Sometimes the nightmares happen when you are still awake
I'm driving down the road. Up ahead there is a green light. As I approach the intersection a car starts out from the right. I swerve into the left lane, avoiding the collision. A couple of minutes later I start thinking about the other possibilities. What if he'd waited another five seconds and there wasn't time to swerve? What if I'd tried to brake and had slid over the gravel from the construction along the sides of the road? What if there had been a car in the left lane? I hadn't checked my blind spot before swerving. Every one of these scenarios becomes a nightmare of the car crash. Would the collision hit my wife and/or child? Would we be able to get out?
Yesterday I had a different kind of day-mare. After leaving Chicago, we started along I-55. As we approached Springfield, we hit some bad weather - winds, rain, thunderstorms. I turned off the book on tape and kept going. We started passing other cars that had pulled over to the side of the road. I turned on the radio and scanned until I came across a weather bulletin. It seems that the weather that we were driving through included a couple of funnel clouds that had touched down on the other side of Springfield, which we had just recently passed. As we are getting this news, we come to a spot where the traffic on the highway has stopped. There's twisters in the area and we're stopped on the highway. My guess is that there is something down on the road. A couple of minutes pass. Finally there is some movement ahead and we start moving. Nothing down - I guess the people just wanted to stop where they were with something overhead. Nevermind all of those people piled up behind them. At least we were moving - the whole time we are listening to the radio and the DJ is telling us to take cover. But where? We aren't at home. Every store that we drive past is covered in glass. The DJ keeps listing counties affected by the warning, but the names of the counties don't mean much to me. Eventually she starts listing cities, but even though the names are familiar, they are just names on highway exits. We press on. The rain is intense, but the winds aren't severe. Finally it starts to slacken and then we're through. But my day-mares start where the twister is coming and we're still stuck in traffic. Or speeding along the open road when a funnel cloud sideswipes us.
I suppose there were smarter things that I could have done, but in the end we arrived some safe. This time.
Yesterday I had a different kind of day-mare. After leaving Chicago, we started along I-55. As we approached Springfield, we hit some bad weather - winds, rain, thunderstorms. I turned off the book on tape and kept going. We started passing other cars that had pulled over to the side of the road. I turned on the radio and scanned until I came across a weather bulletin. It seems that the weather that we were driving through included a couple of funnel clouds that had touched down on the other side of Springfield, which we had just recently passed. As we are getting this news, we come to a spot where the traffic on the highway has stopped. There's twisters in the area and we're stopped on the highway. My guess is that there is something down on the road. A couple of minutes pass. Finally there is some movement ahead and we start moving. Nothing down - I guess the people just wanted to stop where they were with something overhead. Nevermind all of those people piled up behind them. At least we were moving - the whole time we are listening to the radio and the DJ is telling us to take cover. But where? We aren't at home. Every store that we drive past is covered in glass. The DJ keeps listing counties affected by the warning, but the names of the counties don't mean much to me. Eventually she starts listing cities, but even though the names are familiar, they are just names on highway exits. We press on. The rain is intense, but the winds aren't severe. Finally it starts to slacken and then we're through. But my day-mares start where the twister is coming and we're still stuck in traffic. Or speeding along the open road when a funnel cloud sideswipes us.
I suppose there were smarter things that I could have done, but in the end we arrived some safe. This time.
posted by mypetrock at 9:43 AM
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