The Most Traumatic Thing That Has Ever Happened To Me

{This does not end well. I'm serious. Consider yourself warned...}

Once upon a time, I had a Saturday job. Every Saturday morning from the ages of about 15 to 17, I would run along the seafront, inevitably five minutes late, to open up the quaint little florist's in the quaint little High Street of the quaint little town in which I lived. Essentially my role was to be polite, presentable and occasionally creative, and to endlessly scrub buckets with Sisyphean amounts of bleach.

Me being me, there were occasional mishaps. I once apologised for a delay by telling a rotund and somewhat imperious customer that I was very sorry about her wait. It was clear from her face she was quite happy with her weight thank you very much and she did not appreciate my impertinence. That was awkward.

Then there was the time I was filling in a gift card on a bouquet on behalf of a gentleman whose proper name, I presume, was William. Unfortunately, instead of signing the card "Willie" (as in, the well-known contraction of William), I signed it "Willy", (as in, well, you know). Again. Awkward.

There was also the time I melted my trousers on an electric heater but I think you probably get the picture so I'll stop there. Yet despite (or, I like to think, because of) these... eccentricities, they kept me on, I tried not to offend any more customers, and we soldiered on.

On one particular sunny Saturday, the High Street was all a-bustle and the florist's was brimming with spring blooms. We always had a little afternoon lull, so my boss had (unwisely, as it turned out) left me alone to tend the shop. I was idly watching the world go by and probably agonising over some minor high school drama when all of a sudden

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What the hell was that that?

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What?! Where is that coming from??

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I stick my head out the open shop door into the busy street - no, definitely not coming from there...

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After much frenzied searching around the shop and some brief but earnest questioning of my own sanity, finally, hidden behind a vast bucket of lilies, I uncover the source.

A bird. In the shop. A tiny, too-young baby bird, its breast beating wildly in panic and fear and its newly-formed wings fluttering ineffectually against the dusty floor, delicate as eyelashes.

I freeze. I can't leave the shop; I'm here on my own. I don't know what to do. My experience as an erstwhile budgie-owner has not prepared me for this moment. As an interim measure I upend one of the buckets over the bird, catch it like a spider under a glass. This seems like a good idea, although I'm not sure what I think I'm going to do with it now. I can't exactly toss it out the window - I have no idea how it got into the shop but if there's one thing it didn't do, it was fly here. It must have hopped here. Maybe it can hop back? It's not far to the woods, it's just around the corner, a few teeny hops and it will be safe and free and maybe it will be reunited with its mum and it will learn to fly and all will be right with the world. That's it, it can hop back. All I need to do is point it in the right direction and it will be fine. I've saved a baby bird! I'm like Snow White or something! This plan can't possibly fail!

Oh, Kirsty. Silly, stupid, teenage Kirsty.

I shuffle the upturned bucket towards the door. I can't abandon my post but I take it over the doorstop and onto the narrow pavement. Gently I lift the bucket. The bird hops out, more confident now. "Go, little birdie," I whisper. "You're so close - go and find your mum." I watch as the bird hops once, and then again, off in the direction of the safe, leafy trees that beckon to it, calling it home.

Then, no. Wait. Where are you going? Before I can move, the little bird hops to the left, towards the edge of the pavement, towards the stomping feet and the black tar and the rushing, growling cars.

You think you know where this is going, don't you? Oh, it's so much worse.

Hop. Hop. Ho- 

I watch in horrified slow motion as the little bird leaps from the pavement, yearning to fly, stretching its butterfly wings, and then drops oh-so-inevitably between the dull metal grates and into the water-filled drain below.

Oh. Fuck.

I am filled with a terrible dread. I grasp at the bars, I strain against them with all my weight, but they don't even twitch. I look wildly up and down the street and desperately beg passersby for help, but in the end all I can do is watch in horror as the little bird beats its fledgeling wings against the dank, dirty water, in the most futile act I have ever had the unhappiness to witness. I almost want it to stop but it doesn't, it carries on thrashing and striving and clinging on to its short life.

But, eventually, it begins to tire. The frantic flapping slows, and slows, and slows, and, finally, stops. The sight of that still little bird bobbing there in that dark place is one of the saddest, most guilt-tinged images I have ever seen.

Why did I not wait for my boss to come back? Why did I not release it into the garden behind the shop? Why am I even telling you this story?

The answer, to any of those questions, is that I don't know. But I do know that I have carried that little bird in my heart for more than ten years, and it will stay with me for many years more.

When I asked Fin to name The Most Traumatic Thing That Has Ever Happened To Me, this story was the third one he guessed (after my mum getting cancer and the girl I once met who had a really inappropriate relationship with her dog). In some ways, he said, you could argue that this story just shows that life, in the end, is pointless. Thanks, Fin. Cheerful.

But I don't think that's it. What it shows, to me (without wishing to get overly anthropomorphic about it) is that life is often unfair, it's certainly unpredictable, but above all it is short. It's the same mantra that has hummed in my ear ever since my mum's diagnosis, and the humming is getting louder. Life is short, life is short, life is short. Better make the most of it!

I'm still working out what that means for me, and how to cherish the things I love in my life and change the things I don't. I still have a lot of thinking to do. But I'm working on it (here's a hint: Zan isn't the only one with a life list to share).

In the meantime - anyone else got any traumatic stories, to make me feel better (please)?!

All images by Sweet Eventide via her flickr