Close Call

This afternoon, we were in a car accident.  I was taking #2 and #4 (ages 10 and 6) downtown on an errand.  It was raining, but not too hard.  We were going about 70 on the highway when the truck in front of us ran over a piece of metal and kicked it up in our direction.

I had a split second of watching a 3 foot long piece of pipe come flying towards my SUV with no where to move to escape it.  I just watched it come at us.  3 feet of flying metal at 70 miles an hour.

It slammed into the grill of the car and we heard a crunch and then the sound of broken glass.  My 6 year old shrieked and then started to cry.  I calmly and brightly said, “Some big thing just hit the front of the car.  We’re all okay, but I need to get off the highway and see if the car is broken or not.”  In my head I was thinking “Sh–. That hit the grill.  Decorative bits are expensive. We just paid off all our bills and have a small emergency fund.  This is going to cost thousands to fix.  What is our deductible?  There goes all our hard work.”

I called the Computer Guy, who was on the way to a job site a few hours south, and said, “I got hit by flying metal which some car in front of us kicked up.  I don’t know the extent of the damage.  I’ll call you back when I do.”

There was silence on the phone and then he replied, “Did you get the other guy’s tag number?”

WTF?!? “No, I was too busy watching the huge metal thing flying at us.”

Is this a man thing?  Every guy I talked to today asked the same first question, “Did you write down his tag?”  They all just assumed I was okay since it was me calling and not the cops.  Women are different.  They want to know how you are and then hear the details.  Men want to know about the car.

The mechanic whistled when he saw the damage and said, “if you’d been driving a shorter car or been a few feet back, you’d be dead now.”  He’s a former EMT and has seen his share of nasty crashes.  I’ll take his word for it.

Today was the first time in a long while in which we prayed for a safe journey as we left the house.  I had a nagging feeling we would need the help and less than 10 minutes later we did.  We’ll be going to Mass tomorrow morning to say Thank You, but you can bet we’ll be praying for safety before we even leave the driveway.

P.S. The car will be fine.  It has a busted headlight and some loose trim which the mechanic easily popped back on.  The total in repairs will be less than $100.  Do you know what a relief that is?  Do you know how blessed we feel tonight?