Run Off the Road

 

I write this hurriedly, in a frenzy really. My fingers are clacking at the keyboard with an intensity that mimics my heart racing. I feel my heart bursting, my eyes welling, and a lump the size of an apricot in my throat. I’m writing with no regard for grammar, punctuation, style, or voice. I tend to take to my keyboard in moments like this. This is what journaling used to be, but in my state I couldn’t hold a pen steady. It’s all I can do to focus right now.

I was just run off the road by a Heartland Express truck. 

Run. Off. The. Road.

I honked like hell and slammed on my brakes, but he kept coming. I had nowhere to go. I swerved to the shoulder, still honking, the sound of gravel grinding beneath my wheels. I was in the right turn lane, merging to turn right. It’s a route I take daily to work. I know the traffic pattern. The semi truck came from the left lane and barreled over me to turn right, either not hearing or not heeding my horn. It was a slim shoulder. Had there been a foot less he would have slammed into me and dragged me along like a charm dangling from his silver truck.

I had just dropped off my sons at school.

My God. “What if?” reels in my head. I can’t go there.

What if…

I stopped and waited for a bit. I was a kaleidoscope of fright, relief, and seething anger. I was too worked up to capture the truck’s details. All I know is that it was a Heartland Express semi truck on Highway 40 heading East at the Harrison Avenue exit. The driver was older and looked like a Duck Dynasty relative — gray hair and beard peppered with black. Trucker hat. Cliches are what they are for a reason. I reported nothing. I’m not hurt. Shaken for sure.

AP Moore taught me how to drive in 1984. Well before the days of cell phones, he taught me to NEVER be a distracted driver. Had I been reapplying lipstick or reaching for my travel coffee mug, my life, and my sons’, would be different right now. God forbid I had been texting or otherwise engaged in a cell phone. For the record, I DO NOT TEXT AND DRIVE. EVER. An instant would have sealed a different fate today.

Instead, I can work from home with my dog at my feet as he relishes the sun. I can pick up my boys from school.

Tomorrow is a new day. And for that, I am thankful.