The Columbia Chronicle Online

If you could turn back the hands of time

By James Boozer
Contributing Editor

There comes a point in our lives where we have to make life and death decisions. Once we have made those decisions, there is no turning back. No second chance to rethink, to analyzes or to hope that the decisions we made was for the best. While you may think you have all the time in the world, in reality, time has already passed.

Last week, I was reading a front page story in the Chicago Sun-Times that caught my attention.

The story was about Rachel Barton, a violinist who was awarded a large sum of money ($29.6 million to be exact) from a Cook County jury for injuries she suffered while riding a Metra train in 1995. While I was a little surprise by the amount she received, the biggest detail left unanswered about this accident was why did it happen. I'm sure you know the whole story by now, so ut yourself in her place for a moment.

You have four bags, a purse, a food bag, a book bag and a violin case, weighing maybe 70 plus pounds or so. You're in a hurry to get off the train so you head toward the nearest door. The doors open, you get off and you notice that one of your bags is caught on the vertical support bars so you turn around and you: A. Try to unhook the bag before the door closes and the train leaves. B. Say something like "Blah", leave the bag behind and go on your way. Or C, stop readjust the bag on your shoulder while looking back to see what the problem is and hesitate before you make your next move.

If you picked "A," you probably have only a few seconds to grab the bag from around the vertical support bars and leave, so it's a toss-up on whether you chose this one. If you picked "B," you have enough sense to know that if it's not important enough to keep in front of you, it's not worth your life if you left it behind. If you picked "C," you leave yourself open to the chance of being seriously injured or losing your life for something as unimportant as a violin.

Barton chose to put her life in the hands of someone else and must now live the rest of her life in a wheelchair or on crutches. Although she now has millions of dollars to aid in her medical bills and for pain and suffering, her life will never be the same.

Some say that if Barton had the chance to relive those few seconds of her life over again, she would have let the bag go. But as I said in the beginning, there are no "second chances." What saddens me the most about this incident is the fact that Barton had enough time to react and make a better decision. She didn't have to put her life on the line for a violin.

Lawyers on both sides agreed that she had about 10 seconds to react before the train began its departure. Ten seconds may not sound like a lot of time, but let's put this situation into perspective. Your back is up against a train door, you have very little room to move your arm and 10 seconds to make a decision that will affect your life forever.

How long does it take you to figure out that something is wrong? Two seconds. How long does it take you to get your arm from around the bag? Maybe three to seven seconds. How long does it take you to then turn around and see if you could---within a safe enough distance from the train--try to remove your bag without putting yourself in danger? Three seconds.

So there you have it, ten seconds to react to a life and death situation. You're probably saying to yourself that it could never happen that way because there just isn't enough time to react, but you would be wrong. If you really think about it, would you waste time wondering if something is wrong before you realize---probably too late--- the train is moving and taking you with it? And even if the train was moving, you would do whatever you could to escape before the train dragged you along the platform causing serious injuries that may cause you to die.

I know that Barton probably did whatever she could to break lose, but I feel that she could have prevented that tragic incident from happening to her if she would have reacted quicker to the situation. Could that same incident happen to someone else? Sure. Could it result in that person being seriously injured or even killed? Yes. Could the whole thing have been prevented? YES.

It's easy to blame someone other than yourself when you make bad decisions. Whether you want to believe it or not, you always share in some of the blame because you could have stopped it from happening. You can never turn back time to erase bad things that have happened to you because life doesn't work that way. While we all can sympathize with what happened to Rachel Barton, we know--at least I do--that when the time comes to make a decision---whether or not it's a life or death situation--- you react quickly because you never have a second chance.