Thank You, God, for This Near-Death Experience and Fantastic Wordle Score

Gratitude! Pema. Kim Addonizio. Two new songs.

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Last Tuesday, I hit Wordle in one for the second time. “SUITE” had been my opening word, more or less every day since the last time I hit Wordle in one—” NOISE” back in the early morning, post-Halloween hours of November 1, 2023. I wrote about that hit in my 2023 end-of-year roundup because that day, more than others from that year, stood out because I was distracted by what I assumed were 20 short hours of superpowers until the next Wordle. This is what I wrote:

“I spent all day looking up in the sky for lightning to hit me in the spine or for an angel to arrive at my door with a secret message—SOMETHING extraordinary—that I ended up waiting around all day, distracted and checked out. I wasn’t energized enough to participate in the world because it wouldn’t be as interesting or exciting as hitting that Wordle in One. What lottery winners cashed in their tickets and went about their regular, boring routines? Who hits a hole-in-one on a par 5 and doesn’t consider themselves changed? Clark Kent can fake it only for so long. The man can fly! He needs to fly—I needed to fly.”

It was a little ironic that I hit Wordle in one this week since it was the same week we aired the podcast episode with Joe Lynskey, who somehow survived being pushed in front of a moving subway train last New Year’s Eve.

How to Survive a Nightmare w/Joe Lynskey

Joe emailed me last February about his ordeal:

Hi Small Bow,

I wanted to reach out and introduce myself. I was violently thrown off the subway platform in Manhattan on New Years Eve into the path of an oncoming train and somehow, I survived.

Here is more about that part of my story:

I have also survived an 18 yr long battle with alcoholism and cocaine addiction. Currently sitting pretty with 12yrs of recovery under my belt and enjoying a third lease on life after pulling through the subway attack with my heart, head and soul intact. Full of gratitude for all of it, really.

I am a big fan of the podcast and just wanted to see if you all would be interested in chatting sometime about all of it. Thank you, hope to talk to you soon.

When Joe and I first began communicating soon after his attack, I had shared my Wordle dilemma with him. I said, “I didn’t know what to do with MY one day when I felt extra-extra LUCKY, so I can’t imagine what it’s like being you right now .”

I also said he was pretty much Bruce Willis’s character in Unbreakable. Neither one of us had ever seen the movie, but I remember the premise — a man survives a horrific accident despite astronomical odds and soon realizes he’s been a superhero hiding in plain sight his entire life.

Almost every time we spoke I’d prod Joe for big existential answers — the “What will you do now with the rest of your life?” variety. And then he’d give a considerate answer, carefully bringing it back to his 12 years of recovery. He’s still only a few months removed from having a subway run over him, so he hasn’t figured it all out. But who has? Have you?