A Happy Life

I have lived a happy life. Of course I've had my share of setbacks, disappointments, and downright catastrophes, just like everybody else. But in spite of that, my life has been a happy one. I have a story to tell which I think helps explain why. This is a true story, no matter how strange it sounds. I've never told the whole story to anyone, and perhaps it's time I did. I admit that the series of coincidences that occurred is hard to believe, but so what? There was nothing supernatural about any of them. Sometimes life is like that. Maybe peculiar circumstances create peculiar results. This story has been on my mind lately because of the depressing circumstances I've found myself in lately. I need to remind myself that I know how to face life's difficulties and not let them destroy you.

I was just over 20 when this story begins. I'd graduated from high school early, had two years of college, worked for a famous scientist who trained me very well, and fallen in love. The man I fell in love with moved to another city to attend graduate school. We were planning to marry, so I accepted a job in a  not very distinguished laboratory loosely associated with his new university and moved near him. The laboratory was working with single fibers, and part of my job was to weigh them accurately. At that time, this was a very difficult, tedious process. My boss, hoping to make the results more accurate, purchased two small radioactive devices to put into the chamber that held the scale. They were supposed to ionize the air slightly. They both had shields on them at first.  The shields were not supposed to be removed, and they were supposed to be aimed away from the operator of the scale towards the trays that held the individual fiber and the standard. Instead, the head of the laboratory removed the shields and aimed them towards me. I had no way to know that this was dangerous.

I developed a rash after about a week and began to feel horrible. I had a series of flu-like upset stomachs, but I kept on working, with a brief break to get married. Finally, after months of working with those devices pointed towards me, the woman in the lab next to mine asked me if I'd ever read the directions for using them. She said she wondered if I'd been feeling bad because I was being overexposed to radiation. The head of the laboratory assured me that this was nonsense, but somehow couldn't find those instructions. I called my father, told him what was happening, asked him to arrange a doctor's appointment for me, and went back to the city I'd come from. This was a long time ago, and not all that much was known about radiation poisoning, but the doctor told my father I was in deep trouble. He'd contacted the manufacturer of those devices, and I'd had a dose of radiation so large I had roughly a 50/50 chance of surviving at all. If I did, I'd probably have cancer or leukemia by the time I was 40. I probably wouldn't be able to have children, and if I did, they could be damaged by the dose of radiation I'd had. My father, with a certain degree of pleasure, told me all this.

By then I was 21, newly married, my whole life should have been spread out in front of me, and I was told I was doomed. My new husband wasn't with me on this trip to the doctor; I don't remember exactly why not or where he was. I had to take a train, and then a bus, alone, back to where I now lived. I sat on the train, staring out the window in shock, wondering how to tell him my horrible news. It was a long trip, near midnight by the time I got to the station where I'd take the bus, so there were very few people on the bus. There was a disturbed looking man sitting across from me, staring at me, his pants open, handling his penis. As we got into the town where I lived, the driver called me to the front of the bus. He said he wasn't taking me to the bus station, but would stop the bus and I should jump off before the man could follow me. I agreed.

He stopped the bus, I jumped off, almost got hit by a car as I ran across the street, and I tripped over the curb and fell, hurting my knee. Next, I had to walk across the dark, deserted campus to get to my apartment. My knee hurt like Hell, but I had no choice. What's going on? I wondered as I walked home. Wasn't it enough to learn that my life was ruined? Next a pervert is  after me,  I almost get hit by a car, and I have a nasty fall?

It was, as they say, a dark and stormy night. As I crossed the campus, it started to rain. I started to laugh. It was all just too much! Doom, death by cancer or leukemia, a pervert, I could have been killed by that car, I fell, and now it rains? Surely there had to be some meaningful, fateful lesson in all this! And there was. Of course there was. The pervert could have attacked me, but the bus driver saved me. If the car had hit me, it would hardly have mattered whether or not I had radiation sickness, would it? When I fell I could have hit my head instead of smashing my knee. As I walked across the dangerously lonely campus, I could be attacked. The rain was probably protecting me! Nobody would be out looking for stupid girls crossing lonely campuses on a rainy night. Radiation sickness or whatever, I was no more or less mortal than anyone else. At any time you can get hit by a truck. So what? Life is random and dangerous. The only choice is to live as though you're going to live.

So that's how I chose, at that moment, to live. This was over 50 years ago. I didn't die of radiation sickness. I didn't get cancer or leukemia before I was 40. I did have perfectly healthy children. The truth is, as I got older I got more and more healthy physically and rarely even catch a cold. I could have spent the same number of years living in terror, considering myself doomed and about to die. Instead, probably at least partly because of what had happened on my way back from the doctor, I chose to live a full and exciting life. Yes, it's had its ups and downs. What life doesn't? The point is, I've lived my life to the best of my ability, with humor, love, and courage, and there's not much that I regret. I've refused to let anything or anyone spoil my life for me. After all, each spring the flowers bloom again.