Scary Moments
It amazes me how the mood of a moment can be changed by one event. It can be an icebreaker in a tense situation, or a scary happening when everyone is having fun. This past weekend I saw probably the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life. It happened about 20 yards in front of me, and involved a good friend of mine.
After a fun day at the boat races in Marble Falls, we were heading back to this friend of mine's house, and I was following him in my truck. He was riding a little electric scooter that had to struggle to reach 10 mph. There were three of us inside my truck and two more in the bed sitting down. Behind us were two more trucks with some friends in them. We were heading down this hill, cracking up about the way our friend looked on the stupid scooter. Well he lost control and went face first into the concrete, flipped over in the air, and landed flat on his back with his arms straight out from his body. I froze for a second, and only pulled over when the people in the back of the truck were yelling at me to drive closer and pull over. One of the guys in the back of my truck, and another one in a truck following us were the first ones to run up to our friend. He was laying there unconscious on the ground. I won't go into too many details about his appearance, but just let me say it wasn't pretty. We called 911 and the police, paramedics, and so on were there in like 2 minutes. Great response time, I was truly impressed. I guess in a small town, you get quicker service because there isn't as much going on. Well to continue with the story, our friend was laying there with all the paramedics beside him. He finally regained some consciousness, and talked to the medics. He told them his name, and where he was, and where he was from. They decided they needed to airlift him to Austin to make sure there weren't any major internal injuries.
Afterwards we all drove to Austin, and checked on him, he turned out to be okay. It was just a super tense, scary, uncomfortable moment, when everything was hanging on a string, and there was no telling what was going to happen next.
My point of telling this story isn't really to tell of the accident, but more of how totally unprepared I was to handle the situation. I've taken CPR/ and first aid classes before, but standing there after it happened. I was about as worthless as I could be. I like to think that I helped in other ways. I talked to the cops and medics and I flagged down the ambulance (which I'm sure knew exactly where it was going anyway).
I wonder to myself though, had it been someone I didn't know, would I have been able to handle the situation any different? I truly hope to never find that out.
Going back to what I said at the beginning of this post. It's crazy how one event can change the mood of everyone around you. One minute we were all talking about taking a little nap, and then getting up for a little get together at this guy's house. The next minute we were back at his house, packing our bags, attempting to get ahold of his parents, and headed out the door to the hospital in Austin. All it took was a split second.
Without wanting to be cheesy at all here, I hope that it made all of us cherish every moment we have. With the unpredictability of life, we can't bank too much on what is going to be next in our future, whether that's our immediate future, or our plans for years down the road....
After a fun day at the boat races in Marble Falls, we were heading back to this friend of mine's house, and I was following him in my truck. He was riding a little electric scooter that had to struggle to reach 10 mph. There were three of us inside my truck and two more in the bed sitting down. Behind us were two more trucks with some friends in them. We were heading down this hill, cracking up about the way our friend looked on the stupid scooter. Well he lost control and went face first into the concrete, flipped over in the air, and landed flat on his back with his arms straight out from his body. I froze for a second, and only pulled over when the people in the back of the truck were yelling at me to drive closer and pull over. One of the guys in the back of my truck, and another one in a truck following us were the first ones to run up to our friend. He was laying there unconscious on the ground. I won't go into too many details about his appearance, but just let me say it wasn't pretty. We called 911 and the police, paramedics, and so on were there in like 2 minutes. Great response time, I was truly impressed. I guess in a small town, you get quicker service because there isn't as much going on. Well to continue with the story, our friend was laying there with all the paramedics beside him. He finally regained some consciousness, and talked to the medics. He told them his name, and where he was, and where he was from. They decided they needed to airlift him to Austin to make sure there weren't any major internal injuries.
Afterwards we all drove to Austin, and checked on him, he turned out to be okay. It was just a super tense, scary, uncomfortable moment, when everything was hanging on a string, and there was no telling what was going to happen next.
My point of telling this story isn't really to tell of the accident, but more of how totally unprepared I was to handle the situation. I've taken CPR/ and first aid classes before, but standing there after it happened. I was about as worthless as I could be. I like to think that I helped in other ways. I talked to the cops and medics and I flagged down the ambulance (which I'm sure knew exactly where it was going anyway).
I wonder to myself though, had it been someone I didn't know, would I have been able to handle the situation any different? I truly hope to never find that out.
Going back to what I said at the beginning of this post. It's crazy how one event can change the mood of everyone around you. One minute we were all talking about taking a little nap, and then getting up for a little get together at this guy's house. The next minute we were back at his house, packing our bags, attempting to get ahold of his parents, and headed out the door to the hospital in Austin. All it took was a split second.
Without wanting to be cheesy at all here, I hope that it made all of us cherish every moment we have. With the unpredictability of life, we can't bank too much on what is going to be next in our future, whether that's our immediate future, or our plans for years down the road....
posted by Sancho at 5:48 PM
2 Comments:
What a scary few moments it was Sancho. We are so truly lucky that everything turned out the way it did. It just comes to show how close we all are! :)
Gues you guys wont get drunk at chili's next year? Huh.
Post a Comment
<< Home