In an Instant

A lot of time I take my life for granted.  It's a fragile thing, really, being alive.  Our bodies are amazingly resilient but that spark can be snuffed in an instant.  Pondering the rogue cells running amok in my sponsor's body or my Amazing Unicycle Trick the other day has made me stop and think, appreciate how easily it can all go away.

I was cruising down an empty, flat, straight, dry highway several years back, early in the morning, heading to a factory in some small town.  There was a pick-up truck ahead of me.  I watched as the truck drifted just onto the grass in the highway medium, the driver perhaps distracted by a phone or the radio, or maybe he dozed off.  He over-corrected to get the vehicle back on the pavement and doing so at a fairly high rate of speed caused the truck to start fishtailing.  As I put on my brakes I watched in horrified fascination as the leading edge of the right side of the truck started to lift off the ground.  It was odd seeing something that heavy start to fly - my brain didn't have an experience to compare it to.  And it was another slow-motion brain event - I clearly remember everything in great detail. 

The truck got just about high enough, started to pirouette,  and then it went over on its side and started to roll over and over and over.  It made a noise I couldn't calculate - a big metal-on-cement boom, boom, boom, shit and glass flying up into the air.  The truck crossed the two lanes, luckily free of traffic, and disappeared over a small grade on the side of the road, big clumps of grass and mud flying up into the air, coming to rest against a metal retaining fence.

I pulled off the road and waded through thigh-high grass until I got close to the truck, pointing away from me.  I could see a young man - a kid, really - sitting in the driver's seat.  I'll tell you I didn't go too close - if there was a mess in there, and that was a real possibility given the violence of the crash, I didn't want to be any part of it.  I'm no EMT.  Luckily, he was banged up but not seriously hurt.  I got him to turn the engine off and get out of the truck, afraid that it might burst into flames.  By that time another few cars had stopped so I climbed back into my car and continued my commute.

I don't know what I was doing when the great fish-tail started.  I'm pretty rigorous about not using a phone when I drive and if I'm falling asleep I pull off the road and close my eyes for 10 minutes.  I've seen the aftermath of too many car accidents to take any dumb chances.  Still, I was shook up for a day or two.  I paid REAL close attention to my driving, I'll tell you that, until I began to drift back into my typical lazy habits.  That could have gone another way.

Glad to be alive and in one piece this fine Saturday morning.