confessions of a wuss

....my brain has been jogged, [no mean feat...], to ponder my mental wimpiness...my best friend[BFFL] used to roll her eyes or snidely remark that I would never watch a certain film she had just seen and loved,[she is a film buff...], only my extreme respect for her and our friendship caused me to watch as much of "Dances..." or "Braveheart" as I have...she rolls her eyes at my lack of curiosity about "Silence of the Lambs" and still does...in my defense, I really "go" inside of things I watch/read... I've been watching, "The War" on PBS and was just notified that my copy was on its way.... I become depressed, then tearful after watching "Band of Brothers" for the umpteeth time...I think that because I live in my head, things that penetrate , stay with me... so I catch myself channel surfing if moments are too intense on screen and "skip" ahead if reading,...after being "prepared" mentally, I can often go back and watch what I couldn't deal with when surprised...just so you don't get the wrong idea, my BFFL is just teasing me, when she says that she doesn't get why graphic films get to me[although there is a cunundrum there..] and this is why... over 20 years ago,when I first knew my BFFL, I lived in a duplex, just off a very busy one way street... when I moved, after 7 years there, I was cleaning and moving out the last things,[ my BFFL was helping ] ...suddenly, we heard a screeching of tires and a couple of horrendous crashes at the corner, followed by screaming... I looked outside, called to my BFFL to call 911[this was before cell phones and my phone hadn't been disconnected yet...], I grabbed a roll of paper towels and ran to the corner, a guy was trying to open the door of one car to get the elderly driver out, she was in shock, but not too injured...the screaming was from a young girl who had been in the other car, she had been thrown out [no seat belt], her forehead was bleeding so she couldn't really see for the blood and there was a bad cut on her leg...she was screaming for her boyfriend, the other driver, who was trapped in his car, [ the elderly lady, in a battleship car had turned left onto the 1 way, pulling in front of them , their drivers side hit her passenger side...] I knelt next to the hysterical woman, folded some paper towels and asked her to hold them to her forehead after I wiped some of the blood off her face, as I put pressure on the leg wound with a wad of towels, I talked to her, trying to calm her, telling her that the ambulance was coming, her boyfriend was being helped, she was going to be OK, anything I could think of in as calm a voice as I could muster....it must have worked, because she quieted down....the EMTs got there quickly and I relinquished my position to them...my BFFL had been helping other victims and as we walked back to my apt., we noticed that I had blood on my hands and pretty much everywhere else...my BFFL, who already knew I didn't like gore in movies told me that she was surprised by my willingness to get so involved when I didn't like gore,[the whole thing left her really shaken, as it would most sensitive persons, she had to sit quietly for a bit and gather herself]...for some reason, the adrenaline rush had propelled me to act and when it was over, I was a bit shaky, but wasn't freaked out as my BFFL had expected me to be... my BFFL still gives me a hard time about being "such a wuss" about movies, she'll say,"...oh, you probably wouldn't like it " or "don't see that, you'll hate it"... but she always does it with an ironic smile....