Thursday, April 24, 2008
More Excitement Than I Can Handle
I finally fell asleep sometime after 1am after my evening of rabal rousing. At about 2:45am something woke me up. When the cat jumped, I knew I wasn’t just hearing things. Then I saw the flashing lights. My immediate thought? Someone from the planning board meeting was torching my house. I ran to the front door to find a police car parked in front of our driveway blocking the road. I opened the door and looked down the street to see a rescue effort underway. All I could make out at first that there was a car accident and that police, EMS and firemen were working to get someone out of a car. I heard random things..."She was unconscious....Stand down!...We’re trying to help you.” Me and several other neighbors just stood there with our hands over our mouths watching this scene. Several times I heard the screams and cries of someone in pain. Not something you ever want to hear. It’s one thing to drive by an accident on a highway; it’s quite another to have to listen to it go on and on. At some point I realized that the car had flipped over and that someone was trapped inside. The car was basically in someone’s front yard.
Needless to say, I couldn’t go back to sleep, at least not for long. I’d go back to bed for a little while, then hear a commotion and go back up front to see what was going on. At some point I fell back asleep and dreamt I was mugged. I blame the affordable-housing haters who are afraid that $150,000 homes are going to create a “ghetto.”
The accident was on the news this morning. Here’s a short story. I’m so glad to know that everyone is ok.
Flipped over cars hit a little too close to home to me. Back in college I was in a car that flipped over on the NYS Thruway, spun around on the roof across the entire highway until we hit the median. I was in the back...with no seatbelt. By nothing less than a miracle my two roommates and I walked away from that accident with minor injuries. It could’ve been so much worse.
I need to watch Lost and, well, get lost for a while in something a little less real.
