Playing Dead

When I was in Alaska I spent a day on a tiny uninhabited island.  I spent most of my day hiking and playing in tide pools, but with an hour left until I was going to get picked up by my boss in his boat, I decided to take a nap.  I laid down on my belly in some tall grass and must have fallen asleep quickly.  When I woke up, I woke up suddenly.  I could hear a bear breathing heavily right above me.  I waited for him to do something.  I didn't have any of that life-flashing-before-my-eyes stuff going on, I just had a really impatient feeling for it to all be done and over with.  When nothing had happened for what seemed like a good, long, while but with the breathing still rough, and threatening in my ears, I decided to roll over and take a look at the guy and finish the business.

Looking back I can see that probably wasn't so wise.  A smart gal would have laid there like she was dead until the sharp-toothed, large-clawed, heavy-breather got bored and lumbered off to find a livelier moose or something.  But I'm no good with suspense.  Well, when I rolled over I found that the sound that I thought was so clearly a hungrily respirating bear was really the flap of the wings of a large bird that was flying over me.  My heart rate didn't get below 120 for at least a year, maybe two.

I feel like I'm going through that same sort of thing right now.

The checker at the store will be like, "Are all of these yours?"  And just to beat her to the punch, just to get the pain over with, just to get the hard truth out, I say, "Yeah, and I'm expecting another one too."

And the checker's eyes get wider.  And I can see that she didn't really want to know all that.  She was just a bird, not a bear at all.  And she says, "Oh...well...congratulations."

And I don't look at her and say, "Um...thanks."

I'm always glad when I get to wheel my cart over-brimming with children away from something like that.  And I think, "Maybe next time, next time will be the time I remember to play dead."