Assuaging Your Fears Now: Everyone Lives

Back when my sister had just gotten her driver’s license, she was driving my family to church to get in hours behind the wheel.

As we headed out of a neighborhood, a little kid came pelting down their driveway chasing after a lost ball, heedless of the car coming down the road. His father ran to stop him and managed to grab the kid right as he was running into the street, which is good. Unfortunately, the father’s own momentum dragged him forward even as he yanked his son back, so now the father was the one that ended up running in front of the car.

We saw it coming and my sister slammed the brakes, but she didn’t quite have time to come to a full stop. Had she swerved even slightly into the other lane, we likely could have avoided the father entirely, but as a new driver, she mostly froze and didn’t think to do anything other than press the brakes.

At the last minute, the father jumped up right as our car rammed into him, causing him to actually flip up onto our the hood of the car and then slide into the windshield. My sister freaked out as the car stopped and we all got out to check on the father.

Luckily, while my sister hadn’t managed to stop entirely, she had slowed down to a crawl before we hit the man. Despite the dramatic — and admittedly quite scary looking — sight of his flying at our windshield, he rolled himself off our engine and stood up seemingly fine.

My sister was bawling at this time as she apologized, but the man assured us it was his fault for running into the road and that he wasn’t hurt. He said he likely would have an uncomfortable bruise on his leg where we first struck him, but he was otherwise fine and unhurt. He even apologized to us for scaring us like that.

Eventually, after making sure the man truly was fine, we left him and continued on to church. My mother drove the rest of the way, as my sister was in no condition to do any more driving that day.

Two years later, it would be my turn to learn to drive. I wasn’t always perfect, but if my sister ever tried to criticize my learning, I had the perfect response. “Yeah, well, at least I’ve never run anyone over!”