Miss Megsie and the Snow Drift!

Sounds like the name of a horror movie, eh?

I, the girl from Alabama experiencing her first real winter, just one day shy of her 24th birthday, ran off the road into a ditch last night.

Yes, I'm fine...physically.

So is the car.

We both need a tuneup though.

I was coming back from Abingdon last night where I was discussing the followup to the bipolar story with the guy's parents. What's so sad is that the roads were in better shape in Abingdon than they were in Bristol. I was worried about having an accident on the back roads leading to the Beltzs than I was on I-381/Commonwealth Ave./Volunteer Parkway.

Well, guess what I did?

I came onto the tiny feeder Interstate and moved into the left lane and promptly began to slide. Now, I had two choices at this point: Choice A) Go off the road. Choice B) Go into the car in the lane next to me.

Which one did you think I chose?

Sliding off the road is different from other types of vehicular mishaps. Everything seems to go in slow motion as you skid toward the oncoming lane, praying that you find something to stop your car.

That something happened to be the shallow drainage ditch between the two lanes.

So now my car is at nearly a 45 degree angle and I'm inside. Okay, I didn't hear any omnious crunches, so I figured the car was okay. Thankfully I wear a seat belt so I was okay. Now I was just...stuck.

So I called work. No one had a four-wheel drive. Okay, I started digging for the roadside maintenance brochure that came with my car, something I paid for along with everything else. Then I noticed a van stopped by my car. I rolled down the window and saw a mom and her son looking in on me. Are you all right, they asked. Yes, I replied and wondered since I could move forward if I could get out. No such luck. I had no idea how far over I really was.

Then several other cars stopped and a man wearing a Little Caesar's shirt peeked in. He asked how I was and I said I was fine, just trying to call for a wrecker. Then a man came along with his truck. He had a chain and offered to pull me out. That sounded good to me, so he and some other men hooked my car up and the guy in the Little Caesar's shirt stayed to make sure I was okay. He was cute! (shameless female moment here) Then they pulled me out, just as a police car stopped on the other side of the road. One of the guys who helped get my car out drove beside me most of the way back to the paper to make sure I was okay.

I wish I had gotten their names. I told the Little Caesar's guy I worked at the newspaper, but that was it. It all happened so fast. I don't know anything about the people that helped me except the LC guy was from Ervinton (sp?) But I thanked each and every one of them. I reached out to shake one guy's hand. "It's dirty," he said. "I don't care," I replied, and grabbed it. "Thank you."

Max Ehermann wrote in his poem "Desiderata" that "with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world." He is absolutely right. Things like what happened to me last night prove that no matter how much people think this word is going to Hell in a handbasket, the human race is a good one and there are good people on this Earth.