See, I used to like
snow. This is because I had not seen snow since I was
eight years old. And I admit it, it is fun to
run around and make snow angels and
fall on your face where otherwise you would have been seriously injured, but snow is mainly a
damn pain. We had twenty inches, a record. In Texas?
Impossible. But it happened, I was snowed in for two days and had three flights home cancelled on me due to the
inclement weather.
Now I know why Christmas is only once a year. Because if we all had to see our families all together more than that, most of us would go totally insane. 9 people in one 1100 square foot house and quick tempers do not go hand in hand. In fact, they mostly go foot in ass. I got into two arguments myself over the holiday and I am a naturally nonargumentative person at heart. One was over my desire to by a Japanese car, and the other was over open source software and whether the Internet should be free. That one was almost interesting because it was had with my one relative with a Master's degree. The rest of my family is, to put it bluntly, white trash. The only thing that was going through my mind for the entire week was the statement made by Minh, the Laotian neighbor on King of the Hill - "stupid redneck."
The only consolation is that somewhere, there is something messed up about everyone's family
My boyfriend was in a terrible
car accident the day before I left for Backasswards, Texas. He did not tell me about it until 5 hours before I had to head to the
airport so there was no time for me to change my plans. Apparently, he had been stopped in a
traffic jam and a semi truck came barrelling up the hill at 60 miles an hour, not knowing that the traffic ahead was stopped, hitting his car
full force. Fortunately he had left a car length or so in front of him. He spun a couple of times and hit a
Ford Explorer which flipped twice.
(Now I know there is some truth to what everyone told me, SUVs flip very easily!) The Explorer hit another car in the process, that hit another car in
reaction. All five lanes of the freeway were consumed by the accident and it shut down
Interstate 35 for 3 hours at lunchtime.
My boyfriend was the only one injured.
And it wasn't even bad! He had a slight concussion, a couple of cuts and bruises and had to have three stitches in his scalp where his cell phone had flown out of its belt holster on impact and had hit him in the head. His friend Lance was the one driving the Explorer that flipped, and he had just put on his seat belt. That, along with the air bag, saved his life. Someone opened his door and he stepped out without a scratch on him. Everyone, including one lady's chihuahua, was pretty shaken up, but the injuries were very minor for an accident of that magnitude.
People die in wrecks like that. Fortune was on his side that day.
Really everyone, buckle up. And don't follow too close, even in a traffic jam. You just have to. All I could think about was what would have happened if he had not. That I would be opening his Christmas presents because he wouldn't be alive to do it.