What are the odds?

When I was a small child, my family would go to my grandparents’ house in St. Louis for Christmas (every year). It was a good 11 – 12 hour drive.

My story really begins when we got to “Somewhere, Kentucky”.
My brother and I were asleep in the backseat (no seatbelts) and my sister was in the front seat in between my parents. I woke to the sound of a honking horn, it was continuous. I awoke feeling disoriented and noticed my dad was honking and swerving. Then I realized he was trying to avoid an oncoming car. I was young, but I knew this was strange. This was a four lane highway, and the oncoming car was on our side. My dad could not go on the opposite side of the highway because there was on coming traffic, and the other way would have put us in a pretty steep ditch. So he headed for the ditch and the guy still hit us. Guess why? He had fallen asleep at the wheel and was drunk. Fortunately, none of us in my family were terribly hurt, but we had a lot of cuts and bruises. The drunk man was hurt pretty bad, broken ribs, broken legs and internal bleeding. This really made an impression on me, even though I was only about 4 years old.

I was lucky to never be in a car accident again, until…..I was 19 years old.
My friend and his brother took me to a hockey game. When we arrived at the Coliseum there was a religious group outside of the entrance passing out pamphlets and flyers and asking “would you go to heaven if you die tonight?” We talked about that for a while. After the game was over, we headed home. We got to a certain point and turned around to go back to the convenience store to get a soda. (Hmmm, I wonder if our fate would have been different if we had not turned around?) After getting the soda, we got back in the car to head home. I forgot to mention that the car we were in was a small two door, 4 cylinder car. My friend was nice enough to let me sit in the front and his brother was driving. Anyway, we were traveling along through the winding roads going through the rolling hills. It was pitch black because there were no road lights on these hillside roads. We had started discussing the incident of the religious group and their question they had proposed to the fans coming into the building. All of the sudden, we could hear a car squealing its tires and it kept getting louder. We were headed up the hill towards the horseshoe turn and a car (almost a tank – an old ’66 Impala) came flying around the curve, went off the road, almost off the cliff and turned in time to slam head-on into us. It was like slow motion, I thought that was it for us. Once he hit, it was a flash, it spun us around to the opposite direction. I blacked out for a bit, as my head broke the windshield, my nose broke the dash, and my right knee broke the glove compartment. I awoke to the voice of my friend telling me to get out of the car because it was on fire. Both guys got out of the car on my side because the car was so crushed that the driver side door wouldn’t open. The other car started driving off and the brother of my friend chased him down stopping him telling him there were hurt people here. The look on my friend’s face told me that I was hurt although I couldn’t feel my face. Other people in passing, that happen to know us stopped and called for help. I was pretty worried when every person that looked at me said, “Oh my God, are you ok?” Well, I won’t get into any of the gory details, I was extremely lucky to end up with just a concussion, a broken nose and other bumps, cuts and bruises. Guess why we were hit. Yes, he was drunk! That makes it 2 for 2 with me. I was in two car accidents and both times I was hit by drunk drivers.

After that, I was not in any other car accidents until…..several years later.
I had been out to dinner and was on my way home. I was sitting at a stop light (sitting completely still) and all of the sudden, I was rear ended. He slammed me so hard; it ran me into the back of a station wagon. We all got out. The girls in front of me came back to my car, (they immediately realized that I had been pushed into them) saw they had no damage, asked me if I was ok, said they were ok, then took off. (I guess they had been drinking and did not want to be involved). The guy came from behind me and started asking if I was ok. Whew! Guess why he hit me. He was so drunk! I could smell the alcohol on his breath from 10 feet away. When the police came, they asked me what happened, I told them. When they were asking him what happened, he started saying “well, she hit the people in front of her” and some other “out of his head talking”. The police then told him that he had hit me into the people in front of me. (Of course the police asked about the people in front of me…I told them that they left when they realized no one was hurt and they had no damage). Fortunately, this time, I had not been injured, just a little whiplash. My car was drivable, so after some paperwork was done, I was told I could leave. As I drove off, they were testing him, (you know, the typical drunk driving tests…touching your nose and walking the line). He went to jail for DUI. I cannot remember what his % of alcohol level was, but I do remember it was far beyond the legal limit. Wow! 3 for 3. Three times in car accidents and all three times, hit by a drunk driver. What are the odds of that happening? All I can say is that I was very lucky that I was not hurt worse or even killed. Why would people not be more cautious? Do they not realize a mistake like that can change someone’s (and their own) life forever? Be safe everyone!