Indestructible P1

People sometimes try to convince me that I can, in fact, be destroyed. That I should be careful and it's dangerous to believe I can survive anything.
 

That's only because they don't know how many times life has tried to boot me from existence and the universe wouldn't allow it. So, I am going to tell these stories here, one at a time.

This is the first one that I know of. Who knows how many I was never told, don't recall or was unaware of.

I was about 3 weeks old. My mother, who was likely ADHD, but undiagnosed because this was 1983, had set my car seat, with me in it, down in the drive way to buckle my youngest brother into his. Then she made sure the other 4 kids where buckled in and got into the front seat having completely forgotten that I was still in the driveway. Happily enjoying the fresh air.

Where she sat my car seat was the exact path the back tier followed every single day when she backed out for the past two years. She always left in the same direction. Had no reason to drive the other way to get out of that neighborhood. Every day for over two years. That's over 730 days.

But that day as she started the car and threw it into reverse she stopped because an idea popped into her head out of nowhere. She thought...

 I wonder if cigarettes are cheaper at the store at the other end of town...

So, she turned the wheel.

In another universe she did what she had always done and my short life ended when that tire positioned perfectly to roll right over my tiny body from my feet to my head and squeezed all my potential, and every weird moment of my strange future right out of the top of my adorable little cotton top head, like pink bubble gum baby brain toothpaste.

But in this universe, I came into view, my mother hit the breaks, looked at the empty back seat where I should have been, jumped out, snatched me up and sat holding me in the front seat, sobbing for 20 minutes while the big kids tried to comfort her.

I was three weeks old. This was three weeks after the doctors thought I wouldn't survive because the antibodies from my mother and from the breast milk attacked my body. I also refused to breast feed before they discovered that my little body had been fighting hard to keep me alive for all those months in the womb. I don't count that as a near miss... But it's worth mentioning. I was the first and last of her six kids to be bottle fed.

This was also three weeks after the doctor, while running the test that discovered all of this, pricked my heel to draw blood and instead of crying out and snatching my foot away... I broke his nose with it and he ran out of the room cupping his face, leaving a trail of dripping blood.

So, I came out fighting, but, clearly, someone was looking out for me as well.

(Side note: The power struggle between mine and my mother's immune systems could be why I have autoimmune conditions now.)