Goodbye, 2007….And Good Riddance!
Man, I have to say this has been one of the worst years of my entire life, and that’s saying a lot. Both for me personally and the world in general, this year is one that I will happily say “Good-bye” to, and never regret it’s departure.
The year was topped off today by one of the weirdest occurances I’ve heard of, at least where it concerns people I know and love. See, my daughter’s car was totalled today, and it never left her house. It seems an older guy - someone I went to school with, actually - dropped something as he was driving on the opposite side of the street my daughter lives on, and he bent down to pick it up. Simple, right? Well, not so much. He managed to cross into the oncoming lane, kept on going until he hit the parked minivan at my daughter’s curbside, and pushed the car over 20 feet backward, leaving the front rammed into what is left of the engine and several types of fluids from both cars running down the gutter to the storm drain on the corner.
I have no idea how fast he was traveling when he hit the car, but it seems like it had to be more than the 35 mph that’s posted, except when school is in session, when it lowers to 25. Luckily the guy’s airbags deployed and all he got from his adventure was a scrape on his forehead and a slightly bleeding nose, but there was no help for the front end of his car, as it was as mangled as my daughter’s was. The poor guy was so rattled he couldn’t even talk for a while, just mumbled something about getting his stuff before the car exploded. My daughter, an EMT in a past life, tried to get him to stay back and let her ascertain whether he was totally in control of his faculties or not, but he just kept repeating he was fine and he had to get his stuff out of the car.
She was kind of in shock herself, not quite believing she’s just lost her only means of transportation. Once the realization hit her that, had the kids not been dawdling along while getting ready to go shopping, they might very well have been in the car when he hit it, and that gave her a start. Of course, she quickly regained herself and thanked God for her poky kids - probably the first and only time she’d felt that way. Watching the police and several firemen working at keeping any danger posed by the leaking fluids and smoking engine at bay, she just kept repeating over and over “Thank God we were so slow”, mixed with repeated questions of the other guy as to how he was feeling, etc. I have to say, she was more calm than I would have been in her place.
Once everything was cleared up and everyone who didn’t belong there was gone, she began trying to figure out how she’d get a rental car, who would pay, and how. Phone calls to her insurance, his insurance, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, and the police took on a merry-go-round quality, and interspersed with calls from her honey wondering what was going on now and advising her on what she had to do and say, as if she couldn’t figure it out on her own. This was all exacerbated by the fact it’s a holiday and everyone was gone/leaving/just plain not interested in the problem, and trying to get information and advice as to how to go about it all was like pulling teeth from a hen’s mouth. Finally, after all the hoopla was over, I dropped her and the kids off at the car rental lot, waving good-bye as they climbed into their “new” car, ending the saga.
Now, as “disasters” go, this was probably not much worse than a broken leg right before a sking vacation, but for those of us involved, it was absolutely the most appropriate way to say good-bye to this dirty, rotten, stinking year that had started out with so much promise just 12 months ago. It’s like Forrest Gump said so often: “You never know what you’re gonna get”.
As we start this New Year, my hope is that this one will be much better for everyone than the one we’re ushering out at midnight tonight. No more war, no more innocents dying at the hands of those who think they have the right to kill as many other people as possible to get their point across, no more lost homes, no more Acts of God wiping out whole cities, states, and countrysides. No new diseases, no resurgence of old ones, and no lives lost to careless manufacturers or outright sabotage. No more hunger, no more pain, no more wondering how to live from one day to the next…..am I asking too much? Yeah, I guess I am, but….wouldn’t it be wonderful? Happy New Year, Everyone. God Bless and Protect Us All.
