Well.
I waited at the red light, to pull out of my neighborhood and make a left onto the four-lane main thoroughfare to head south.
When it turned green I still waited a bit as the car to the right that had been waiting for its chance to turn left in front of me onto my street, went and did so.
After it passed in front of me and to my left, and drove off behind me, I started into the T-intersection to cross the two northbound lanes and make my left turn – and saw a turquoise-blue pickup barreling northwards towards me from my left not slowing down a mite even seeming to be accelerating and it just kept coming and coming and my brain couldn’t believe it or process it or what and my unthinking this-can’t-be-happening reaction was to slam on my brakes and I’m pretty sure I laid on the horn but it seemed like forever it kept coming towards me and coming towards me and coming towards me and coming towards me.
It swerved ever-so-slightly to its right as if to go around behind me apparently assuming I was accelerating and continuing into my turn. But I had stopped dead still. And was right in front of it.
And it – finally – stopped.
The grille about 4 feet from my face.
I saw some guy with long blondish hair and dark glasses behind the wheel.
I remember raising my hands, and I’m sure I swore, and I sat there in the intersection and looked at that turquoise front end of that pickup right there by my left shoulder – I’m not even sure I could have opened my door all the way without banging into it – and watched disbelievingly as he slowly maneuvered to his right, around the rear of my stock-still-in-the-intersection bright red Prius…and continued on northward.
By that time the light had changed and so I was in the way of both north- and southbound traffic who now had their green light back…I wasn’t injured; my car was untouched…so I crept forward and turned left as planned into the near southbound lane and turtled along at, oh I dunno, maybe 11 miles an hour 
(in a 40 mph zone – who knows what the pickup had been doing) for a while as my body and brain tried to figure out how to get back to functioning effectively. I saw in my rearview mirror the southbound driver who had been stopped for her (and the pickup driver’s…) red light back at the intersection – I could swear she was looking at me and telegraphing through my rear-view mirror all her love and compassion and shock and good wishes and have-a-nice-life and gratitude that I hadn’t been plowed into right in front of her.
So that’s the story.
One of the many – many – things going through my thoughts, blood vessels, and emotions since that close encounter of the near-fatal kind is this: I have so much more to do, to live, to share, to learn; so many more stories to tell, to hear, to live…things inarticulately profound and things mundanely quotidian…
One of the more mundane: I wish to get back to blogging and other writing, which I’ve neglected for a while. So I decided to kick-start the re-entry by telling this story.
And wishing you a beautiful day in this glorious world in which we live. And urging you to go hug someone you love, and gratefully share stories, profound and mundane, with them.
What are you grateful for today?
Thanks for reading – Pam
I try to make at least one Gratitude Post on Facebook every day. Here’s mine for May 27, 2016:
“I am so Grateful to have awakened in my comfy bed this morning instead of in the hospital, so Grateful to be home here with my Old Doggie instead of there with nurses and doctors, so Grateful to have my familiar morning aches and pains instead of whatever it would have been if that barreling pickup truck hadn’t managed to stop 4 feet from my face yesterday.
Yes, Grateful. There is much yet to do.”
…definitely including hanging out with Old Doggie in our yard at the edge of the Wild Kingdom…
[Featured image of sunset over the Rockies by Pam Faro / Turtle image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti at FreeDigitalPhotos.net ]
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