Yup. My son’s first set of stitches came to mind as I pondered this question. He had just turned 2. I was sitting on the front stoop of my mom’s house looking at a wedding album of a girl I grew up with that her mom had brought over. He came excitedly running across the porch, tripped on an uneven spot and pitched forward toward the concrete steps – sssslllllooooow-mmmmoooo – I can still see him falling forward, but not being able to get my hands out to catch him and watching his face hit the corner of the steps right between his eyes (an inch left or right and he could’ve easily lost an eye). We scoop him up and blood is squirting straight out in time with his pulse – he’d hit an artery. I heard myself say, “major blood” and hopped up to get clean dishrags and ice to put on it. 20+ years and 5 sets of stitches (among several other medical emergencies) and he doesn’t remember, nor is there much of a scar… but the memory is as fresh in my mind as if it were yesterday. Amazing how it works.
The only time I didn’t have a slow-down was my most recent (and worst) accident. Traffic stopped short on the interstate and the two vans in front of me swerved left and right to avoid collision, so I stayed straight. The huge pickup behind my Mini Cooper couldn’t stop as fast and he caught my right rear corner which sent me into a 180° spin, and I thought that would be it. Next thing I knew, I was upside-down hollering, “Holy Fuck!” because the median was very muddy from all the melting snow, so the right-side tires stuck in the mud and inertia took the rest of the car over. Once I was upside-down the slo-mo kicked in, but because I thought I’d just spin and stop, the onset of the roll caught me completely by surprise.