In The Blink of an Eye

Both of my girls take dance class & we end up over at the studio 3 evenings a week right now. The studio we use has 2 store fronts on the side of a strip mall. They are sandwiched between a tanning salon & a hair salon. On the corner is a pizza place, & on the other side is a real estate office & a vacant store front. There is one row of parking on that side of the strip mall. It's where we usually park, but admittedly, that particular part of the lot is not very busy & has very little traffic.

Last night we were leaving dance at about 6:30...so it was already dark. I pointed out the full moon to the girls. Lindsi was excitedly talking about the parade she will be dancing in coming up in 2 weeks. We had stayed a little past dance class so she could have an outfit fitting.

In usual mom fashion, I had one arm full of stuff, I was holding Jami by the hand & Lindsi was walking on the other side of her as we headed over to our car. It's about 50 ft from the curb to our car.

We were about 15 ft off the curb when a young guy, in his jacked up pick up trk turned into that part of the lot & decided to use it as his very own drag strip. In one motion, he turned the corner & gunned his trk with no regard for anything, but for how quickly he could make his trk get to the other end of the strip.

I stopped & had to let go of Jami in order to grab Lindsi & pull her back. He never saw us until he was nearly on top of us. At that point, I was just thinking "What an idiot"......& I gave him a little lecture about slowing down in parking lots.

That would have probably been the end of it all, except this kid was visibly shaken. He was very upset. I thought, Good! You need to be upset. Wake Up call, no harm done...this time. Make it the last time. He sat there while I put my kids in the car & then apologized again & again.

I was fine (well, a bit annoyed with the kid) until I started driving home. Then I started to think about all of the what ifs....what if I hadn't been able to reach Lindsi. It wasn't even a deaf thing, it was an animated 6 yr old talking excitedly about a parade. She wasn't paying attention. That could happen to anyone. We had stopped & looked both ways before we stepped off the curb. It's that assumption of safety, you do what you've been taught & it should be OK from there.

It was a close call. It was dark. Lindsi was in dark clothes. I know the kid did not see us until it would have beeen too late. I can make myself crazy struggling with the What Ifs.......

I guess the lessons learned is even when it looks safe, there could be trouble right around the corner...and I'm pretty certain there is one less teenage boy speeding through parking lots in his jacked up trk today.