What If Oklahomans Knew How to Drive?

There is something you should know about Oklahoma. This place is like the tornado capital of the world, and when I am cowering in my closet, any self-respecting Okie is running outside to "feel the wind," as Scott would say. They are hard core.

However.

When a little rain decides to come to town, people FREAK OUT. AHHHH WHAT IS THIS RUNNING DOWN MY WINDSHIELD I MUST PULL INTO THE LEFT LANE AND GO 45 MILES AN HOUR ON INTERSTATE 35 AND BRAKE EVERY 1.8 SECONDS OR ELSE I WILL DIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!! I really think that's what they're all thinking. But that's besides the point.

So yesterday, I was driving myself down to Norman at roughly 8:00am for class. It was raining - not pouring, just raining - and people were freaking out, as usual. So I had the freaker outers on one side of me, and the crazies who are oblivious to anything who still think it's okay to go 85 miles an hour when it has been raining for a while, and the roads are quite slick. Somewhere in the middle, people - not 90-year-old slow, but not speed racer fast. It's possible, I promise.

I am dutifully merging into the middle lane where the left lane ends, but the crazies are racing down to the verrrry LAST possible second so they can get to the front of the line, because THAT will make them get to their destination wayyy more quickly. So the freaker outer in front of me is braking frantically, but not letting the crazies in, because that would just be wussy. But no, the crazy will not let them get the best of him after his dangerous and a-hole-like maneuvers to the front of the line, so he just decides to go. Ehh, they'll stop, ehh, I have room, ehh, who cares. EHHHH WE ALL SLAM ON OUR BRAKES AND BIG TRUCK BEHIND ASHLEY SLAMS INTO HER.

So there I am, on the side of the road, strangely calm but staring at the back of poor Rocky the Rav4 while the very nice man (Roy, by the way) who hit me is assuring me that he is a good person and takes responsibility for his actions and will call me with his insurance info as soon as he gets home.

All is ok - I have a pretty sore back/head/wrist, but paranoid husband made me go visit his ER doctor boss to get it all checked out (which, by the way, I learned it is a very bad move to tell the person who hit you that your husband has an ER doctor friend, woops). So I'm good.

But it made me think - what if Roy hadn't been so nice? What if he had just lost his job and didn't have insurance anymore? What if I was actually injured but didn't happen to know someone who could get me into the ER in 5 minutes instead of 8 hours? What if the accident was more severe and one of us got hurt? If he didn't have that piece of paper, I'd be in a hospital, desperately thinking about how on Earth I was going to pay the $50,000 medical bill. I know, I just got rear-ended, blah blah blah, but it made me think for a second about all the What Ifs, and how thankful I am that things played out the way they did. Because for a lot of people, they don't, and this incident that is an inconvenience to me would change someone else's life.

But hey, I got a great friend out of it - Roy calls me approximately 5 times per day. Yay Roy!