Caution, Bridge Ices Before Road

  I had no experience of driving on ice until my second quarter of college. I was living through my first winter in the far-up-north world of Atlanta, after spending the first nineteen years of my life in sunny South Georgia. It was twenty-five years ago this past week, and classes were out for the MLK holiday. Headed back to campus after having breakfast with friends, I had just pulled out onto the many lanes of Peachtree Street as big flakes of snow fell all around. I hadn't traveled a quarter of a mile when I realized the tires of my Chevy Blazer were not pointed the same way as the steering wheel. I looked up to see that one-hundred yards in front of me a delivery truck was completely stopped in my lane. Time actually slowed down, and I pumped the brakes repeatedly, praying that rubber would connect with road and I would slow down. I didn't. Instead, I ran into and under the elevated liftgate of the truck going no faster than 25 miles an hour. The front of my car was smashed, with the engine block being push up to the windshield. The truck I hit wasn't scratched.
   I learned so much in the hour that followed. First, I learned that that section of Peachtree Street is actually a bridge over Interstate 85, and therefore ices before the rest of the road. I learned that the truck was stopped because it was the third car in a chain-reaction crash that had happened some time earlier. I became the fourth. I also learned that law enforcement can opt to not write up an accident if they are busy, as the Atlanta City Police Officer drove off and told us to work it out among ourselves. My parents and my insurance did not like that part of the story. Most of all, I learned that living in Atlanta for six weeks without a car was not much fun.
   I am still learning. At the time, I considered it a terrible hardship, resulting in more meals on campus and many more miles walked on foot. It is funny what we think constitutes suffering in our youth. Kids today believe the absence of wi-fi is cruel and unusual punishment. If I am so fortunate, what I will look back on in another twenty-five years and recognize was not as difficult as it seemed at the time?
   Grace and peace, Scott