Justin Nutt, BSW, LMSW

Today I was driving to work and as I was driving along a guy driving a cab ran a stop sign going around 40 or 45 miles an hour.  It all went into the sort of slow motion thing we see in movies as it was happening and I thought he would miss me, no way he could possibly hit me…then he did.  At that point things truly went into the type of slow motion almost goofy stuff in movies.  I felt the start to slide, the back end trying like hell to for one moment be the front end.  Then I felt the truck as the drivers side wheels started to pick up off the ground, but knew that my truck was heavy enough there was no way it would flip (or so I thought.)  As my truck flipped and rolled down the road I saw my coffee cup coming floating by my head and each of the drops of coffee which was being spilled in crystal clarity, then saw as my Chris LeDoux CD went from the center console to by the windshield which as it caved inward pushed the CD back the other direction.  After 500 feet and rolling by my count three times the truck landed back on its wheels facing south, which is only important as when I was driving I was going North bound.  After a closer inspection of the truck after being released from the hospital with only a sprained neck and little bits of glass stuck in pretty much every part of me (still picking them out after a shower) what I found was rolled is a very inaccurate description.  What I did was bounce you can see in the pictures that the driver’s side and the top of the truck are destroyed…the passenger I didn’t take a picture of, but the only real damage on that side is the a few scrapes near the tailgate and a broken tail light.

I tell all of this for only one reason and that is what every single person who saw the truck, the cops, ambulance drivers, dealership it was towed to, tow truck driver, an ex-life flight person said.  The words varied a little, but the meaning was all the same “we thought the guy from that truck was dead.”   While of course as a country boy I feel lost without my truck and I’m, well, I’m pissed I am also very grateful, I should be dead my head was actually touching the roof by the time it came to a rest, the windshield was so far bowed in the it stuck past the steering wheel, and it apparently slammed hard enough on the roof to break the cup holder out of the center section.  So while I am grateful to be alive I am as much grateful for a new perspective on life.  I have often been the guy who was up for a good time, but only if it didn’t mean not doing what I “needed to,” but was also the person who procrastinated, but both for the same reason….there was always tomorrow.  Today I walked away with the realization there isn’t always going to be a tomorrow, it isn’t a promised thing.  I will no longer wait to say I love you, say I can see that person some other time, or hell say I have a life time to go fishing.  From now on the things that I “needed to” do which stood in the way of spending time with those I love are going to be the things that get put off.  I refuse to hold a grudge over a simple misunderstanding or put off until tomorrow what really should be done today.  So to all those people who I have put off, all the things that I have put off all I can say is you better have some free time since I won’t be putting it off any longer.  And I say to all of those who think that there is always time, you don’t know that is true.  There are a million things that I have put off and had today been the last day there would have been a lot of stuff I had missed out on.

This picture I think even my phone was still a little shook up.

What that picture should look like...

Close up of the windshield...

And I generally have my wonder fiancee proofread things, but this one I didn't wait for that to occur.