Part IV: What A Wreck

Driving to meet some friends for dinner, I saw a horrible wreck. It’s one of those things that maybe you see a half-dozen times in your life and it never gets any more familiar.

A garbage truck ran a red light smashing into the side of a Jeep Grand Cherokee.

The Jeep was demolished from behind the driver’s door. It looked as if a giant hand had picked up a toy made of Silly Putty and twisted it at its center. The back half of the vehicle was so distorted that it was completely unrecognizable.

Outside of the car sat a woman on the ground. She was weeping. The sight of her crying so hard made my stomach turn. My first thoughts went to whom and how many were in the back seat.

Her tears, though, were for who was not in the back seat – her children. She was so relieved that she hadn’t picked them up yet. So overjoyed, looking at her totaled car, that she was spared the horror of their certain deaths had it been ten minutes later, that she couldn’t contain her emotions.

Watching her over the next few minutes, it was apparent that the car, which was beautiful and at most two years old, meant nothing to her as she considered again and again in her mind the alternative to the situation. If the garbage truck ran the light just three seconds earlier, she would be under its front wheels. Three seconds later, she would have avoided it altogether. Ten minutes later, it would have claimed her offspring. The car, the only thing injured in the whole event, had absolutely no value to her at this moment. She only thought of what mattered most.



Check Out Thursday’s Post for…
Part V: It’s All Relative (How These Events Really Relate to Education)