hospital in the front seat on my lap. It sounds insane now. But it didn’t feel that way then. And riding was physically much more comfortable.
Then laws were enacted, and laws were enforced, and we all started strapping in, at least when a cop was in sight.
I think my personal issues with seat belts began when we bought a car that had automatic shoulder belts in the front seats. As soon and the engine turned over, this robotic sound would rise up as a strap locked in at the shoulder. We had to put the lap belt on ourselves. The parent in me had by that time started taking note of the safety factor of the seat belt. Public Service Announcements from the Utah Safety Council did an effective job scaring us. And I jumped on the scare tactic train by telling poor pre-adolescent Kate about the lady I heard of who did not strap her seat belt on and was beheaded by the shoulder belt in an accident. I think I may have added the clincher visual of her head rolling down the freeway. Not my finest parenting move. I think poor Kate is still traumatized.
Anyway, I have never been comfortable, physically, in a seat belt. I’m sure it has to do with my body shape. I swear seat belts are made my men for men, of a certain height and shoulder width, with no hips and no breasts. I used to call that automatic shoulder belt we had the "Lucifer strap". Its sole purpose was to protect us, sure, but we had absolutely no say in it. "That's exactly what Lucifer planned... he was going to FORCE us to be good. It's devilish, I tell you!" That automatic seatbelt was going to force us to be safe, by golly, whether we wanted to be safe or not! . I developed a sort of righteous indignation about that belt because it took away my power to choose. That's where church and seat belts fit in the same emotional category for me. And frankly, when it comes down to it, I am grateful for both, I just don’t want to be forced into either of them.
A few decades ago I was in a car accident on the corner of Shepard Lane and Main Street. A car ran a stop sign and ran smack into the front corner of my van. This was before we had a vehicle with air bags. I sat stunned for a moment, watching steam rise from the scrunched hood in front of me, with steam rising from it. I became aware of the loudness of the music basting from my car speakers, removed my seat belt and leaned up to turn off the radio. There was a piercing pain in my chest, so I sat back and waited. The paramedics arrived, strapped me to a stiff wooden board and hauled me off in an ambulance. I thought something was wrong with my heart or lungs. X rays showed I had a broken clavicle, a bruised sternum, and cracked ribs. All this from my seat belt. I also had an injured knee, broken toe and torn tendon in my finger and forearm. I could not lie down for six weeks. Dave lugged my mom’s old blue chair up to our bedroom awhere I recovered. I did a lot of thinking during that time. I also wrote the song Get Back on That Pony., but that's another story for another time.
I often think about the fact that what harmed me also saved me.
I realized, as I sat there, that what had harmed me had actually saved me, too.
Now, when I choose to reach over my shoulder, tug on the polyester belt and strap myself in, I feel it press against that tender spot on my collar bone that had once been cracked because of a seatbelt. I bugs me. So I have to parent myself and speak logic. I have a personal brain fight every time I get in the car. A while back, while I was driving and doing a little self-analysis about the whole seat belt thing, I had a little thought that putting on my seatbelt was kind of like saying my daily prayers. Sometimes its no problem at all. I wake up grateful and rested and its easy to pause before God and thank him. Then there are the times I’m grumpy, or sore and tired, or running late for a meeting, and I don’t really feel like praying. That’s when I think of prayer like my seatbelt. In a good way. I decided daily prayer and seatbelts are just those tools given in our humanness to help keep us just a bit safer in a dangerous world. We can choose to use them, or not. And in choosing, I accept the consequences if something should go amiss.
Seatbelts. Church. I wish the temptation to resist doing what's right would dissipate in me. But I am getting up there in years and it is still alive and well. I guess its part of being a spirit, who I suspect fought hard against Lucifer's plan, put into human form. It's ok. I don't hate myself for it. But I do have a lot of brain fights. And fortunately, usually, the good guy wins.
