Monday morning I began my day like many others. It was the first day of school for many, and it was the beginning of the work week for me. I also managed to get out the door in record time (related) that morning; the sun was just creeping up above the horizon as I set out for work. As the roads were particularly empty, at least in the opposite direction to the commuter’s pilgrimage, I noted a single SUV driving opposite my direction across the median. I noted it, though it was for no reason other than my significant training in Zen Driving. Over the next 7 seconds, I would take special note of this vehicle as it careened out of control and ended up on its side in the middle of the lane.
It began as what I took for childish misuse of an SUV by brazen young kids on their way to their first day at school in the new year. There was a wild swerve into the median – a hard hit against the curb wall followed by a brief foray on a narrow median, ending in the erratic jerk back into the vehicle mainstay. This was the opening act for several more wild swings of the SUV’s rear end as it tried to come to terms with the perfectly straight road. You might say it was going through corrective maneuvers, but each swing seemed wilder than the former until the wheelbase could no longer handle the large vehicle’s centrifugal force. I witnessed the slow and labored moment where the driver-side wheels lifted off the ground and I knew the driver had lost. The truck rested on its side in the middle of two lanes; as though it had happened sometime in the night when no one was there to see it, and now it is found with the surrounding mystery of how it got there.
I pulled around at the very next median break to see how I could help. I have a cell phone, vague knowledge of CPR, and I’m 2 meters tall with great dexterity – surely that makes me useful in some ways. However, people were already running out from stores on the side of the road and other cars behind me had stopped in the road to lend their hands. In seconds, the scene was covered in people looking down into the truck’s interior. I have no idea what happened in there, but I can only imagine a few circumstances. A) There was a fight between the driver and at least one passenger. B) The driver had a seizure. C) It was intentional. All of these are pretty bizarre circumstances in my book. The oddest thing is that it has taken me three days to actually blog about this and I didn’t mention it to anybody until late Monday. The whole event seemed to have taken place in my imagination. It was difficult for me to keep the memory from being a nebulous dream in my mind.
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