My husband, children and Uncle Jonathan had just finished eating dinner at a restaurant this evening and were driving over to a locally produced, all fresh ingredients, deliciously delectable ice cream store across the large street when we saw something that scared us enough we’re still talking about it.
We were at a stop light, preparing to do a U-turn when we heard sirens. Whenever this happens, we tell the children to look and see if they can see what’s coming. Children love fire trucks or ambulances or police cars and as we were already stopped, we were in a good position to look around. We saw a ladder fire truck coming from a side street, slowly enter the main road and begin to carefully cross the lanes. There were cars all around who had stopped to let the fire truck go “rescue people” as my son calls it.
The next thing I know, I hear a crunch sound. I said to my husband, “did the truck hit something? It sounded sort of like it did.” My husband said, “a car just slammed into the side of the truck. They didn’t slow down, they didn’t hit the brakes, they just ran straight into it.” I hadn’t seen it because my view was blocked by other stopped cars. My husband and Uncle Jonathan had seen this car not even realize there was a huge, red firetruck with sirens blaring in the middle of the intersection and tried to stop.
I could be remembering it wrong, but everyone saw that truck. Everyone heard the sirens. We all stopped. The fire truck was careful and was moving slowly. I don’t know what happened with that car. It was crumpled up under the passenger door area of the fire truck with most of the engine and front not visible. The fire fighters got out and began to check on the occupants but by then our light was green and we turned to go to the outdoor ice cream store, only one block away.
As we got our ice cream, police, first respond vehicles and ambulance after ambulance drove past us. We wondered if more cars had collided with the fire truck. When we left to go home, the area was blocked off and a slew of emergency medical personnel were visible as we drove around.
It’s always scary to see something happen like that. How did the driver miss all the visual and aural information letting him know he should be alert?
The children asked a lot of questions. There was some confusion on my son’s part on how many emergencies there were, what with all the sirens. I think he understood though that one emergency was being driven to by the fire truck and then a second emergency happened when the car ran into the fire truck. We talked about the EMS and how the ambulances were taking the people to the hospital to make sure they were okay. My children don’t understand death really yet, but my son did ask if they could take someone who was dead and make them non-dead at the hospital. We assured him the doctors would do everything they could to keep everyone alive and that doctors were pretty amazing people.
The Big Boy Update: As we were driving to school this morning my son asked about another school we passed on the way. I told him that was where I went to middle school when I was younger. My son then asked, “a hundred years ago? Two hundred?”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Uncle Jonathan joined us at the pool today. I had told the children he and Margaret would hopefully both be coming. When my daughter heard Margaret couldn’t join us today she said to Uncle Jonathan, “well, I’ll just pretend she’s here.” My daughter then waved and said “hi” to the Margaret who wasn’t here.
Fitness Update: Seven miles running in the morning and then I did that twenty-three minute upper body workout at the fitness room today. I’ve been putting off going, even though I like doing the workout when I get around to getting there.
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