That’s true, @SQUEEKY2, and you should know it of all people! But here. Let me tell you a story.
We were driving south on Main street in Winfield sometime after 6 p.m. last night. The parking downtown is at a diagonal. If there are no other cars parked around you it’s pretty common to back out a little bit, then crank the wheel left and go forward to straighten the car out so you can just kind of merge onto Main, instead of trying to back out into traffic.
Around 10th and Main there was a lady in a Buick trying to do just that, but she didn’t seem to notice the oncoming cars and almost hit at least one, the one in front of us. Learned a bit later that there were others. The car in front pulled around her, and Rick stopped to let her pull on out. After several hazy seconds she finally did, but she was driving very, very slowly so Rick drove around her, as did the guy behind us. Something was wrong with her.
I was on the phone with Corrie when Rick, who was watching the gal in his rear view mirror, suddenly yelled, “Shit! She’s on the curb! Call 911!”
So I hung up on Corrie and called 911 (pretty sure they’re starting to recognize my crime-fighter voice. I sure recognized the dispatcher’s!) As I’m trying to give them the location, “Um, she’s heading…heading…um SOUTH! SOUTH on Main!” the driver kind of wandered over to the left lane and somehow managed to turn left, on to 12th, which is a residential neighborhood. Actually, she kind of missed the street and wound up on the grass to the north of a brick insurance building and was headed toward the side of the building.
I yelled, “She turned on 12th! She’s heading, um, LEFT! LEFT! Um,East? EAST!! She’s heading EAST on 12th! I think she’s going to hit the building! Oh, this is very bad.”
Dispatch said, “She’s going toward Rubbermaid?”
“YES!” I yelled. He and I have had these kinds of discussions before.
“Just checking,” he said.
Before she hit the building she managed to turned her car and wobbled her way, somehow, back toward the street.
Since we were about ½ a block ahead of where she had been on Main, Rick accelerated to 13th, turned right and zipped around the block and came out on 12th, across Main street from her. We got there just as her car slowly fell off the curb, back into the street.
About three blocks up 12th street there was a truck parked in the street. Rick said, “Man, I bet she hits that truck…..”
We crossed Main to follow her, I’m giving the dispatch a blow by blow, and the driver was alternately riding up on the curb, into people’s lawns and on the sidewalk, then back in the street, wandering all over the street.
Then Rick yelled, “There she goes! She’s gonna hit that truck!” It was like watching a disaster unfold in slow motion and there is nothing you can do. And sure as hell she hit it. !!!BOOM!!! She knocked it up over the curb and about 10 feet away, almost flipping it, but it landed crookedly on all four wheels, blocking the sidewalk and the alley. Still can’t figure out how that little Buick knocked that truck so far. Rick said the truck had a lift kit on it, and she was accelerating at the moment, and she just plowed under the back fender and just picked it up and shoved it. Her front window was broken on the right corner where the fender of the truck hit it.
“She just hit a parked truck!” I yelled at the dispatcher, then tried to get my bearings to tell him exactly where we were. I’m crappy with directions anyway and the adrenalin didn’t help. Finally managed to give him an address. You’d think someone who fights crime as much as me would have this direction thing figured out by now.
Her car was stopped so Rick got out of our Mountaineer and he jogged toward her car.
“Rick’s going to take her keys,” I said to dispatch.
Dispatch said, “OK. By the way, can I get your name?”
I said, “Valerie Billionis.”
He just said, “Uh huh.”
When he got to her she had started to open her door and had one foot out the door, to get out, but trying to restart the engine at the same time. Car wouldn’t start so Rick just stood there, outside of her passenger window, ready to move if, somehow, the car DID start.
Rick said she didn’t look to be physically hurt, just a small cut on her forehead where she hit the steering wheel or something, but she was incoherent.
Right about then 4 or 5 more cars pulled up around us. They were the all the people she’d affected, in one way or another, during her 2 block rambling disaster down Main street. It included a Pizza Hut delivery car.
Then the police and EMS finally got there. The neighbors came out. The street was full of cars and cops and people. Most of us were completely blocked in, by emergency vehicles and ourselves.
Groups formed and shifted, as we talked.
One of the vehicles was a big, white pick up with those heavy duty push bumper grill on the front. The driver was saying he almost wished he’d pushed her to the curb while she was on Main. I said, “That would have been something to see! I wish you had too!”
I said I wished we would have blocked her in somehow back then, but…we didn’t know then how BAD it really was.
Got my camera and was taking pictures. I was standing by the Pizza Delivery car and a lady from a house across the way said, “Is the pizza guy there?”
I said, “He’s not in the car, but the pizza is! Want some?” I was sorta tempted to start handing the pizza out to all the on lookers, but then the neighbor said, “That’s my pizza!”
So went and tapped the pizza guy on the shoulder and said, “The lady wants her pizza.”
So, in the middle of this, the pizza guy delivered the pizza.
Well, long story short, the driver of the Buick was a mess. We don’t know if the problem was medical, but we doubted it. But we don’t know.
So they loaded her into an ambulance, B&L showed up with their big, purple tow truck and they towed her car away, and we finally started dispersing.
As Rick and I were sitting in the Mountaineer, ready to leave, a neighbor (who I knew in another time, long, long ago) and her daughter, who was about six, came to my car window and were talking with us. The child was just excitedly chattering on about the mess, saying she hated bad people and bad things and how she’s bionic.
I said “You’re bionic?”
Her mom said, “Yes, she’s bionic. Just ask her.”
So the little girl grinned at me and said, “Yes, I’m bionic!”
I said, “Well, you know what? When I was your age I was a mermaid!”
Her eyes opened wide in astonishment and her mouth fell open and she said, “Really??”
I just smiled and nodded. Then I realized I was memorizing her. I saw her sweet little face, her summer-sun bleached blond hair, freckles skipping across her nose, her bright blue eyes, wide open in astonishment at meeting a real mermaid, and thought how easily it all could have changed in an instant that bright afternoon, had she been outside playing in her yard…..
Composing members:
0
Composing members:
0
