Tuesday is the day we have everything to do. My work. Baby Blogger's school, then dance class, then piano lesson. It's a draining day, made more draining by the dead-stop traffic on the way back home at the end of it all, the lights and sirens up ahead indicating it might be a long wait. I inch forward, with all the other bumpers, in typical Atlanta fashion, waiting on line to get home.
When I'm finally close enough to see what all the fuss is about, I do the other Atlanta thing--the one I'm compelled to do every time I see an accident (which is too often)--and tell myself, "Quit your whining about the traffic and be glad you aren't the one they're shoving into the ambulance. Your big wreck is still ahead of you." It's a kind of metro "do unto others oath." We all take the pledge, this prayer to the jaws of life.
I remember when I was new to this town, how it would knock the air out of me the way people talked about wrecks (southern for car accidents). "I saw a good one on the way to work today." I heard that more than once. The news blink-blink-blinks these firey orange explosions on the traffic map every morning, not relaying that someone just lost a husband, wife, mother, father, friend, set of legs, but letting us know that taking an alternate route would be a good idea.
So as I pull up to the remnants of the wreck this Tuesday, I'm smack dab next to the paramedics working on one man, with a birdseye view into the ambulance. I notice someone's inside, being attended to by animated medics. I quickly turn my attention to the mangled truck and the small white sedan it ate. I edge past the scene and get the expected result that no one wants to admit is pure relief: traffic disolves instantly as you pass an accident--it's always a faster-than-usual drive from there onward.
Relieved to be past the mess, able to once again haul ass, I forget there's an innocent bystander in my back seat, until I hear:
"Mommy, was he dead?"
"Who honey--you mean at the accident?"
"Yes, was he dead?"
"No, I'm pretty sure he was alive. They're just taking him to the hospital to make sure he's okay."
"It was a boy."
"Well, it was probably a man. They had the stretcher on the grass. I think I saw a man."
"No, mommy, inside the ambulance."
"Oh. Yes there was someone inside. Probaby the man driving the other car."
"No, it was a boy," she insists.
"Well how do you know that?"
"Because his feet were very, very small."
