Mishaps

Suddenly and without warning Apple reached out and told me my life would not be complete without the new Mavericks operating system for my Mac. So I did the only thing I could do. I welcomed it, all unawares, into my home. 

I'm in my sixth hour of downloading, installing, updating and iclouding the contents of my computer.

So you're all getting a rerun today. I wrote the following on Sunday October 19 2008. I called it 40,000 Car Crashes. Enjoy.

This Saturday a.m. was possibly the most perfect autumn morning in the history of the world. The sky was clear blue.  The sun warmed the chill edge off the gentle breeze.  The trees in Allen Gardens were a brilliant mix of gold, orange, red and stalwart unchanged green. I walked through the gardens on my way to shop onChurch Street. I had company coming for lunch and was thinking happy thoughts about what I was going to buy to feed my guests. I had just come out of the dappled shade of the north west end of the park and was walking toward the intersection of Carlton and Jarvis Streets.

A small red car westbound on Carlton didn’t seem to notice the red light and T-boned at high speed a grey van half-way through a left hand turn in the middle of the intersection.  There was a horrible bang and a gigantic splash of pulverized car bits that caught the early morning sun and made a glorious aura around the shocking sight. Hit with such force, the grey van bounced out of the intersection and slammed into one or more cars on the eastbound side of Carlton.

“Oh my god!” I said, a time or two, not really adding much. 

There were quite a few people at the intersection (mercifully, there were no pedestrians in the middle of the mayhem) most of whom had cell phones and were already calling for help.  The rest were checking on the health of the people in the vehicles.

The fellow in the red car, the one who’d caused this mess, was stunned but unbloodied – his seat belt was on; his air bags deployed – and was sitting in the warm embrace of shock in his vehicle that was 50% shorter than it had been mere moments before.  The front end wasn’t just smashed; it was practically atomized by the force of the collision.

There was nothing I could do, so I went and did my shopping.

Half a block from the terrible, horrible scene, the world was still bright and sunny and every person I saw was untouched, unconcerned and unaware of the awfulness less than 100 metres away. 

I, on the other hand, was really badly shaken. As I walked away from the scene, I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t burst into tears. I felt I needed to hold my head. I heard sirens before I got to the store and I hoped the people in the vehicles would be OK.

Twenty minutes later, I returned home the way I came so I could walk back into the scene of the accident. All the people in the vehicles had been taken away. Just the ruined cars remained to snarl traffic and impede the progress of streetcars. Firemen had spread sand on the street to trap gasoline from someone’s shattered gas tank.   

I wondered if there had been other witnesses who had really seen how it happened. All you have to do is look away for half a second and you miss things like this – they happen so fast. I really had seen the whole thing. At least I was very sure who had been at fault.

So, I approached a policeman and told him what I saw. I gave him my name and phone number. I was afraid I was going to have to stay, or “go downtown” like they do on the TV shows and not be able to feed my guests. But he just said thanks and let me go on my way.

I’ve seen at least 40,000 car crashes on TV and in movies and, so I’ve heard, your brain doesn’t really distinguish between the make believe and the real.

Yes it does.

Drive careful.

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Here's a picture of Molly when she was a puppy.

You can read Molly's post today here.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen