Monday, May 25, 2009

I'll never forget this Memorial Day...

Since it's the one where I ran over a kid.

You heard me. Here's the story:

My best friend Jen is in town for Alex's baptism (which was yesterday - I'll write a post about it on Alex's Blog in the nex few days or so). Justin went golfing with my dad, so I decided to pack Alex up in his carseat in the big blue truck and go visit Jen and her family for the day. As I was driving across 12th St (a 5 lane road - 2 lanes in each direction, with a turning lane), I had to stop for a red light. I stopped back at the white line, and thought to myself, "Boy those people next to me sure pulled up far - what if someone wanted to cross the street?" The light turned green, and I started accelerating. That's when this 16 year old kid on a bicycle came screaming out from beside the building into my traffic lane. I slammed on the brakes, and he disappeared then popped up in front of me. I put the truck into park, and got out of the car. The car that was next to me was already across the intersection, but pulled over and got out. The SUV behind them stopped next to me, and the car behind me also stayed.

The woman behind me is a nurse, and she checked the kid over. He said he was fine, but his bike was obviously wrecked (the front tire was at least). He had knocked off my front license plate, and he was *VERY* lucky we didn't have any kind of receiver in the front hitch. He was spitting some blood, due to the fact that he hit his mouth off of his handlebars.

The cops were called, and a fire truck, an ambulance, an EmergyCare SUV, 2 police cruisers, and 3 motorcycle cops showed up. The kid was cited for failure to stop at a red light, and possibly for riding the wrong way in traffic (since he was riding against traffic, instead of with it). His parents arrived, and I assume they took him home. I feel sorry for what happened, but that kid was very very lucky that I was paying attention and not talking on my cell phone, taking care of Alex, or dealing with some other distraction.

Oh, and Alex is fine - he slept through the whole thing.

1 comment:

Aunt Juicebox said...

OMG That could have turned out horribly. Thank God everyone was ok. Kids scare the hell out of me. Our neighbors let their freaking kids play in the parking lot which is a big condo rules NO-NO, and they do stupid stuff like trying to race you up the hill as you drive up.