BOOOOM

When I was 19 or so, I had the pleasure of being in a minor auto accident. I had just bought a new/used car and was driving home. It was winter time but the road were clear as I approached our mail box at a reduced rate of speed. A small patch of compressed snow had frozen over and as I attempted to come to a stop the front of the car slide over about a foot and dinged the post that carried the mailbox. There was a small dent that was easily knocked out with a rubber mallet and it was as good as new.

We’ve almost all had some kind of motor vehicle accident in our lives, some of us more then others, and if we’re lucky there is no major damage. About a year after the fender bender above I was involved in a collision. Yes collision sounds more dramatic because it was in many ways. I was working nights at the time and fell asleep on the way home from work. When I came to I was on the floorboard of my car looking up and realizing that this wasn’t a natural position and passed back out. The next thing I remember is being in the x-ray room and asking the nurse if the other guy was alright. She informed me that I had already asked her a dozen times about the health of the other driver and that it had not changed. There is no way I asked her that many times because I would have remembered…right? Anyway, I spent the next few days in the hospital on a painkilling IV of some sort with a bad concussion and a bruised heart and sternum. I had lingering affects from the accident for many, many weeks but eventually I recovered.

Events like these make an impression in your being that molds the way you look at things. Being 20 at the time it reaffirmed that I was invincible. Something like that today would make me thank my lucky stars and deepen my love for my family even more then it already is.

9 years ago I got a call at work that my wife and two girls had been in an accident and that they were being taken to the hospital. When I get there I find that my wife has a lacerated spleen and that my oldest daughter was in getting a CAT scan and that she had a broken leg. My other daughter was shaken up but no real injuries other then the trauma of being in the accident. A short time later the nurses wheel in a young child who has blood all over her face and just looks terrible. It was 5 minutes before I realized that it was my daughter and that she was hurt bad. The moved everyone to intensive care for observation and eventually flew my daughter to another hospital that specializes in these types of situations. She would end up with a skull fracture, broken leg, missing teeth and some stitches along her mouth. My wife had the spleen issue and some micro fractures in her teeth while my other daughter has bruised and battered and walked with a limp for about a week. In the end everything turned out OK with complete recovery for all but things like this are scary for everyone involved.

So what does any of this have to do with anything now?

I got a call from my wife that they were involved in an accident this morning. My first reaction was fear but the realization that she was calling quickly helped me regain my focus and that it probably wasn’t that bad. A driver failed to realize that the road were slick and slid through a stop sign and put a nice dent in the front of the van. Everyone is OK and though the van is drivable, a headlight is messed up so it can’t be used at night.

Relief is the best way to describe how I feel.