One Wrong Move

Today was rough. I won’t go into the gory details of my life at work, but I was ready for a break at the end of the day. Because we won’t get any rest this weekend (it’s filled with church events on both Sat. and Sun), I was looking forward to one nice, relaxing evening at home.

Not long after we retired to the theater room, the electricity went out. Interesting, I thought, but I wasn’t too worried. It would come back soon. It always does.

I continued to work on my computer. After all, I had a One Life email to send out and a blog to write.

A few minutes passed. The lights remained off. Gary and I finally went downstairs. I checked the breakers, and Gary stepped outside to see if any of our neighbors were experiencing the same problem. I think it’s funny that people go outside when the power fails. They look around as if that’s going to give them some type of explanation. It doesn’t, but I guess somehow it’s reassuring to know you aren’t the only one in the dark with absolutely nothing to do.

Then came the sound of sirens — lots of them. At this point, people started pouring out of their houses to find out what was happening. Like children following the sound of the pied piper, we were drawn towards the noise.

A major accident had occurred on Custer Road just outside the boundaries of our neighborhood. From the looks of it, the car flipped multiple times. It landed on the other side of the guard rail on the bike path. A few feet farther and it would’ve ended up in the creek. Power lines were down across the street, and the top of the telephone poll had snapped off leaving the transformer dangling in the air.

I’m still not certain how the accident occurred, but it was a bad one. My prayers go out to the people who were injured. As I stood only a few feet away from the mangled car, I was given a startling reminder of how quickly things can change. One wrong move, one careless mistake, and you could find yourself upside down in crushed heap of metal.

I think I’ll slow down and try to drive more safely tomorrow.