(These are facts!)
(Eat the rich!)
Anyways. In retrospect our lives were just very simple. The three of us ate dinner together three or four nights a week. Me and Roz—
(Roz!)
(ROOOOOZZZ!)
(Who has Roz on the bingo card?)
Me and Roz went to work, came home, spent time together, thought about Raff. Thought about having a kid. Thought about what to do for my mom on Mother’s Day. This was life. And I, honestly, wouldn’t have changed it. If you’d given me the option to go live on an island. Or inherit a yacht. Or whatever. I would have said, Nah. I’m good.
But there was a big bad wolf. And maybe everybody has a big bad wolf? Like, maybe if you live long enough, you just get a big bad wolf.
Ours…was maybe a little different than most people’s.
We were three of four people who were sitting in a café this time last year when a truck drove through the front window and almost killed us.
(Oh, Vin.)
(Shit.)
(You got it, Vin!)
I know, I know, I’m not trying to lay out all my bad and terrible moments onstage. I know that this isn’t therapy. I think a lot about what CJ said to me right before I went up onstage for the first time. “We don’t want anybody bleeding out onstage. Take care of yourself up there, man.” And so I’ve just kept not telling this story.
But here’s the thing. I think…I think I’m kind of stuck. Like, every day, at some point, not all day, but at some point, I realize that I’m pretending it didn’t happen. That I’ll drive home and not jump out of my skin whenever someone honks at me. That I’ll get home and walk into the house and Roz won’t have a scar under her shirt. And she and I won’t cry at loud noises. Or yell at each other because we’re all panicked about absolutely nothing. Or that I won’t have to see my brother do his PT where he picks up a pencil, draws a circle, puts the pencil down, and then does the whole thing over and over again. And he’s an engineer, for Chrissake. He needs to be able to—
Sorry. Sorry. Wow. You can hear a pin drop in here. I can’t tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
(It’s a good thing!)
(You got it, Vinny!)
Anyways. I thought that telling the story might be a way to remember that it happened. And that’s life. And we’re all okay. So here I go. We were sitting in this little café on the corner of Hudson and Worth. We were too early to meet some high school friends in Rockefeller Park, so we decided to duck in there and get coffee. It was raining. So we sat in the café. Roz was trying to figure out how they got their corn muffins so moist.
And this is life. One minute you’re laughing because your brother burned his tongue and the next minute everything is in slow motion.
I learned something very important about myself that day. It’s the only good thing that came out of it. I learned that I’m someone who would die for my wife. Did learning that come at way too high a price? Yes. But there it is. We heard screeching tires, I looked over my shoulder, a truck came through the window, hit the side of the building, and went on its side. And in those two seconds I’d jumped across the table and covered her. Which meant that even though she was really hurt, she was okay. Mostly okay.
Oh, shit.
(What?)
(He’s freezing up.)
(Why is he freezing up?)
(I don’t know, Irene. Why don’t you ask him?)
(You okay, Vin?)
I…didn’t…Shit. Hold on. I just…saw someone I didn’t expect…Oh. Two people I didn’t expect…
You okay, baby? Can I go on?
(Wait, what??)
