Snow, Seatbelts, and Safety
Speeding down the highway, snow whipped past our car as we drove home away from Grandma’s house in Oregon. As we escaped the biting cold of the winter, our warm car provided a feeling that we were more accustomed to: the heat of Texas, our home. When it comes to vacations, my family was never much of the driving type; we preferred to travel comfortably by airplane, but only business class. But this time my parents, my 3 older brothers, my older sister, and I were crammed into our small van, and any open space we would have had was filled with luggage and presents from Christmas. Trying to obtain just a little extra room, all of us had taken off our seat belts. It’s not much of a surprise that everyone was annoyed with each other and attitudes were getting out of hand. Just as any other family, tempers and arguing seemed to take hold until Mom decided she had had enough. Wearing her quirky, red holiday sweater that was nothing short of tacky, she frantically waved her arms above her dirty-blonde hair, exclaiming, “kids! Just stop arguing! Turn on a movie and be quiet!” Fortunately, our car had a built-in TV so we each put on our wireless headsets and tuned each other out. “And Roark, you need to slow down. It’s dangerous on these roads.”
“Honey, we’ll be fine. We’ve got a schedule to keep.” One thing that’s important to know about my dad: he’s stubborn, ridiculously stubborn. Once he has his mind set on something, he’s not changing. You wouldn’t even need to personally know him and you’d still be able to assume he’s stubborn—his scraggly, brown beard and stern expression just about sum up his personality: unyielding. So given the weather outside, no seat belts, and Dad’s stubbornness, it’s safe to say that our family was far from safe.
Things seemed to settle down nicely as we all watched Emperor’s New Groove. My wireless headset was uncomfortably tight on my ears so I pulled it off to adjust it. Once my headset was off, tuning everyone else out was hard and I couldn’t help but listen to what my mom was saying to my dad. “Roark, you really need to slow down. Look outside, it’s not safe.” Gazing out the window, I noticed that the snow had picked up and our car was now drowning in a sea of swirling white flakes.
“Sweetheart, I’m telling you,” my dad expressed in a hushed tone, “it’s not that icy outside.” My dad’s confidence worried me. Coming from Texas, I didn’t feel comfortable driving at this speed through a blizzard. I don’t like to interject when my dad and mom are arguing, but I couldn’t help it. I was scared.
“Dad, I really think you should slow down. I can’t see further than 10 feet in front of the car,” I added.
“It’s alright. I can drive through snow,” my dad reassured me. “Nothing’s going to happen. Go back to watching the movie.” Knowing that there was nothing I could say that would change my dad’s mind, I put my adjusted headphones back over my ears and once again escaped to my own world.
“Roark! Roark! Roark!” My mom’s screeches broke through my headset, pulling me out of my world and back into the car. Looking outside, there was no road, and trees were directly in front of us. That’s weird, I thought. Why are we driving towards trees? Then I realized it, we were sliding sideways down the highway. The car kept turning until we were drifting backwards, facing the wrong way. In a frantic effort to get the car back to going straight, my dad whipped the other way on the wheel. The car spun all the way back around; it worked! Only too well though, as the car spun to the side again, but this time throwing us off the road. We tumbled down a small hill, only to get thrown up the other side of a bank. With so much momentum, our car barrel rolled up the bank until gravity pulled us back down, twisting us to a stop on our side. Because we hadn’t been wearing seat belts, we immediately crawled out of broken windows, and our family gathered on the side of the road. As we got out of the car my mom would grab each of us individually, asking, “are you alright?” Everyone was fine but no matter what response we gave her, she kept repeating, “oh, it’s because you’re in shock! You don’t know if you’re alright.”
As we waited for roadside assistance to show up, we began to walk around the car to see the damage that had incurred. Walking to the side that I had been sitting on, I found my headset buried in the snow with the ear covers disconnected, barely held together by the inside’s flimsy wires. This headset had been situated on my head before we began to tumble up and down the bank. Next thing I knew, it had been ripped off my head by the window’s broken glass. Within a few minutes, roadside assistance showed up and asked how we were feeling. “Lucky for you guys, I see accidents like these every day. Let’s get you guys somewhere where you can stay the night.” We piled into his large, white car as he took us to a small town called Willowpoke about 15 minutes away.
Climbing out of the roadside assistance’s car, we stopped outside the car door and stared at the run-down motel we would be staying in for the night. My dad sprinted off to the reception desk to get us a room; well… I say he sprinted because he was putting in the same effort that it takes to sprint. To be honest, he had more of a nice jog, which was still the fastest I’ve ever seen him move. Standing in the freezing wind in just a short sleeve shirt and no coat on to keep away the cold, I was surprisingly warm. Noticing that my coat had been left back with the car, my mom was worried about me. “Oh, dear! Where is your coat? You’re probably freezing…”
“Nah, I’m good,” I responded nonchalantly.
“Oh my gosh! You’re still in shock! You can’t feel anything! You don’t know if you’re alright! You’ve probably got a bad cut somewhere and you’re bleeding to death! We need to…”
“Mom,” I interrupted, “I’m fine. Really.”
Finally, my dad came jogging back—not nearly fast enough. We walked into our motel room and I immediately called “first shower,” much to the dismay of my siblings. As I washed my body, a dirt stream seemed to flow continuously down my legs and into the drain; I had no idea I had gotten so much dirt from the accident. Inspecting my body for any cuts or major problems, I found that my mom couldn’t have been any further from wrong. I had maybe three scratches on my hand—the kind of scratches that a 2 year-old comes running into the house for, crying to mommy that they need a Band-Aid. I couldn’t have been any luckier; not wearing a seat belt was a stupid mistake.
“Alright, everybody out of the house. I’m setting the alarm,” my dad yelled down the hall. Grabbing our suitcases, our family pushed out the door of our home and loaded our baggage into the yellow taxi waiting outside. We were headed to Grandma’s house in Oregon again, but this time by flying. It took some persuading from my mom, but Dad finally gave in unexpectedly and agreed that we wouldn’t drive there like last Christmas. Situating ourselves into the taxi, Mom buckled her seatbelt in the captain seat and then turned around, checking to make sure that we had all done the same. Recognizing what my mom was looking for, I pointed down at my seatbelt and smiled at her.
“Mom, you don’t need to worry about me… I haven’t missed one day of putting on my seatbelt since the accident—and I don’t think I ever will.”
