Draggin'

Yesterday a lady walks up to me and my kids while we were waiting to be served at a restaraunt. She looks at me in the wheelchair and asks my daughter what happened. After she told her, the lady looked at me and said "you have to think of them, you know." She was awfully serious when she asked me if I was going to do "it" again. It took a lot of thinking, but I responded to her concerned query with a simple "no." I was debating giving her the answer she deserved, but it wasn't worth it. I've been answering questions like this all month. The favorite is "are you still going to ski?", or something similar. I must have gotten that one about 15 times this month.

The typical conversation goes like this:
Person: "Did you get that skiing?"
Me: "No, I got it racing at Infineon Raceway" (I throw in the location so people don't think I was street racing)
Person: "Wow, that's too bad, motorcycle racing?"
Me: "No, I was in a car"
Person: "You were lucky, it could have been a lot worse."
Me "Yeah."
Person: "Well, stay safe."

If I told people that I really like driving and that being in a race car on a track is an extremely exelerating experience and that in actuality, I'm not at all sorry I did it. Or that I'm not worried about getting killed and I would like nothing more than to do it again as soon as I can. I would then have to explain that I thought that living my life in a safe-and-sane manner would be a death of spirit. I'd also need to explain to them that expanding their universe and trying something new and possibly scary would maybe get their mind off of death and bring focus to life and the thrill of living it. But I just don't have the time, or in some cases, the inclination.