The Ride Home

NORMA SHERRY

Together Forever Changing

An Article

The Ride Home

It was nearly seven years ago that I nearly lost my life. It was a clear, beautiful day; crisp enough to wear a sweater, and the air was rapt in the rare coolness we fleetingly enjoy in Florida . I was leisurely driving to our new home in the country. In route I came upon a slower moving vehicle. I got up to passing speed and made my move. Then it happened as if the sun hid behind a cloud of doom.

It was at that precise moment that the driver began to turn left slamming directly into me. The memory is forevermore etched upon my mind. The sound of metal crashing into metal, still, to this day reverberates in my head. The spinning, the sense of stopping and taking off again, the bronco-like bumping until finally, blessedly, my little red truck came to a halt 160 feet from the point of impact, in a culvert at the side of the road.

Then the pain came blasting to the forefront as if a blur coming into finite focus. I knew in an instant that my gruesomely, distorted feet were both broken, so too my nose. Blood dripped from my nose and spewed out my mouth. I can still taste it all these years later. The yellow folded float that lay on the passenger seat beside me was ominously streaked red from my blood. My stomach ached – a jarring pain I can still feel every time I pass the spot on the road from that fateful day when he collided with me.

My favorite sunglasses – the only pair I’ve never lost or broken, lay intact in the furthermost corner of the passenger feet area. So, too were my reading glasses that only moments before hung gracefully around my neck and across my chest by a pretty beaded chain that was given to me as an upcoming birthday gift. The stick shift and steering wheel both seemed eerily somehow out of place.

Paramedics took the rear window out to extricate me. I was life-flighted to the hospital. My liver was lacerated and threatened my life. Both feet were horribly, seriously broken. In the surgeon’s words I, “shattered nearly every bone in my left foot.” My eyes were swollen near shut and two weeks later, when I was first given a mirror, they were still black as tar. I had two broken ribs, contusions and bruises on my abdomen, legs, pelvis, thighs, arms, and my nose was as wide as a highway.

I spent thirty-two days in the hospital, twelve in ICU, and through it all I was in incredible, excruciating pain. Surgery mended my feet – now held together with steel plates and eight screws. My casts, to the knees, were a part of me for eleven weeks. My recovery, however, has been long enduring and still ongoing.

I no longer walk with my once dancer’s grace. Eight-years later my stride is still stilted and awkward and clearly evident to all that see me. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m grateful I can walk at all, and even more grateful to be alive. But every day, sometimes a dozen or more times a day, I am reminded of this senseless, avoidable assault to my body – to my life.

You see, the man who struck me and many, too many of you, has something in common: You don’t use your directional signals.

Some of you actually do, however. But, it’s as if it is a last minute thought just as you begin to turn suddenly you seem to remember and engage the turning signal. Unfortunately, for the majority of drivers out there, it is with careless abandon that one drives. The evident disdain for other drivers sharing the road is a blatant act of lawlessness that could also result in a life-altering, if not deadly end.

I share my story, my heretofore, private experience, for only one reason: I hope with all my heart, that by reading this very short version of my harrowing experience, it will alter the consciousness of those of you who neglect or refuse to use your directional signal. For the remaining of us on the road, I pray it does. And for those of you reading this who would take offense to my use of the pronoun, you, it was not meant to be offensive, just inclusive.

© Norma Sherry 2006

Links to Our Pages

The Purpose and The Vision:

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Philip's Personal Story

Philip's Presentations on Personal Responsibility

A Little About Norma:

All About Outsourcing:

Businesses that Outsource

What You Can Do About Outsourcing?

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Front Page Story of Creator's Norma & Philip

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