Twenty minutes ago I was exiting CD Warehouse. After just putting two great cds on hold I was in a pretty good mood. Got in the car. Turned on the defrost. Released the brake and headed for the parking lot exit.
I stopped and turned on my turn signal. It clicked on and off. My headlights shined through the still falling dusk. I was waiting for a car to turn into the parking lot before I pulled out onto the road. They steered their car toward the entrance of the stip mall's parking lot.
"Squeeeeeeeeeek!!"
I heard the brakes and instinctively looked and saw a car trying to stop.
"Thunk!"
Despite it's efforts, it slid in to the car who had been turning into the parking lot. The passenger side door got hit with the bumper. The two cars slid apart from the impact and sat skewed in the road.
This got me thinking. While it looks really long in text, it was acutally about 3 seconds from the time the first car started turning till both cars had collided and come to rest. Three seconds.
Count it out to yourself. One... two... three. Doesn't feel like a long time, does it? One... two... three. Think of the twist of fate which brought those two cars together. If either one had been a few seconds sooner or later, it could have been advoided. What if one of the guy's wife pulled him aside to give him a kiss before leaving home? A three second delay. One... two... three.
It took three seconds to change two families' lives. Just driving down the road and all of a sudden... one... two... three. It could happen to you. It could happen to me. Three unforeseen seconds is all it takes.
Humans, I think, don't like to think about things like that. It makes us pause and realize that as hard as we try, we do not know, nor can we control, our future. No matter how many consistant, regular aspects of living that we pad our life with, we don't know it all. It took three seconds to screw two people's safe, controlled world.
One... two... three.
peace.
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