This is a different post than I had been planning. I was at the bank the other day and the chatty man helping me asked about the scar on my lip. Most people either ignore or don't see the anomalies on my face. It's one of those things that makes me doubt people really see me, either that or they lie to protect my feelings (I don't know how to feel about that). When I look in the mirror they stand out like trees in a desert.
There were so many strange things about the accident that rearranged my face and gave me a fear of intersections. For years my grandmother told me, "Put on your seat belt. One of these days you're going to be in an accident and mess up your pretty face."
My aunt Bobbie Sue, died in a car accident when she was eight. She died because she was not wearing a seatbelt. But that was a very long time ago when nobody wore seat belts. My middle name, Sue, is a tribute to my mother's sister. My accident happened one month before my eighteenth birthday.
In March of 1993, my grandmother's prophecy came true. The following is a bit I wrote for a prompt. It's been fictionalized bit and names changed to protect the innocent and some of the details are a bit fuzzy, but the part about the seat belts is true.
The bright sunshine did little to stave off the winter chill. The girls, one tall and blonde, one short and brunette, rushed from the brick building, pulling coats tighter. As they climbed into the two-tone, green, 1973, Ford, three-quarter ton pickup, Morgan, the blonde one said, "Maybe we should wear our seatbelts for a change."
Sue, never one to argue, shrugged and belted on, not that she really needed to. The truck was built like a tank. Besides, it had a radar detector, so it wasn't like they were going to get pulled over. The old V-8 engine roared to life and Morgan steered it into traffic and down the highway.
Sue watched out the window as they passed the expensive gas station, the one they never filled at. Passed the cheap gas station where her step-dad got the "bad" tank of gas that "ruined" his starter, so they didn't get gas there either, but the coffee was okay. Passed the mattress store with the "We take trade-ins" sign. She squirmed trying to get rid of the bugs the sign sent wriggling along her skin. Passed the local nursery where grandma always used to buy hundreds of dollars of flowers every spring, back before she got dementia, back when she always knew who Sue was.
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band started singing Fishing in the Dark, making Sue's toes wiggle, as they approached the junction where everything got curvy, where traffic from the interstate merged with the highway. There was a semi-truck, rolling toward the junction—a big red tractor, pulling a trailer with a medieval-looking shield painted on it. A beautiful rig, regal even, too bad grandpa couldn't see it. He loved trucks, especially red ones. Red shiny, trucks. Trucks that should stop at stop signs. Why wasn't it stopping at the stop sign?
Everything slowed to a crawl. The sound went out of the world. The big red truck continued rolling toward the green truck. She'd be late for class. Forget class, she'd be dead. And then green metal smashed against red fiberglass and there was darkness.
The light crept back in "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Morgan was crying. Sue tried to sit up, she wanted to tell Morgan it was okay, but something, no, someone, shoved her down.
"Don't move," a man's voice said.
Everything was blurry. Everything was far away and close at the same time. "Is my neck broken."
"It's just a precaution."
