by Gary Dauphin

News & Notes producer Christopher Johnson shared a deeply personal story on the show, explaining his pick for song of the week, Sly and The Family Stone's "Thankful N Thoughtful." Sly's song is a look at a period when, as Christopher put it, "drugs and success were wreaking havoc on [Sly's] life, and he thought HE was about to die." The song led Christopher to reflect on a time his own life seemed to hang in the balance, this after a near fatal bicycling accident. He writes in to share more:

The story about my bike accident was a difficult one to tell. Besides the actual (and still lingering) physical pain/trauma of the experience, there were all the strange, unavoidable side issues: the police, my "friends" who left me in the hospital bed strapped to a spine board so they could go get some sleep, an obnoxious university professor who wouldn't help me get health insurance that would have covered the big bills , and my feeling that the god I'd believed in so whole-heartedly had actually given up on looking out for me.

I'm still working through some of those things , others I accept as part of the cycle of life and personal growth. I have an interesting scar above my left eye that swells when I'm angry, and since the accident I'a lot more ready (not eager, but ready) to knuckle up. And if I happen to see a car accident, I run right into the middle of it without really thinking, and I start ordering people around - You! Call 911!; You! Get me a towel!; You! Stop staring and help me open this door! - not because I'm anything like a hero, but because I don't want anyone else to everhave to be alone inside the kind of pain and fear I was in that night.

But here's the latest major thought on the whole experience. A couple of Augusts ago, I was standing by myself on Praia do Flamingo, a beach in Bahia, Brazil. The waves were delicious and no one was around for miles up and down the coast. I played in the sunny warm water all day long. And as I floated, spitting sea water at the bright Brazilian sun, I thought about how, at one point that awful night in the hospital so many years ago, I was so miserable that I actually decided I was ready to check out of this life.

And then I laughed. In the middle of the ocean, I laughed at how silly that seemed. Because I would have missed... all of this. And so very much more. So, yeah - I am truly thankful, and thoughtful.

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