Now I am 30...

Note: I actually wrote this 4 or 5 months ago, before I decided to start a blog.

There I was driving home listening to a new compilation CD and feeling a very mellow pop music groove. A traffic jam appeared in front of me, but I didn't mind. I was in the mood for sitting still and listening to the music and now I had an excuse. Shiny emergency vehicles kept passing me on the shoulder so I knew it was a very new incident ahead.

Then a song come on that I liked back in 1990-something and I sang along for a verse and a chorus when a thought hit me out of the blue like a surprise sledge-hammer. "I miss school". Not school itself because, to be honest, I didn't really enjoy it per se, but I missed the fact that I used to see my friends every day.

I'm not the kind of person who takes friends for granted, ever, but perhaps it never occurred to me back then that grown-ups didn't see their friends every day like school kids do. If I could be anywhere in the world doing anything I would be somewhere with all my friends laughing and talking... We all have a lot going on in our lives, and some friends are now really far away, and it's not really a practical wish but I found myself getting nostalgic anyway and wishing that I could see that I could see my friends every day.

 I was sitting there humming along to pop songs and unfocusing my eyes a little so the sea of brake lights looked pretty, and the light rain was splashing on my window and I was not annoyed about being stuck in a jam.

 

Cars in front of me then started to merge across getting closer to the point where all the emergency vehicles had clustered together. Finally I was moving so slowly past a long line of red and blue flashing lights and it seemed like that was all there was until I saw the accident. And it was bad. Very bad. I actually gasped loudly like a pantomime actress, only it was spontaneous and genuine. It was the worst accident I had ever seen in person. It looked fatal. If not fatal then someone was very, very badly hurt.

After the close cars and the bright lights the highway in front of me suddenly seemed so empty and dark. I started to cry. I was driving along with tears rolling down my face. I knew countless lives had been changed back there – for the worse. And it would have happened in a split-second, but it would have been the longest moment of those people’s lives.

I’d made my way past it and I was ok but couldn’t stop crying.

I wish I could see my friends every day.