Perhaps I’m paranoid, but lately I’ve given much thought to the power of words, and how language betrays us. Take the word “awesome.” To say that something is awesome is to say that something is “mighty good, old chap.” However, to say something is awful means that it is “rather unfortunate.”

Apparently there is a critical mass of “awe” that makes something good, but too much of it is downright wrong. Perhaps “awesome,” back in the day, actually meant “balance.” So if something is awesome, it’s not amazing, not superlative, but well-proportioned. In other words, awesome power is none other than the red-headed stepchild of ultimate power, and an awesome movie is comme si comme ca. We know better now.

We seem to have upset the awe balance and have brought items with some awe to the top of the list, while items with lots of awe are bad. Is there anything else in this world where some of something is great, but lots is bad, or worse, tacky? It seems to be the theme these days…some cholesterol is good, but too much is fatal. Children are born singly or at least with fewer siblings rather than popping out by the dozens. Indeed, Americans have gone the way of moderation in its quest for the superlative, the best, the apex. I think we’ll found out soon enough that the old saying is true: everything in moderation. Including moderation…

But I digress.

History and I have been at odds lately. Rather, a more appropriate description would be parallel lines – we acknowledge each other, cross the same paths at the same angles, but never touch. I am fine with this relationship. Because when I slept, History often used to climb on my chest and sleep, a small weight on my heart, so that in my semi-consciousness moments between awake and asleep I had lucid dreams about being stretched out medieval-rack-style-with a twist, where I would be stretched taut and small weights placed on my chest until…

Well, I won’t go there. It’s icky.

In any case, I was thinking a lot about betrayal, and my little white lies I told in order to make History more dramatic. Please forgive me. I said earlier that “Before History doesn’t matter,” but really, more of my life happened before I met History than after, so I suppose I should give that time a quick acknowledgment and then move on to the juicy bits. Quite literally – the nightshade berry juice that History has tracked under the couch is pretty stubborn.

I was a first-year med student when I met Chelsea. I’m not even sure if Chelsea is her real name, but I think you’ll find it fits her personality. My apologies to all the Chelseas of the world who disagree. Her face was awesome. Her clothes were awesome. Even her mannerisms were awesome. In fact, she was so awesome I probably never would have noticed her had she not backed into my car.

I walked out of Walgreen’s drug store toting a particularly embarrassing assortment of face creams and hemorrhoid treatments. Before I went out into the real world, I arranged the boxes so one couldn’t read them through the thin plastic bag. Chelsea was outside of her car, looking at the sizable dent in the driver’s side of mine, with her upper lip curled into a sneer of which Medusa herself would be proud. With a quick flick of her wrist, she snapped closed her pink phone and walked towards me, her bleached blonde hair barely moving in the wind as it was weighed down by far too much product.

“Scuse me,” her pronunciation of the letter “s” made ripples in air that pounded my ear drums like scythes. “You were parked really far from the curb, so I had like no room to turn around.”

“That so?”

“Look, I really don’t have the time to argue with you, but you are gonna like hear from my insurance company really soon, ‘cause my dad’s a lawyer and he’s gonna sue your ****.” She climbed into her car and sped off, and was so angry with me that she did not look both ways.

That was the first death I ever saw, and it was kind of like looking at a flipbook: discrete points in time rather than a flow. The moving van did not have time to stop (whoever was driving it was too busy “moving,” chuckle chuckle) and careened into her hood. It must have been the perfect angle because her little sedan turned over on its back, with its wheels spinning as if it were a little turtle that some freak kid turned on its shell, which fought fruitlessly to reinstate equilibrium and was only met with pokes on its sensitive belly from a fat finger. I think I laughed, but with tears in my eyes. Honestly, I don’t remember a thing until after the police had questioned me.

When I tell that story, people use look away nervously, or find an excuse to adjust clothing or use the restroom. I think when people ask me, “when was the first time you saw someone die?” I think they were hoping for some sort of tale reminiscent of an ER episode, where I valiantly did compressions and mouth-to-mouth on a trauma victim (probably a burn victim, for some reason everyone wants to hear about the burn victims) and as the jaws of life and the EMTs arrived, the poor guy breathed his last, and holding his wilted body, I screamed “NO!” with tears in my eyes and uttered a heart wrenching soliloquy, followed by a commercial about over-the-counter constipation meds.

But no, I tell them the Chelsea story. And I told you the Chelsea story, though you never asked what my first “death” experience was. No, instead I told you the Chelsea story as evidence why “before History” really did matter. It’s because I saw my first death, and it was a dumb blonde getting struck by a moving van, and I laughed because of the poetic justice and karma of it all.

This story is not about Chelsea, though. It’s about History.

These days, History taunts Fate or pesters Skeletor, or mopes in the corner, licking his chops. You know, I haven’t fed him for weeks now, yet he continues to get plump.

I had the unfortunate opportunity to find out how.