Holy Horseradish, Batman!

77 percent of the American population believes in angels. It’s true, I Googled it. However, only 55 percent of them believe in guardian angels. I’m the only one who knows for sure that they exist though.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never actually seen one or heard one, so I’ve got no concrete evidence to back up my claim. There’s no way I could prove it to someone else, so you just have to take my word for it.

I first suspected something was watching out for me when I was at dinner with my parents a few years ago. My father had gone to the restroom, and my mother and I were talking about my classes.

I picked up a chip and put it in my mouth, but apparently I didn’t chew it properly. The next thing I knew a sharp bit of it snagged in my throat. I coughed and coughed, and my mother stared at me, wide-eyed. She seemed too shocked, or scared, to move. I could feel my eyes watering up as the chip wedged itself tighter, and my coughing grew weaker.

When white gathered at the edge of my vision, I felt it. Arms, or what felt like arms, wrapped around my middle and yanked as I coughed. One, two, three times I felt the tug in and up. The chip finally launched out of my mouth like a hard loogie, and landed with a small splash in the salsa bowl. My mother was still staring as though I had two heads.

I coughed a bit more, more easily now that my windpipe was clear. I turned to thank my rescuer, but there was only the rest of the restaurant looking at me with concern on their faces, but none by our table, and certainly not close enough to have saved me.

My mother, after we had gotten home and she had made me a cup of hot cocoa, told me she thought that I had managed to get the chip up on my own. She hadn’t seen anyone near me, and looked puzzled at me when I told her I had felt someone’s arms around me.

I wasn’t sure though until last week. I had been crossing the street after one of my band’s late night shows. I was the last one out of the bar besides the owner, and everyone else had already left. I was feeling a little…out of it, I guess you could say. It’s always nice when the audience buys the band drinks. As nice as it was, I stumbled a bit while leaving and didn’t really look when I crossed the street. Nobody was around.

A horn blared out of nowhere, and I turned and froze as a truck bore down on me, moving too fast and veering too much for the driver to be sober. I blinked, but all I could do was stand there.

It would have been easier to explain what happened next if I had been athletic at all. But even if I had ever been good at sports, it still wouldn’t have been completely realistic for me to leap completely over the truck and land on the street behind it.

As it was, only I felt it when I had been lifted underneath my armpits just before the truck hit me, and let me gently down onto the street once it had passed. The only person, aside from the driver, who had even seen it happen was the bar owner, who rushed over to me as I staggered back to the sidewalk.

He fussed over me for a while, and even offered to call an ambulance or the police or someone, but I managed to convince him to just call for a taxi. The last comment he made before he settled me in the cab for home struck me as odd.

“Did you eat anything with horseradish tonight? It’s like you’re sweating it out right now. I shook my head, confused, and smelled my armpits. He was right. They definitely smelled of horseradish, and I pointedly never ate anything containing that particular condiment. I never could stand the smell, though thinking back on it, I remember smelling it on my shirt the night I almost choked on a chip.

I don’t think anyone but me believes that guardian angels live on a diet of horseradish, but just in case, you should pay attention whenever you smell it. It could just save your life.

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I had a puzzle when crafting this week's story. Thanks to Susan Reifert, I was tasked with putting together a scenario involving invisible aliens that smell faintly of horseradish. I came up with the idea, as I do most decent ones, late at night, that aliens do not have to be malevolent beings, and some may work simply to help us. We call these benevolent aliens guardian angels.

For next week, I would like you to give me the name of your favorite band.

The title of this week's entry is dedicated to the memory of Adam West, his family, and all those that he brought joy to throughout his career.