I’d like to think I was just distracted. My wife and I were
driving home, and the route we take goes over the freeway. On and off ramps
guarantee that the street is usually packed with cars.
I stopped at the light, as cars streamed through the
intersection. I continued an anecdote I was sharing with my wife. At this point
my brain apparently clicked over into an alternate universe, and I concluded
that I was not at a traffic light, but a stop sign. Which, as everyone knows,
means you come to a complete stop, look both ways and proceed through the
intersection.
So that’s what I started to do. Despite the fact that approximately
fourteen thousand cars were still zooming through the space our Corolla was
about to occupy.
My wife, watching in disbelief as I began moving confidently
forward, started screaming, “It’s black! IT’S BLACK!” while gesturing wildly at
the red light.
This shocked me back into the Land of Trafficular Reality, and
I slammed on the brakes. “Black!? Where black?” I yelled incoherently.
So we sat silently, waiting for the light to change,
watching cars whizz by, with our vehicle sticking out about two feet into the
intersection. After a moment I said quietly, “Black?” while squinting up at the
red light above us. We both began to laugh, all the way from when the light
changed, until we pulled up to our house.
I even thought of some morals to the story...
- We are all capable of dumb mistakes. Sometimes a simple dumb mistake could end in disaster. We need people around us to help stop us before it does.
- Just as a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, so it doesn’t matter whether you call it red or black. When the light says stop, you better stop.
- Laughing at ourselves is a sign of humility. It also makes life a lot more fun.
- In the end it is only the grace and sacrifice of our Savior that keeps us from an eternally fatal crash.
