Near Miss

Near Miss ©

By Michael Casey

I read in today’s paper that the USAF dropped a nuclear bomb in 1961, they dropped  it when a plane had a problem, it fell to the earth in North Carolina. They had a lucky escape as it did not detonate, it could have changed the course of History. USA attacked, nuclear war, without realising they had dropped it on their own people, it was not a hostile attack. It is all too horrible to contemplate.

I’m not going to talk any more about that event, what I do want to talk about is when WE all have near misses. Like you see a pretty girl and several boys home in on her, which one will catch her eye. Only you discover you had a near miss, your mate took her out and guess what, she could drink him under  the table. The next day you hear chapter and verse, she’s a pint drinker and she matched Jazza pint for pint. Jazza likes a pint but he is 6’2” and a rugby player, Donna is 5’1” the new temp and she really is an alcoholic. Really as in always drinking, that’s why she always has mints on her desk, to disguise the smell of alcohol on her breath.

You don’t think of girls as being drinkers but this one was, I am in fact talking about a real people but I’ve disguised it to protect the innocent. One of our lodgers 40 years and more ago was a struck off doctor, an old alcoholic, I can remember my dad bringing down her full chamber pot in the morning. We all have other near misses. Eric Clapton once gave up his place on a helicopter ride, only for the helicopter to crash, he would have been dead and he’d never have met me, offering to carry his bag at CPNEC.

I fell in love with a house once, 35 years ago maybe, but then when the survey came back I was angry as the house was dodgy, and I had wasted £115, which is a lot of money now and was an even larger amount then.

So what do these events teach us? Well they do make us sigh, and thank God, that could have been a bad experience. Was it luck? Did that lucky rabbit’s foot really work? Crossing the road on the zebra can be a near fatal experience. 100 yards away is the zebra, I was crossing it and a bus had stopped to let me cross the road, now everybody would just cross the road, a normal everyday event. Me I stopped ½ way to see what was behind the bus. Then a woman speeding thunders past  overtaking the stopped bus and would have killed me. She was overtaking at a zebra with traffic stopped.  That’s why I always make the traffic stop in both directions before I cross the road. Another Near Miss.

So Near Misses make us think and change our attitudes. I’m always a safe pedestrian. Coming home in the dark for decades and crossing busy junctions makes me that way. Analyse situations for a second or two before you do anything. This can improve you success ratio. When I was a concierge I was able to judge people in 20seonds, I cannot do it now, but then having met 100,000 guests I was good at it.

You look at people’s face then you watch their hands, how are their hands, do they have fists clenched, do they have open or closed hands. This is useful when you going through the city late at night, as I did for years in my computer room days. What is their facial expression? A person’s face gives away what their intent might be. Clenched teeth and so forth. Cross the street and avoid a possible confrontation.

Some people stick out for the wrong reason. If you are in a four star hotel and a guy with tattoos turns up when everybody else is in business suits then you’ll watch him. If there is a band in the hotel, he may be a roadie, but otherwise you watch him and radio in to the security guy who follow him on the camera, or may literally walk 2 paces behind him. I did do a bit of security too while I was at CPNEC, as well as 10 other roles, Employee of the Year after all.

Exams can be Near Misses too, you did not quite get that grade, your whole life can spin on that grade. You may have set your heart on this, but you end up doing that. Though it can be the other way around, you got better grades and you end up doing something different. Then you look back and it was a near miss, you could have followed the boring path. You may have not met your husband if you had gone to a different Uni. I wonder do Kate and William think that.

I’ve had a few Near Misses in my life. I could even say my whole life has been like a gamble, a game of roulette. My eldest brother said try computers 35 years ago when my life was in a dead end, and then I had 20 years in a nice place, and I only applied to one computer job. Back then people were very impressed when you said you worked in computers, the word IT hadn’t even been invented.

I’ve had a near miss when a play was accepted but not finally produced, then I watch tv and think what rubbish compared to my play. It was my Rocky Horror moment without getting produced, the play is called Shoplife by the way. You can get rich just by one piece of writing. You may never produce anything else, but who cares if you have made a few bob.

At the moment I’m waiting to see if a script of mine is going to be turned into a film, so while I’m waiting there is Hope. If it does not happen there is at least the consolation that it WAS considered.  So what do we learn by all these Near Misses? To be stoic I suppose, to never give up and never give in. After each Near Miss there is a chance to start again, a kind of evolution of the Spirit if you like. If you keep on having the same “bad luck” you need to change your mind set, never be the victim, or that  just spirals down into self-pity.

So Pray, Hope and Don’t Worry after each dark night is the dawn.