You get hit by one bus and survive, it’s a narrowly avoided tragedy. You get hit by a second bus and survive, it’s a miracle, somebody up there likes you, but also, buddy, you’ve got to learn to look where you’re going. You get hit by a third bus and survive, it starts to be assumed that you are asking for it, that you are in fact seeking out buses with intentionality, having clearly devised perhaps some thin layer of high-tech body armor worn under your hoodie and jeans that is protecting you from serious harm, and society, upon further consideration, does indeed rescind their previous condolences and well wishes and now casts upon you only aspersions for your obvious, pathetic, desperate ploys for attention. You get hit by a fourth bus and survive, not even the local news covers you that evening. You get hit by a fifth bus and survive, people on campus start actively trying to hit you with their cars, their bikes, their Razor scooters, saying things like “cheat this death, bitch,” before pulling knives on you in the dining court. You get hit by a sixth bus and survive, you don’t even go to the hospital, you just go back to your dorm room and nurse your injuries yourself the best you can, in the dark, shades drawn, not even answering your girlfriend’s calls, even though she has been extremely sympathetic through all of this, believing you when you said there was no armor, no magic, nothing keeping you – or, crucially, those who crossed those intersections with you – safe. You get hit by a seventh bus and survive, you realize there is some unstoppable force at work here, some malicious cosmic entity capable of sending massive vehicles thundering up over curbs, through grassy quads full of Frisbee-ers, shattering through hundreds of pounds of brick, cement, Fight Club posters. You get hit by an eighth bus and survive, you begin to doubt that any of this could be real, up here, secluded in your aunt’s rainy Adirondack lake house, you start to believe that perhaps the simulation theories were correct all along and you’re living inside some open world video game right now being fucked with by a sadistic pre-teen. You get hit by a ninth bus and survive, you marvel at how long this one took, years and years for this particular bus to reach you out here in your one bedroom shack in the arid, lip-chapping desert of Arizona, where you finally thought you may be safe at last, lonely but safe, frail with sagging nipples but safe, skin fine as Kleenex but safe, having gotten through it – ‘it’ being life – without bringing inadvertent harm to anyone you’d ever loved, not even your parent’s dog, who you stopped walking decades ago, even though you were always his favorite, and you remember sometimes how he’d nudge your bandaged hand with his leash in his mouth and you’d ignore him for what you knew was his own good. You get hit by a tenth bus and survive, you receive a letter in the mail from your old college girlfriend, saying nothing but “glad you’re ok, think about you sometimes.” You get hit by an eleventh bus and survive, you realize maybe you haven’t.