The Murderer

How would you feel if you killed someone barely know?

And it wasn't your fault.

If you were to ask me that before I heard last weeks episode of "This American Life," I would've probably replied "Oh, I will remind myself over and over again it's not my fault, then gradually get over it."

Now I think different...

Just take a listen:






I spent some (actually, make it a lot) of time paraphrasing the podcast so if people don't want to listen to the some 20 minutes podcast, you can read it. But note that it's greatly paraphrased and doesn't have the intended effects as a human voice. You can download the podcast and listen to it here.

So Darren was driving his car along with some of his friends to play putt-putt golf. He drove on a four-lane highway with a bicyclist in front of him.

Suddenly, the bicyclist made a crisp turn into the car's lane, only 10 feet in front of the car. Of course, the car smashed into the bicyclist (which we will name Susan) at a speed of 40 mph. Darren at first thought that Susan was just injured but as the situation dawn upon him, he lost it.

Susan died the next day in the hospital without her parents seeing her, as they were on vacation.

Everybody said that Darren was not at fault. The police and witnesses all said that there were nothing that Darren could do. No charges were filed.

But Darren couldn't believe it. After all he said, "he saw it all happen... how could it turn out this way?"

After the story appeared on the paper, everybody will know about it. Darren's parents suggest that he goes out for a movie to forget about it, but Darren eventually went to a different town. He didn't want people to see him enjoying. He spent the next few days talking to no one in particular.

The next Monday or Tuesday, there was a special memorial for Susan. Darren didn't have the guts to go to it, or to school for that matter.

He finally went back to school. As he stepped into the school, one of Susan's friends gave Darren a hard, cold stare. He expected this to happen the whole day at school. Instead, there existed a silent zone around him, with his friends trying to act as if nothing has happened.

At Susan's funeral, it was one of the hardest thing for Darren to do by going through those church doors. Then he had to face Susan's parents in the backrooms. Susan's father took Darren's hand and gave the impression of "I'll be friendlier than you have anyway of expected me to behave." Susan's mother attempted a smile and asked Darren to do "whatever in life twice as well." Darren nodded.

Darren graduated around two weeks later. He left town instead of staying over the summer. He said "college offered a witness protection program... no one would know." Still, Darren made one last stop before he went away, Susan's parents house. Instead of getting the warm welcome he expected, the visit was cold.

A month into college, Susan's parents sued Darren for 1.5 million dollar. It took some 5 years of time to clear that up. At college, Darren finds peace in computational work.

If you're going at 45, and a girl cuts 10 feet in front of you, you'll her in some 700 milliseconds. It takes some 220 milliseconds to notice and identify a hazard. Then 500 milliseconds is needed to hit the brakes. He would be studying for another class, then suddenly calculate the times over again to reassure himself.

In the first semester of his freshman year, Darren took a class called "On death and dying." He thought this would help him feel better. For one of his paper, he was incouraged by the teacher to investigate the Susan side of things. 

So he made "blundering intrusions" into Susan's friends about that day. Darren learned that she remade herself a few months before the death. Then he discovered something that would change his life. While talking to one of Susan's field hockey friends, the conversation went on something like this:

Darren: ..I need to know, find things out for this class, you know.
Friend: Wasn't the diary thing weird?
Darren: What diary thing.
Friend: Oh... I assumed you knew.

Turned out that Susan wrote in her journal before the crash:

Today, I realized that I am going to die.

Darren decided that Susan had taken her own life. Why else would she turn in front of her? That's how Darren got through the twenties, even the early thirties, believing that Susan took her own life.

He never thought of the entry in another way. He never thought about the entry in a more obvious way: "Today I realize I will die... someday."

He grew a lot more introspective after the accident, as he had nothing to hide from the world. He barely told any friends that he killed someone. On dates, Darren always wonder whether to tell the women Susan's story. The few times he told the story, it's only because he knew them a while. He hated the reactions thoug. It made the women feel tender, it made them feel that he was using the story to score points.

Darren always imagine Susan's life before the accident, and her life if she had survived. It's probably his way of pretending she hadn't died. Darren thought of her every time he drove by a bicyclist, which was pretty often. Susan would show up with Darren at job interviews, "Is this an ambitious enough job for two life?" Darren thought of her everywhere.

Now, Darren is twice as old when the accident happen and he'd developed a complete different view. He sees the thing as a mathematical error; a statistic.

If Darren had die instead of Susan, he wanted Susan to forget him, not to haunt her till the twenties, the thirties... but Darren would never forget.

-runiteking1

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