Do you ever get a glimpse of what could have been...
 

I was driving home from work yesterday when a young man and a young woman with a baby strapped to her front ran across a fairly major road right at the side street that I was turning down. There's no light, no crosswalk, just lots of 40 mph traffic anxious to get home for the night....They crossed behind a turning car, so that traffic coming from the other side could not have seen them....Literally my heart stopped for just a second as they got to the middle with barely enough time to make it across, they made it no blood, no death....

But as I made my turn for home I shuddered and fully played out the resulting scene of them not making it, the mother stumbling, the car speeding up from 40-50, them leaving just a second later, and I couldn't shake the image for a while....then I got to realizing that I do this little mind game fairly often...like when I got in my fender bender this past Friday playing out if the Explorer wasn't there....would I have slammed the guard rail? flew off the embankment to the highway below? See here for that thread:
crash

Or when the window washers are outside my office window...

I find my body even does a little wince in those situations...I must say that this isn't a daily event but definitely weekly, even every couple of days...anyone else have this sort of reaction? it can be so detailed at times that I think I have tapped into some other stream of consiousness, makes me think of some of those science fiction novels about alternate realities and parallel universes...

I'm sure it is pretty much a mental reaction to a moment of high stress or disturbance but man it is just one of those human mind things that creeps me out sometimes....

Thoughts?
Adam

... reminds me of those acid trips back in the 60's

Xanax.

On occasion my imagination wanders down that path as well. Sometimes it is disturbing as all get out.

whew! You Ok man?

sometimes I wonder....I think I need to start drinking more....

I refuse to delve into those kinds of negative thoughts. A Marine officer riding his bicycle to work was hit, dragged 150 ft. and killed near Miramar yesterday by a hit and run driver. Life is filled with potential harm/death nearly every minute. If you start letting the fear in then what? Where does it end? Should the guy not have ridden his bike that day? How about ever?

The only time those fears come to the surface is when I'm dreaming. Otherwise I refuse to go there.