In praise of the VW passat

My husband and I were in a bad car accident Friday night. We were coming home from seeing Superman (without babies, thank goodness) and getting off the freeway onto the four lane divided highway thingy that is 7200 S.-West-of-the-Freeway, when an out of control drunk driver came from behind. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but we were hit once from the back, then there was some spinning (and some screaming), then we were hit from the side, then we skidded over the median and into oncoming traffic all the way across two lanes and up onto the opposite sidewalk and almost into a ditch but not quite. Thank goodness the oncoming traffic was able to stop because let me tell you there's not much freakier than seeing six or seven sets of headlights coming straight for you as you're totally out of control (and screaming ). The side air bags deployed and my husband's window was shattered. The whole back of the car was mushed in and the side pretty messed up, too. All four tires exploded and there was oil leaking from somewhere in the car.

Afterward were shaking pretty dang bad but were really surprised to be walking around. [Not quite as surprised to see the drunk dude stumble out of his car and try to run away from the cops who were *right there*, but whatev.]

Turns out our car (a VW Passat)--which we bought for the sole reason of its being the cheapest used car we could find at the time--is one of the safest cars you can get. It's mushed now, but we walked away and think we want another one just like it.

Anyway. If we had skidded across the median about three seconds later than we did, we could very well be dead because we would have hit two cars head on. It's frankly kind of weird to be in a situation that could have been so deadly. I don't know if the fragility of life is supposed to teach you to just hang on through tough times or to do whatever it takes not to have tough times because life is so short.

[post edit: my back hurt a lot after this, but the medics and the hospital thought it was the type of injury that would go away. but it didn't. it might never go away, they tell me now. blah.]