XOMU: A test of gratitude

July ended with a bang... literally. A personal update, shared with my private community

Do bad things really come in threes? If so, there’s a third shoe out there somewhere with my name on it—which scares the crap out of me, because the first two were doozies.

Me: Thing one

A few days ago near home, I was rear-ended while at a dead stop on the highway. Traffic had slowed to stop-and-go a few minutes earlier due to construction. The kid in the Altima behind me must not have realized I was stopped and tried to switch lanes, but couldn’t get over fast enough. He slammed into the passenger back corner of my car before sliding off to my right.

He must have been braking hard because my airbag didn’t deploy, but it was a jolt. As his car started to pull over in front of mine, I could see his entire driver’s side front corner and side body was just… decimated. I was dazed, but mostly worried about whether the other person was okay. He pulled over, but couldn’t get his door open—it was that mangled. Finally he slid out and confirmed he was okay, but he looked shook. Honestly, we both were, and it didn’t help that traffic was still bumper to bumper across five lanes of traffic all around us, everyone trying to figure out how to work around the pieces of his car sitting in the middle of the lane. I immediately called 911.