Tuesday night, I kissed the ground when I returned home from picking up my oldest son, Bryce, from his football practice. I also kissed my husband and sons. Then I proceeded to tell them why Bryce and I were lucky to be alive.
As I pulled out of the school parking lot onto the county road where the speed limit is 55 mph, I noticed a black SUV approaching in my rear-view mirror like a bat out of hell. The vehicle then began to weave back and forth across both lanes. I declared aloud to Bryce, "There's a drunk behind us and he's going to kill us if we don't get away from him." I began speeding, but the guy was going above the speed limit as well. We watched as he drove off the side into the grass and assumed that he might flip his vehicle or crash, but he didn't. He merely swerved back onto the road and into the other lane. I continued to speed up until I approached a white truck. I had to make a quick decision and I decided to pass him in order to get away from this lunatic driver. I barely made it around him because there was a car coming in the opposite direction (I'm pretty sure I was in a no-passing zone, but getting away was my primary focus at that point). When I sped up enough, Bryce told me to turn off at the next intersection. I did and my heart was beating out of my chest.
We still don't know whatever happened to the white truck that had then been in front of the lunatic. We got back on the country road and proceeded home, wondering aloud about where the crazy man was. Eventually, we saw him again. This time he was on the grass beyond the other side of the roadway and his vehicle leaped in the air as he bumped along and then back onto the road. There were other vehicles there, but he weaved between them. As we got closer, a large dump truck crossed our lane and turned around in a grassy field on our side of the road. He got back on driving in the direction of the main strip of our little town, where the speed limit is only 30 mph and the lunatic was sure to injure or kill someone. We discovered that the truck had turned because of an accident (no surprise). The erratic driver was nowhere in sight (must have driven on), but there was a blue pick-up truck with the back end smashed and the rear tire completely off on the ground. Someone was running to the driver, who appeared to be uninjured.
At that point, we turned to go another direction home, to get away from the immanent traffic jam. As we drove, a police car came speeding towards the scene of the accident. We still don't know if the deranged lunatic ended up killing someone or not.
I shook for a good long hour after returning home and could not get the images of our near-death experience out of my mind. It was like the driver thought he was in a video game and could swerve and weave and dodge traffic with impunity. Every time I get in the car now, I feel traumatized, wondering if others will stay on their side of the road. Still, as my husband said, we're "lucky to have been in front of the guy instead of on the opposite side of the road." What a wild experience.
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