A dignified coroner’s report

You see those pictures of people in Pompeii and you think, how weird: one quick game of dice after your tea and you're frozen, and that's how people remember you for the next thousand years. Suppose it was the first of dice you've ever played? Suppose you were only doing it to keep your friend Augustus company? Suppose you'd just at the moment finished a brilliant poem or something? Wouldn't it be annoying to be commemorated as a dice player?

Nick Hornby, ‘High Fidelity’

 

Years ago in college, one day I was having a coffee with friends outside the cafeteria when a huge pinecone fell and landed a few inches from me. That pinecone could have hit and split my head open. Perhaps. At least that’s what I imagined and it was at that point that I started fearing a ridiculous death. Second time I escaped a ridiculous death was in Goa, India, when a killer coconut fell from a tremendously tall palm tree missing our group by a few feet.

It’s not fear of death per se. I’m not afraid of dying. Not that I would ever choose to go heli-skiing –i.e. jumping from a helicopter onto wild snow and extreme slopes- or cheerleading, which seems to be the most dangerous and injury-prone sport for women, although if I had to choose I’d prefer to risk my life while being tossed into the air and rotating in a funky costume rather than by jumping out of an helicopter in ski wears that make me look as if I had to survive a bio-chemical disaster.

I’m not afraid of dying in a sense that, for example, I’m not scared of turbulence when flying, meaning that I don’t flip out and scream WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. You never know what Jacks and Sawyers you will find on that tiny island awaiting you in the middle of the Ocean…

I fear a ridiculous death, though. One of those that make people remember you as “that chick that die from a pinecone”. Or, the coroner’s report indicating “death by coconut”.

One would say, stand clear of trees and of course the closing doors. Nope. Not enough. On my way back from Florida I found myself thanking God I didn’t die smashed by a pelican while swimming in the Gulf of Mexico or hit by a 34 kg flying ray jumping out of the water.