All Forums  Public  General Discussion  Ever had a " Moment?"

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Posting Form Screensize: 640 x 480 800 x 600 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024 UserName: Password: Format Mode: Basic  Help  Prompt  Format: Font Andale Mono Arial Arial Black Book Antiqua Century Gothic Comic Sans MS Courier New Georgia Impact Lucida Console Script MT Bold Stencil Tahoma Times New Roman Trebuchet MS Verdana   Size 1 2 3 4 5 6   Color Black Red Yellow Pink Green Orange Purple Blue Beige Brown Teal Navy Maroon LimeGreen Callouts: Message Icon:                             Smilies [quote][i]Originally posted by Festus-OGO[/i] [br]Yes, a "Moment" One of those moments where in the middle of an average, none too interesting day, where a potentially life altering (or ENDING) event occurs? Where you are engaged in something mundane, something innoculus, and you look at the chain of events that put you there and you realize that something ever so insignificant separated you from life and death? Well I had an unbelievable number of those when I was younger (much, MUCH younger) and all I would have left behind was my loving family and a bunch of "damn that was close to being knocked up girlfriends", but now its different. Now I have a family......children.... So, there we were, hanging out at home. Wife has been to the Gym, I met with my contracter with regard to my new office, had settled my Ebay accounts (saved a bundle on some equipment), and to finish the day we were picking up my daughter and taking her and 2 friends to a grass hockey game for their school. Now my wife drove and I was the passenger. Why? Because she is a good driver and I had not turned in my drivers abstract to the school, so they didn't trust me. It was just easier this way, I had been too busy to bother and Nancy is a great driver. Drove them to the game, well 3 games, and they tied one and won 2. My daughter scored a winning goal and played great. So there we are, driving home along the highway, with my daughter and 2 other grade five girls in the back seat. we reach the intersection of the highway and the turn to the school, a LEFT HAND turn, and as we approach the interection my wife slows down, almost to a complete stop (we are in a left hand turn lane). The highway has those amber flashing lights to warn cars that the lights are about to change, and since the lights at the intersection turned yellow it was obvious that those "warning" lights had been flashing for about 5 seconds. As the passenger, go ahead, call me paranoid, I was watching the oncoming traffic. The outside lane I saw the cars slowing down and braking, but between them was quite a gap so I immediately turned my attention to the inside lane and the pickup truck about 50-70 yards behind the braking vehicles in the outside lane. Now maybe I'm a frustrated NASCAR driver or something, but I saw this truck and KNEW he was not slowing down, instead I instinctively KNEW he was going to accelerate to beat the light. Problem was......my wife was focussing on the outside cars who were obviously coming to a stop. Keep in mind, the cars on the highway were doing minimum 60 mph. My wife hesitated, then inched forward, and I knew she was going to turn left in front of this accelerating vehicle. First thought thru my mind was,.."OH MY GOD....One of my sons classmates parents and siblings died EXACTLY like this less than 8 monthes ago at this very intersection". Then Nancy stared to touch the gas.... "Watch it".....I warned,...no change on the gas. As a matter of fact no change is not an adequate description, I knew she was going to proceed. My mind, not the nimblest at times, was continually calculating the point at which out slow moving left hand turning vehicle would intersect the 80-70 mph (converted from metric for my US pals) and I knew we were less then a "twitch" on the gas peddle from making my son an orphan, as well as having 2 other families lose children. "WATCH IT" I spoke up....still I felt my wifes indecision, I think she felt that the other cars were stopping, and hadn't noticed that this IDIOT had decided to beat the light. [red][size=4]"WATCHIT"[/size=4][/red] I screamed...enough that I felt the girls in the back stiffen up, and my wifes foot instinctively leave the gas and hit the brake. The truck roared past the front of our bumper by less than 3 feet..... We made the turn, said nothing, other than my flippant comment for the girls that "Boy he wasn't looking". A few minutes later we pulled inot the parking lot at the school and all the girls piled out to drop stuff off and get stuff from their classrooms. I stepped out of the truck to get stuff out of the back for the girls and returned, leaning into the front passengers side to look at my wife.... There she was, gripping the steering wheel, shaking, pale. I said to her, "Jesus Christ Nancy, that was close, thank god you stopped". She is still extremely shaken by the event...and Its scary to think of how close it was to a horrible tragedy. Somehow it wasn't as important when I was younger...but these days.....its very scary. [/quote]    -  HTML is OFF | Forum Code is ON    Insert a File     Check here to include your profile signature.