Seatbelt saved my life, twice - that's food for thought today

The spray of glass whooshed up my nose.

I don't remember that moment - or the three days that followed.

My family, largely citing the newspaper, filled me in.

I was 16 and riding shotgun when a friend zipped through a red light. This caused the first car to T-bone the passenger door. The trajectory of that rammed us head-on into a pickup truck.

The passenger side - and especially its windows - imploded on me as the first collision's epicenter.

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To this day, scars dribble from my nostril, and my septum is "deviated" - the clinical term for crooked.

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The driver, Dave, later recalled shrieking at the sky, clutching my juddering body until the ambulances arrived. He thought he'd killed his best friend.

I don't remember that. He'll never forget it.

The first thing I remember is coming to days later, with family and many friends stooped over, staring at me.

I asked them what had happened. Apparently, I'd been doing so for the past three days - several times a minute, without recalling what they'd said seconds before. I'd also been asking for "softies" - a word I apparently made up as my brain swelled to describe a milkshake.

They told me I'd been in a car accident and sustained a concussion. I also had lacerations and stitches fastening my nose, mouth and hands, and broke my nose and cheekbone.

A month later, surgeons extracted a pinky-finger-sized shard of glass wedged in my nasal passage. That was a surprise to us all. While I'll likely never remember the pain of the crash, I'll certainly never forget the agony of that operation.

From the moment I left the hospital, I swore I'd never get into a car without a seatbelt. Nobody does in the United States, anyway.

Then, I arrived in China and did so every day for the past seven years.

I even forget to buckle up when I visit the US, until family and friends gloweringly remind me.

But all of that changed last week in Beijing.