Most Wanted: reckless driver in a red pickup

I am in a particularly vindictive modd today, and want to recount the details of a car accident we were in in May. It goes to illustrate the point that following rules and being careful is not enough, you also have to always watch out for the other jerk.

It happened on Saturday, Mother's day weekend. We were going on the left lane on the interstate just west of Ann Arbor, MI, when a big red pick-up truck with a giant American flag plastered across its rear window cut us off. He appeared from nowhere going at no less than 90 miles/hour, and attempted to pass us from the right. I didn't really feel him hit us, although he smashed our right front light panel pretty good. However, the force of the impact was such that it stripped the right front tire off the wheel, and the tire lost pressure instantly, just like in a blow-out. At the time of course we didn't know that. All we knew is that the car became impossible to control: it started wheering with ever increasing amplitude, and then went into a tail spin. We flew off the road right into a grassy divider, and slammed into a steel railing that was positioned there. The car kept going, but we were able to stop it at this point.

The fact that all four of us, my husband, myself, and the kids, came out alive and unharmed, is nothing short of a miracle. If we were to come off the road only about 20 yards further down, where the railing was right at the curb, we would have slammed into it head on and ricocheted onto somebody's path. Another 100 yards further there was no railing at all, and it would have been entirely possible to fly thorugh the grass onto the oncoming traffic lanes. We read up on how to drive through a blow-out when we came back home; the only sensible advice given was 'pray to God'. The car also has only cosmetic damages. The right rear light took almost all the impact with the railing; the plastic broke, but the lamp itself worked. The panel bent slightly, but it didn't even have to be replaced. Same with the front light, although there, all the panels needed replacement.

Sometimes I hear people moaning about the good ol' days, whene everyone ate white bread with real butter and didn't get fat, and when everyone rode without car seats. The car seats for some reason epithomize government control to those people. Well, I want to say that I can't thank God enough for them, since my children might have easily smashed into the walls or flied into the windows were they not safely buckled.

The accident happened out of the blue; I didn't have any premonitions, never even figured that something was terribly wrong until it was obvious that the car can't be conrtolled. The whole incident took no more than 8-10 seconds, yet ut felt like considerably more than that. My perception as we were weering back and forth was considerably heightened, I noticed every crack on the road. When I saw that railing going at me as in slow motion, all I could think was 'grave injuries', and still it didn't sink in. When we hit and barely felt the impact, I felt absolutely elated, jumped out and yelled 'we are alive!' I got scared when I looked around and realized what could have been; but it really only hit when we got back home. For a while after, I have been very sluggish and wheepy for no apparent reason (other than the accident).

Now, here is why I can't get this out of my mind:

The other driver just sped off and left the scene of the accident. The police told us that without a license plate, it is impossible to find him. Remembering the license plate was the last thing on my mind in those moments; although I think it was a blue Michigan color. WHAT KIND OF A SICK, EVIL BASTARD WOULD DO SUCH A THING!? I would have dearly loved to find him and rip him to pieces.

Another thing that sort of bothered me is that no one stopped or called 911. There were quite a few people around; somebody was actually passing us while we were having trouble, but many had enough sense to slow down. Still, quite a few people saw us going down, and yet, no one stopped. It didn't matter on our case, fortunately; we called everyone ourselved. But it is really chilling to think that someone may bleed to death on the roadside as a result of an accident, and people would just fly by.

A towing truck came; the man helped us replace the tire, and we drove on a donut to the nearest tire shop, making it there minutes before closing. They replaced the tire, inspected everything, and we were able to get back on the road and continue with our drive. It has costed us a few K to fix the car (those cosmetic daMages are very expensive), thank goodness that the insurance picked up a lot of it.

I know that I have been given the greatest gift of life and a chance to finish whatever it is I am here to do.

And if you ever see a big bright red pickup truck (a GM brand more likely), with a wavy American flad plastered across the back window, may be with a blue Michigan plate, please -- take down his number and pass it along to me, so that I can get him by all means legal and physical.

I am back, and more on homeschooling

I was out of country for a long time, with limited Internet access, thus no new entries. But I am back now and ready to write more. I found two comments on one of my past entries that I haven’t seen before, and would like to use them as a platform for future discussion. Thank you Chris and Cynthia for taking time to read my dormant blog, and for your comments!

Cynthia, thanks for your prospective as a recent high-school graduate. You start your comment by writing: "You might wish to be careful about how far you go as far as homeschooling. I can see your point about the failings in the school system, I just got out of high school, but be sure not to go isolationist." You are basically equating schooling to socialization, and you reiterate your point later on. Thus, the more one homeschools, the more isolated one is. I want to point out that learning and socialization are not the same things. And in fact in education the shift to emphasizing socialization is a relatively recent one (see e.g., Charlotte Izerbyt, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America"). Academics went down precisely as it started to happen. Because to me, socialization and academic learning are different, I don't immediately make a connection between homeschooling and being isolated. One can learn at home and then go out and socialize. And with the amount of extracurriculars children take these days, it is practically impossible to grow up isolated.

You say, "The job market being what it is from this point of view it's not what you know it's who you are socially". "Who you are socially" here is an interesting Freudian slip, IMO. This is what the school does very successfully, is molding you into one of the few social prototypes. The stereotypical ones would be the jock, the cheerleader, the popular, nerds etc. In real life there is slightly more the variety, but the basic picture is the same. And it is really amazing to observe the reemergence of these social roles when people congregate into the groups. I have been in a few of women’s clubs over the years, and there is always a struggle for popularity and influence, right along the old high school clique lines. The good part is that bitches have never won, at least in my experience, but still, it all is very amuzing.

But of course this is not what you really meant by “who you are socially”; you meant that being social and outgoing is a requirement for the modern job market. While social people do better anywhere, undoubtedly, it is also very obvious that there are different kinds of people and different jobs to do. A reporter or a PR officer must be social, while a researcher must be able to work on his own. And I would imagine that a naturally introverted person simply wouldn’t choose to be a PR officer, and instead would choose a job that better suits his/her natural temperament. But this is really self-explanatory.

What I want to point out that ‘being social’ and ‘working well in groups’, that you seem to equate, are, again, two different things. My husband was studying for his business degree in school just as I was working on my research degree. While I had to work on my own a lot, they were always required to do group projects. And I tell you, that was the stupidest thing, and had no relation whatsoever to the actual process that goes on at a workplace. The amount of time wasted on endless meetings and chit-chat was huge, the product substandard, and some people ended up shouldering a lot more work than others, creating grudges. In an actual workplace, everyone in a team has their relatively independent parts that they do; they get together to report on the progress, discuss the developments, and go on working on their parts again. And there is still a boss, you know, who supervises the project and tells you to do things. ‘Being social’ is reserved to lunch-time and political shmoozing, and we all know that it is important, but that alone wouldn’t get you anywhere.

I too am wishing you good luck in your endeavors, and please stop by again to read my blog!

Chris, I think that you are correct in principle in that homeschooling children are the same as general population: some social and outgoing, others more introverted. Yet, there is definitely a difference there too. I can’t yet say exactly what it is. There is a fact though there are no cliques and power struggles among the moms in the homeschooling groups I belong to, although there are conflicts sometimes. Go figure.

Thank you for stopping by, and please come again!