Ripples

The blog address came from an earlier title I tried for this blog. Didn’t work. The new title is a better reflection of me – and if you’re here, I hope it’s a reflection of you… http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/search/label/Introductions

While my daughter doesn’t often blog on her 20: A Journey of Hope, she does on her other site (http://think.o-my-soul.net/). Currently on the right hand side is her twitterfeed regarding a car accident she and I witnessed.

An elderly woman was driving her very nice car south on Washington Ave, parallel to Interstate 94 at about 4:30 PM. I’d picked my daughter up from Augsburg College where she’d just spent eight hours of attending classes in biopsychology and research methods. Traffic was light. We were chatting.

Many people use Washington to skip the heavy traffic feeding on to the interstate directly from the downtown Minneapolis area. They take it for a short jaunt through the fascinating businesses in the old Warehouse District, then enter the ramp at 22^nd by crossing a usually light southbound lane of traffic.

I think the elderly woman missed the ramp, got on to the next stretch that runs between 26^th and Lowry and then, thinking the ramp was there, simply veered into oncoming traffic, looking for the ramp. She said to another bystander that she thought it was the turn on to Lowry she was making (and the Washington was a one way?). At any rate, what we saw was the woman’s car swerve deliberately into two oncoming cars.

My daughter says we experienced vicarious dissonance, “a type of vicarious discomfort resulting from imagining oneself in the speaker’s position, leading to efforts to restore consonance”. In other words, we couldn’t believe that the woman was driving that way because we KNEW that that kind of driving couldn’t happen. We KNEW she should be in the northbound lane.

The resulting head-on collisions destroyed both her car and badly damaged the other two. I was “first on the scene” and called 911, gave the address to dispatch then waited for the police to arrive -- moments later. Eventually, I reported what I saw to police officer in charge after the arrival of two squad cars and a fire truck. Then my daughter and I moved on to home, deeply shaken.

As I drove, I thought about the accident and the effects it would have. Aside from burning itself into my daughter’s mind – she just got her license a bit over a week ago – and my own, the lives of the people in those cars will be irrevocably affected as well. The young Asian man whose older model car doubtless carries only collision insurance is now car-less and likely will get piddly cash from the insurance company after endless wrangling over whether he caused the accident or not. The woman in the Volkswagen Beetle will experience the same thing, though by the newness of the car, it likely has more insurance.

And the elderly woman? Will she ever drive again? Will lawsuits (most likely formed by lawyerly vultures wishing to sue everyone in sight and retained by the elderly woman’s wealthy friends, cause the blame to fall on everyone but the woman) be brought, fought and bought? Who's going to come and pick up all of the victims and bring them home? Did any of them go to the hospital or just go home because their insurance doesn’t pay for something as minor as a non-lethal car accident?

Ripples.

What does a car accident on a Thursday afternoon have to do with breast cancer? Those of you who are THERE can easily guess. Those of you who are not, might consider this: the girlfriend of a good college friend of my daughter; has a mother who was just diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. Who next? How will the girlfriend's life change? And that of her father? Aunts? Uncles? Siblings?

Ripples, ripples, ripples…

image: http://priyaneelam.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/arnie-rosner-water-drop-and-ripples.jpg