Sunday, March 13, 2011

Another Car Story: I Saw Blue Lights


Yes. Blue lights.

No. I haven’t gone crazy (yet).

Excuse me for a moment while I collapse on this fainting couch. Don’t you roll your eyes at me! You have no respect for my poor nerves – no idea how much I suffer! Though it’s been nearly an hour, my insides are still all tremble-y and pudding-like, and my hands feel shaky. This has definitely been the most adventurous, craziest, car story to date. There have been others which I have, bluntly, been too lazy to record, but this surpasses them all – even this one. What is a towed car to an experience such as the one I just lived through? Nothing!

We, the older girls, were on our way home from a baby shower. The wind was really a-blowing, so much so that the rain was hitting our windshield at quite the horizontal angle. Mama took the driving slowly, maneuvering our little car around the branches, twigs, and mysterious colored plastic sheets that littered the roads. Turning onto the road-before-the-road-we-turn-off-of-for-our-road, she bemoaned the tall trees standing in such proximity to where we were driving, shedding their branches. We had just about made it past them when smack! one branch slammed into our windshield, immediately followed by a louder THUD! as another, larger branch banged down onto our roof. Mama made us laugh by immediately placing her hand protectively on her head, and we drove on, a little giddy from the taste of adventure we were having.

We had no idea of adventure.

We were just about home when the real excitement happened. As we approached the top of our hill, a little branch caught our eyes. A little branch stuck to a sagging electrical wire and smoldering in the rain. The moment we pulled up level with it, the soggy stick and pine needles burst into flame and blew off, landing right on top of us! Daddy thinks the electrical wire must have fallen too, because as we felt the impact of the branch on the car, the car shook twice, accompanied by a loud “BUZZZ-BUZZ” sound, and glowing, blue-flashing lights on the windshield wipers.

Rachel went into “Diana scream” mode (you know, when Anne fell into the well in the haunted woods).

Emily had cataplexy.

Gracie shrieked over and over again that “We’re going to DIE!!”

Mama gave one scream, and fell silent.

I screamed I-hardly-knew-what. Except for that after all the buzzing, and flashing, and banging was over, mama asked, “What are you saying?” and I had to stop and analyze my words…apparently I was screaming “Lord, help us!” – something  I genuinely meant even if I didn’t know I was saying it.

After the drama, all of us girls burst in to frenzied tears and uncontrollable laughter (one way to cope with adrenaline, I suppose), and mama was completely quiet as we coasted down the hill and pulled in to the driveway. “Um, is it safe for us to get out of the car?” I queried. “I don’t know, I don’t know what we should do!” was her reply as she parked the car.

We almost gave daddy a heart-attack, calling him in our hysterical state on the cell phone – from the drive way, mind you – to see if we could get safely out of the car. Apparently that’s a question only girls would ask (for you girl readers, it is completely safe to get out of the car, even after being hit by lightening) but the fact that he couldn’t understand us gave him quite a scare.

So out we piled, crying and stressing, giddy and shaking. After our exclamations and dramatic tale-telling to the family members at home, we put on cozy sweats and made some tea, but even with these relaxations, we have not yet been able to completely shake off the crazy emotions and tingly-backbone feelings our adventure gave us. It was a rather traumatic experience, don’t you think?

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