The Drop of a Hat

Have you ever heard someone say to you that things can happen at the drop of a hat? Now upon first hearing this phrase I naturally assumed that it was an asinine statement in which I would never find an relevance. First of all, the chances of me having a hat are slim to none, and secondly, if you had a hat, why would you drop it?

That's all wrong, isn't it?

Things can happen at the drop of the hat. This means that no, you dont have a literal hat, and no, you arent going to drop it. 

Instead, this phrase has a lot of meaning. It means that something can happen in your life that is so quick and unexpected, that it was as if you were wearing a hat, and suddenly the wind blew it off. Just like that, it happened. And you had no warning of said happening.

After this weekend, this phrase has new meaning for me.

Anything can happen, at any time, unexplained, unexpected, and unbelievable.

This weekend I had a hat dropped on me.

I had gone to bed friday night, after talking to my best friend for hours on her car ride home from Florida. She was supposed to be back at 5 am, and I wasnt supposed to wake her up in the morning, even though I was so excited to see her.

When i rolled over at 9am, I had every intention of going into her room and waking her up, even though she had told me not to. But a message on my phone caught my attention. It said "I'm not home yet... call me when you get this."

That's when the hat started to drop.

Upon calling her I learned that she had been in a car accident, about thirty minutes after I had talked to her. The breaks in the car had malfunctioned, and stopped working, and all five girls were rolling through the hills of west virginia going 95 miles per hour, preparing for a collision, which was the only thing that would allow their car to stop. After four minutes of agonizing anticipation, their car took out 100 yards of gaurdrail, flipped seven times, and hit a tree. Upon hitting the tree, the car lit on fire, giving the stunned girls less than 5 minutes to get their things out, and run. While running away with their bags in their hands, looking over their shoulders, they watched the car blow up.

The hat had dropped.

Anything can happen at the drop of a hat. After listening to the story of my best friend surviving a car crash that the paramedics explained "no one should ever survive"  I was finally clued in on the true meaning of this phrase. I have never been so thankful in my entire life, and I have begun to take things more seriously, and not for granted anymore, because anything can happen at any time, and you are not guaranteed anything.

Ill never look at a hat the same way.