I'M SORRY, I GUESS YOU DIDN'T NEED HELP

It's dark, wet (icey, which I don't find out til very soon), and I procceed with the neccessary caution. I look over to my friend in the passenger seat and remember a time. "Remember that time," I say, "when I slid around that curve?" She responds, "You mean when you hit the curb?" And I correct her. It wasn't that time, it was the other road, when I slid around the curve but maintained control. It was the same road we were on now.

Excited, she screams out a name. We apparently passed someone standing off to the side of the street that she recognized. Her car looked parked, halfway up a stranger's drive way. Next thing I know, my car starts sliding. I jerk the wheel to the left and my car continues to glide right. "Remember that time I slid around that curve?" Ha, I was about to recreate those memories. I brace for impact and go with it. My car is on course to go off course, but maybe that telephone pole ahead will redirect me. There's a sudden impact and my car comes to a stop. About ten inches diagnol from my vantage point, and slighty in front of the telephone pole was a sign. I hit the sign, which kept me from hitting the pole.

I reverse, turn the wheel and attempt to move forward. I get about six feet and my tires just keep spinning. I get out of the car, realizing that I wasn't going anywhere. I look back down the road and that car that seemed to be parked in a stranger's driveway was wrapped around a telephone pole. Realizing how severe the conditions were, I carefully walk my way up the hill with the intentions of stopping any other oncoming traffic. I see a car ahead and I try to flag it down to stop. The driver applies the brakes and goes sliding right past me. Please don't hit my car. Instead, it bares to the right, sliding into a tree stump which spins the car one-hundred and eighty degrees. So far, mother nature has three notches.

I check to see if the driver was okay. She was startled, but safe. The cops arrive, or should I say cop. Apparently all other cops were busy, not that they would have made it with the icey roads.

So now I'm standing at the top of the hill, in the middle of the road, making sure cars don't come down this way. For the most part, everyone was understanding, appreciative, and thankful for what I was doing... except for one very nice family.

The air is cold, the road is quiet. In the distance I see a pair of lights. They sit high off the ground, so I think it must be a truck. As it approaches at a fairly quick speed, I notice that it is an SUV. I stand out in the road and wave my arms, signaling them to slow down. The reaction time was delayed but the SUV eventually comes to a stop. Inside is an older man and woman, and a younger woman. I peak inside the window, ready to give my explanation. Meanwhile, the older woman in the passenger seat is struggling hard to get her door open. It was frozen shut and she looked furious. So I stood there, staring, as if I was at the zoo observing some sort of freaked out monkey trying to bust through the cage. Finally the door opens and the two older people start screaming at me. Apparently they were upset that I was standing out in the middle of the road. They would have made it seemed like I jumped out in front them. I tried to explain to them the road conditions and that it would not be such a smart idea to drive down that road but they seemed to not get it. It didn't help that the girl who crashed into the telephone pole was their daughter, so they were already in a panic. I suggested that they parked where they were and walk down the hill. But instead, they kept freaking out on me. The younger woman, their other daughter, was trying to say something to me but I really couldn't understand her over her parent's screaming. So then I thought, the daughter who crashed seemed so chill, how could this be her family? Anyway, I made more attempts to explain that I was doing them a favor and maybe even saving some lives, including their very own daughter's. Needless to say, these thick-headed suburban white folk know-it-alls ignored my warning and pulled forward anyway. About twenty feet ahead, the SUV begins to slide. Maybe now they get it.

In the end, I redirected about five cars and there were no more accidents. The cop called a Salt Truck there and it salted half the road (that's a whole 'nother story), and I was able to drive the one and a half blocks to my friend's house. And all I had to do the next day was catch a flight.

Oh yeah, before I left, I went to the cop, who was dealing with the girl and her family, and I thanked him for his help. The mother turned to me and said, "thank you, and be careful, stay out of the roads." My response, I turned around and walked away.

PREFACE

I always thought the best way to learn about 'self' is to put one's self in challenging situations and then reflect on them. Now, these situations do not have to be life threatening, however, they do make for better stories. But I also find that even the most mundane events that string each catastrophic moment in our lives together can bring out a new fabric of one's self never before discovered. Maybe through these moments, we learn what truly keeps our pulse beating during the flat-lining periods of our existence; to conjure up motivation and turn thought into action. Of course, after reflection then comes recordation.