I had a plan for Snippet Wednesday yesterday. I even had a post half written. But stuff happened. Stuff that took precedence over worrying about a blog post.
If you saw my notes on Twitter and Facebook yesterday afternoon, you know Katie was in a fender bender on our wonderfully snowy and slick Illinois roadway system. She called me at work and told me. Being as panicked as she was over the accident, there was no way to know how bad it was so I simply up and left immediately to be with her.
Thankfully it wasn't bad at all. She lost control on ice and was doing everything that they teach you in driving safety classes to regain control. No dice. She skidded very slowly into a CRV and left a streak mark along his passenger door. Something that pretty much just buffs out. No structural damage to the other car whatsoever. Katie has a minor dent above the wheel well on her front driver side. It's minimal at best, but since the fiberglass did buckle, I'm sure the entire quarter panel will need replacing. Not like the old days when it could just be hammered back in place.
The biggest thing for me is that Katie's not hurt. Neither is the other guy or his wife. Katie was just in a bit of shock over the whole thing. She was also really upset with herself even though she did everything she could have. Just sometimes Mother Nature and fate don't want to work our way.
I wish I could relate to how she feels about it. I've been in two car crashes in my time, but I wasn't the driver in one and I have episodic amnesia to this day about the other one.
The first was a football team trip to Great America in Gurnee, IL. I was in the backseat and we were in stop-and-go traffic. The driver looked away at his radio and missed that the car in front of us stopped. He hit his brakes but it was too late. We rearended the other car. The cool thing was that, you know how when there is a crash or a loud sound, you instinctively shut your eyes? I didn't. I saw the whole thing happen in a pseudo slow motion. The front end of his car rippled and then buckled and shredded apart. It was the most amazing thing to see. And I can still see it step by step in my mind's eye.
The second, for which I have episodic amnesia, apparently goes something like this (according to the police report)... I was driving down a road in bright daylight on a perfectly dry and warm day. I had balloons in my car for my then-girlfriend's birthday. The balloons probably blew into my face because my window was open. I swiped them away but my hand hooked the steering wheel and pulled me off the side of the road into a 15-odd foot ditch. The car was still moving, but I hit a mound where a drainage pipe cut into the ditch and my car flipped up on its front end and continued on to the back. It then finished its roll down the hill another 180 degrees so when I was found, the car was on all four wheels, but the roof was crushed in and the engine compartment was all kinds of FUBAR. At the scene of the accident, in the ambulanace, and at the hospital, I was supposedly conscious the entire time. Police took a report I don't remember giving, EMTs talked to me, doctors checked me out, friends and family visited. I got nothing until many hours later when I remember waking up. About this same time is when everyone said I stopped constantly repeating myself and seemed more like the normal "me."
Glad I don't remember that one.
