We were at a dead stop. The force with which we were hit resulted in a four-car pile up that stopped traffic for an hour. My wife was up front with me, our six year-old son in his booster seat, seat belt thankfully secured.
Our car was totaled, our 100-mile ride home was a $400.00-fare flatbed.
No one was drunk. No one was speeding. No hotrods or tuned-up drift racers were involved. There were no media hooks around this event, but that made it no less life altering.
I watched it happen. Congestion ahead forced us to slow to a halt. In my rear view mirror I saw the white Impala behind us, still traveling at highway speed, the driver clearly oblivious. Helpless to protect, helpless to defend, all I could do was yell "Hold on. Hold on! HOLD ON!!!" as I watched anonymous car plow into the back our Passat, my family strapped to their seats inside.
I've already exposed my hand with the title of this entry: no one was injured. No one was injured. No one was injured but no one came away unchanged.
I heard the impact, felt sheet metal buckle, watched plastic and glass crackle and spray as I was ricocheted deep into the crook of my seat back only to be thrust forward and then pulled back again by my shoulder belt, just as our entire our car was thrust forward only to come to a very abrupt halt upon impact with the unsuspecting, stopped car ahead.
The accident elapsed in an objective split-second. But for a subjective eternity I thought I had lost my son.
I was uninjured, but just as the prehistoric experience and emotion of my caveman forefathers are somehow encoded into the DNA that touches my every cell, so has the fleeting vision of a son's life cut short attached itself to the very core of my being, a bitter reminder that, like freewill, security is a nefarious opiate.
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