Timing is Everything

If you regularly read my blog you know that my commute to work takes me about an hour.  I’m going to tell you about this morning’s drive.

Fruitville Road is very long and covers quite a bit of distance.  It starts at the west end of Sarasota where it is a whisper away from the Gulf and runs straight through  to the east end where it almost comes into contact with a different county but doesn’t quite get there.  Each end dead ends into a major road.  Driving West to East, once you cross under I-75 the landscape changes from city to country and the scenery is beautiful.  Wide open fields, cows, donkeys, horses, and goats are all a part of the roadside show.  I fantasize that I live somewhere along the way in a big house set back from the road and my only job for the day is to take care of it and my animals.

This morning was like any other.  I gave Poppy his treat to distract him from me leaving the house; I locked the door, got in my car, and made my way to Fruitville Road.  About 10 minutes later, still on Fruitville in the city of Sarasota, I noticed a school bus in the far right hand lane with its yellow lights flashing.  “That’s odd,” I thought.  In the almost three years I have been making this commute and all of the different times in the morning I have done it, this has never happened.   The bus’ lights change from yellow to red and the “STOP” sign swings out from the bus’ side.  I can now see a little boy running down the sidewalk to the stopped bus.  The little guy was late and the driver was outside of the normal routine to pick him up.  Question resolved.

The bus then cut across all three lanes to the far left turn lane and the incident was forgotten until about a half an hour later.

Once Fruitville Road is no longer a part of the city proper, it goes from straight to winding and changes from six to two lanes.  I had my windows open because after the long and very hot summer it was finally cool enough to do so.  The breeze whipped my hair around as it blew through the car.  I was loving it until I drove around one of the bends and saw a car in my lane coming towards me.  It was passing in a clearly marked no passing section of road.  “Holy fuck,” I said out loud as I gently applied the brakes and started to point the car towards the shoulder.  I looked in my rearview mirror to check on the actions of the driver behind me because I didn’t feel like getting rear-ended, either.   I could see he or she was slowing down, too.  Looking ahead again, I figured that the oncoming car’s driver must have stomped on the gas as it moved like hell passing the vehicle in front and then flew back into its lane. 

Now I was talking to myself.  “Well.  That was exciting!”  I pulled back into my lane and sped back up to the 55 mph speed limit.  Mind you, as hair raising as it was, it took seconds to take place.  Once again I checked to see what the car behind me was doing. Apparently they were more effected than I at the prospect of a head-on collision because it took them much longer to move from the shoulder of the road back into our lane.  Even when they accomplished that, they were driving much slower. 

Now I ask you - what if that little boy wasn’t late for the bus?  What if the school bus driver thought too bad so sad and decided to teach the boy a lesson about being on time and not make an extra stop to pick him up?  That probably ate up the same amount of time it took for the crazy driver to successfully complete the illegal pass without taking someone’s life.

Once again I and those around me were saved from something that could have ended up badly.   I bow my head and thank the Universe. Timing is everything or is it Karma at work?  Some would say it was a wonderful gift of coincidence.  Others would give God the credit. 

To quote the song written by Pete Seeger and sung by The Byrds "Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There Is a Season)" which is based upon a passage from the Book of Ecclesiastes:

To everything - turn, turn, turn

There is a season - turn, turn, turn

And a time to every purpose under heaven

A time to be born, a time to die

A time to plant, a time to reap

A time to kill, a time to heal

A time to laugh, a time to weep

I think it simply was not time for it to happen.  

Intervention

I do a lot of driving because I live so far away from where I work and because I am the only employee that lives in Sarasota or "in town" as they Myakkans would say, I usually am the one that runs errands.

Last Friday afternoon I was doing just that.  I had left work early as I had an appointment to have some blood drawn for medication level testing.  My first stop was the accountant's office to drop off June's books so that they could work on them.  I had run my distance and I was passing the baton to them.

It was a typical summer afternoon with plenty of rain, thunder, and lightening.  For those that have never experienced one of Florida's summer afternoon storms, they are torrential.  There is no soft pitter-patter of tiny droplets that dance from the sky and land gently to the ground.  These are fierce globules of water that have formed gangs and race to the ground to pummel it.  It comes down in buckets; it comes down in sheets.  A film of water forms on the surface of roads daring drivers to hydroplane.  It was raining like this on my way to the accountant's office.  I arrived there safely, said hello, dropped off the thumb drive, and left.

When an opening in the traffic allowed, I pulled back into the 3-lane road and found a good spot in the middle lane.  It wasn't raining as hard as it had been just a few minutes ago and I could comfortably set my wipers to lazy intermittent.   I saw up ahead that the traffic in the right lane stopped to leave a space for a driver to pull into.  Instead, this crazy man who apparently does not cherish life whipped out from in between the cars and drove across my lane and the left lane of oncoming traffic. As I looked in my rear view mirror, all I had time to do was break hard and hope that I wasn't rear-ended .  That shouldn't have been my only concern because suddenly to my left I saw a white car that must have been going faster than me and unlike me didn't have the warning of a possible situation.  As I watched the white car slide closer and closer to my beloved Taurus, I was waiting to hear metal against metal, to feel my car shudder as it was hit.  Instead I saw an incredible thing.

Are you familiar with marshmallow fluff?  Here's a picture of jar of it and next to that is a picture of what mother's in the 1960s used to consider a healthy sandwich.

 

See how the fluff is oozing out of the sandwich?  That is what I saw in between the white car and me.  It was like there was fluff smashed between our two cars prohibiting the collision that never was.  

The driver of the white car eventually stopped and I pulled up next to him and rolled down my window.  He then rolled down is passenger side window and we looked at each other.  He was a handsome late thirties early forties man that was in shock.  The conversation made up of one liners went like this:

He shouted over to me, "Did I hit you?"

"No, you didn't."

"I didn't hit you?"

"No."

"He pulled out in front of traffic!"

"Yes, I know."

"I can't believe I didn't hit anyone."

"Yes, I know."

"I can't believe he did that."

"Yes, I know."

I couldn't expand my vocabulary because the man just kept talking.  I confirmed for him that everyone and everything was OK and we both drove on.

It is not up for debate whether I saw the fluff protecting our cars.  The point is...is that he and I both could not believe there wasn't an accident.  Divine intervention?  The Universe deciding in a split second it wasn't time for this now?  Guardian angels?  Take your pick.  It did happen.  Fluff rules.