Crash bang boom.

For whatever reason, I have yet to share this on my blog. Last month I had a bit of a scare.

I was driving home from Ethan's house one night. It was a chilly and damp evening. I was on a exit ramp merging from one freeway on to another. The ramp comes along the left side of the next freeway; it is relatively narrow and curvy. I've driven this ramp countless times, so I was kind of on auto-pilot, singing along to the radio.

A couple of summers ago, I got into a minor fender-bender after getting lost driving to a birthday party. Ever since then, I've been kind of paranoid and also imagine the worst possible situations wherever I drive. So I was thinking to myself, "It would be awful to wreck right here in the rain," because a lot of drivers tend to rush through that on-ramp, merging dangerously and causing accidents.

All of a sudden something caught my eye: the white Corolla in front of me has just driven up the steep embankment on the side of the on-ramp. The car was nearly standing up on its tailend before it fell straight back. It landed with its roof on the ground. It then flipped over so that it was sitting with the drivers side on the ground.

What the heck do I do? Probably the most unsafe thing I could have done: I moved my car only slightly out of the way and hit my emergency blinkers and frantically search my phone to call 911. I don't know what possessed me to stay so near the lane as opposed to pulling over, but I soon saw why God had me there: as I started to dial 911, I could see the driver trying to push himself out of the driver's side window. He slithered between the car and the ground and stood up - completely okay. Thankfully there had been no traffic to threaten either of us. We were both safe.

I called out to him and he was able to walk the distance to my car. As soon as he arrived, he said, "I'm so sorry! Did I hurt you?" The whole thing happened so quickly, he didn't even know what had occurred. So we both talked to 911 and I instructed him to get into my car so that we could pull over to the side of the freeway. It started to pour rain.

The driver's name is Stephen. He is an exchange student from Hong Kong and lives here to go to school. He had been driving home from getting a haircut when he had somehow lost control of his vehicle.

It had gotten dark. We stood in the rain waiting for some sort of law enforcement. In due time, two firetrucks, a paramedics van, and a few policemen and highway patrol officers arrived. A quick check of Stephen's vitals and response times relayed that he had escaped the sticky situation without any injury (although, he was probably sore the next morning). We watched as they did their parts to clean up the debris and tow the car.

Stephen and I didn't exchange information. I will probably never see him again. But, I was so glad to have been there to help him when he needed it, especially considering the fact that he's so far away from home.

God works in mysterious ways. It was a wake-up call I needed.