Trauma at the Texas Turnaround

You wanna know why I brought up how long it took to drive to the birth center?

Why I emphasized the point to death?

Why it was the 100% focus of last week's letter?

Here it is, people.

We were almost home from a prenatal appointment. We had just exited the highway and were waiting at a stop light.

Guy in front of us gets antsy. He sees the U-turn lane that would allow him to curve under the overpass and head back the direction he came and all with zero wait times and no insurance required!

Guy (that's the drivers name now) is pulled up past the Texas Turnaround. So he throws it into reverse...

What we see is the 18-wheeler in front of us begin to back up.

Hannah roars. You wouldn't know it by looking at her, but there's a specific voice that takes over her body when she sees injustice on the roadway. The voice of one crying in the expressway.

But the driver cannot hear her.

It's happening in slow motion.

The truck is backing up,

getting closer and closer,

heading straight for our disbelieving eyes.

Even though I'm a cup of coffee short of crisis response mode, two options pop into my brain:

1. throw my vehicle into reverse and race the truck backwards to safety, or

2. honk the horn.

Before I tell you my decision...

I have to play a flashback of another time I was faced with this exact dilemma. 

Roll the Road Rage remix...

I'm driving down a sleepy side street in South Austin.

I see a man and a woman in the road. The man wears a sweat-stained basketball jersey and equally oversized shorts. He shoves the woman. He's yelling. They tussle.

I stop and call 9-1-1.

The police are dispatched, or so I'm told. But I'm still there. (I may or may not have racked a round into my Ruger at this point.)

I engage.

And honk my horn.

The man turns towards me and points. He starts towards me.

HE'S COMING FOR ME!

Forget the fully loaded semiautomatic (this just means a normal handgun that isn't a six-shooter cowboys used when everyone roamed the earth on horseback, for those of you who are somehow shocked we carry guns in Texas) in the glove compartment.

Forget the locked car and rolled-up windows cocooning me in my own safety bubble. 

I threw the car into reverse and floored the gas.

THUMP!

I've never seen anyone before on this street at this time of day. But there behind me now is a Ford Explorer. 

I had just rear-rear-ended them. Or whatever you call it when you back into someone.

Now what do I do? I mean I can't get out of the car because this homicidal maniac is loose in front of me. But behind me is a car that wants my insurance or my life.

A police cruiser arrives and two fit officers get out and talk to the couple who were fighting.

I get out of my car and turn to the driver of the explorer. Puzzled, I think is the best description for her reaction. Grandma, the driver's mother no doubt, is less generous. I explain about the domestic disturbance. She responds with a lesson about how sometimes its best to stay out of other people's business.

One of the officers comes over and gives us his card and explains that he wasn't called out for the accident so... he'd just rather not.

After a few other rude remarks from grandma and the ritual exchanging of insurance information, I leave with a dent in my bumper. 

I actually won that round of bumper cars. The driver behind me had let their insurance lapse. (My dad inspired that line — soon after I got my first car, he started calling it "Trent's bumper car").

End flashback...

There we were, MomBrain, The Amazing Jillian, The Extraordinary Ellia, the yet-unborn Felicity, and I packed into our mini-minivan. On our way back from an appointment at the birth center. The backend of a Semi bearing down on us.

Somewhere in the recesses of my mind the option of putting my car in reverse got shelved.

I honked my horn.  

The truck kept coming.

(I think that was maybe the second time I had ever used that car's horn. If I had remembered how shrill and pathetic it was, I would have tried something else. Excuses, excuse, I know.)

The truck kept coming. 

I also somehow misjudged the distance. I mean the truck is in front of us at a stop. You would think you would have less time before the vehicle hit you.

I think I honked again, because that strategy was working so well.

THUNK!

The truck hit us. 

It actually pushed our car backwards until completing one of the more brazen lane changes I have seen. Then without ever acknowledging our existence, it drove off into the sunset. 

It was in this moment that we realized the truck had no rear license plate. 

I looked down and found every light in our dashboard flashing back at me. The car wouldn't move. I had my pregnant wife and kids in the car.

MomBrain suggested I turn the car off and back on. 

...

It actually worked.

Hit by a tractor-trailer, and all the car needed was a reboot. 

The police officer who met us at the nearby gas station was less than optimistic and hinted that we should not fill out a report.

I began to write down every detail that had transpired. But was kindly reminded that they really didn't need to know the exact shade of green the truck was or really anything. The police officer seemed both bored and like he had to be somewhere else at the same time.

We apologized for existing and went home a little shaken but not stirred. Except MomBrain, who will most likely hunt down the driver of that truck in his sleep and give him a face tattoo with an iron.

I know, this was supposed to be a family show.

Tune in next time for the next installment. It will be more or less gruesome.

— DadFace

P.S - Today I learned that ingenious U-turn lane is also called a Texas Turnaround. It's apparently rare, except in Texas. Wired magazine wrote an entire story "investigating the mysteriously feel-good Texas Turnaround."

P.P.S.  - I'm on a writing structure kick. Brains love order and structure. We learn by connecting one thing to another in our minds.

For this edition, I just started writing and then realized that the flashback gave this story a nice mirror effect.

While the accidents are not identical, they share several details — most strikingly, the police officers who would rather not (and who is to blame them considering the staggering amount of emergencies competing for their time). 

DadFace Directive (one simple action step you can do today to fulfill your daily writing habit): Find an article you like and examine it for structure, how it is arranged and how it links together. Deconstruct the article for these elements of structure and then see how you can steal one for your article. Or even easier, just copy the mirror method I used today.