It was a nice summer afternoon, an extravagant day, about 80 degrees and no clouds.  I was eight and I was with my brother and my dad.  We were driving down to my dad’s parents house and when we had exited Interstate 84 and were almost into a left turn lane at an intersection ready to head south, when someone cut my dad off and he slammed on the breaks and laid into his horn.  The person was trying to make the light just ahead, it had just turned yellow, but they had failed.  We stopped a couple feet behind them. I was sitting in the passenger seat and looked up just in time to see a baby blue pickup truck with a white stripe along the length of the vehicle run the red light to our left.  I heard the engine scream and saw a tan SUV, that was going straight, slam into the side of the truck pushing it across the intersection and into the car in front of me.  This car rolled back and came within inches of hitting my dad’s front bumper.  The some lucky feet. 

“Should we call 9-1-1?”  I ask.

“No,” my dad replies, “there are plenty of people doing it, just look outside.”

I looked outside and saw that my dad was right, everyone was leaving their cars and was on their phones.  I glanced ahead again and saw the mess before me,  the car in front of me had its hood bent up and I could see shards of the car laying around the front, the airbags were inflated.  The driver of the pickup truck, wearing a flannel vest and had a rough handlebar mustache, had an arm bleeding, some shrapnel must have went through the open window and cut his arm.  I could barely make out the smashed front end of the SUV.  The drivers did not look pleased.

It hit me, this is the most destruction I have seen.  I had thought the world was a calm peaceful place.  This was the start of losing my innocence.  I was terrified, I had never seen anything like this before.  I could have been, maybe should have been in the car that got hit.  The person that wanted to make the light had saved my vacation and any injury the crash could have caused.  Was this the world giving them what they deserved?

“What happened?” my brother had just woken from his nap.

“There was a crash” my dad answers.

“When are we going to be able to continue driving?” I inquired.

“When the tow trucks get here and remove the crashed cars” my dad answers.

I heard some sirens in the distance. They grew louder, slowly until they were beside me and in the intersection.  The fire truck was the first to respond.  Then the police came and a couple tow trucks.  I saw them hook the chain under the truck, they had already gotten the people out of the car.  The truck was moved to the side, then the SUV and finally the car in front of me.  They had wanted immensely to get through that intersection and now it would take much longer than a cycle of lights.  We begun to move, through the intersection and ready to start our vacation. The trip that someone saved because they cut my dad off.

I was relieved, but sorry.  But this was the way the universe worked, sometimes things happen to you that are good in the end.  I did not like that the car had been hit, or that the driver of the truck had gotten hit or that the SUV had gotten hit.  It made me thankful and happy and pleased to not be a part of the mess and to leave it behind as I continued down the road to start my vacation.