As the car crossed our lane of traffic and we were preparing to collide, I remember just sitting there watching it all unfold from the passenger seat. There's a scene in the beginning of the movie Garden State where Zach Braff is having a dream where he is in a plane that is going down and as everyone is screaming and in a panic, he is sitting in his seat disaffected, calm, and stoic. It kind of felt like that for me. There was no jerk reaction, no heavy breathing, nothing. When we hit, the only thing going on in my head as there was the squealing of tires, crunch of vehicle bodies, and the deployment of airbags was: "Wow. The sound is deafeningly quiet now." My ears were ringing and everything was muffled for a moment. I remember Sarah asking me if I was okay and my only response as I went through the motor checklist of my limbs and body my only response was: "I don't know."
The emergency vehicles begin to arrive and it quickly becomes a scene from a cheesy B-film (including the helpful man with the ZZ Top beard in the pickup truck who witnessed it all happen). I then received an epiphany to a question I had wondered my entire life: I wonder what people think about as they are standing at the scene of a car wreck witnessing the emergency response crews working. The answer is: not much of anything.
Here's to hoping the rest of the summer gets better.
