A chance encounter

So I was at my local speedway gas station today. I was out for a drive and decide to stop and get a slurpee. There was a woman at the slurpee machine filling lots of drinks. She had two kids with her. She asked if I wanted to use the machine and I told her no I'm not in a hurry. The lady was front of me in line and she told the clerk she had 7 slurpee's. I paid shortly after her and walked out.

So tonight I'm checking the nightly news as usually and there's a story about a woman and 7 kids involved in a roll over accident. It was right down the road from the gas station. I went the opposite direction. I guess the SUV rolled over 3 times and all of them were taken to the hospital.

I just wonder if maybe I had used the machine when she offered that maybe the accident wouldn't have happened. Maybe I would have held her up long enough for the event not to have occurred. I would have been in line first?

It's just messed up.

originally posted by: wantsome
So I was at my local speedway gas station today. I was out for a drive and decide to stop and get a slurpee. There was a woman at the slurpee machine filling lots of drinks. She had two kids with her. She asked if I wanted to use the machine and I told her no I'm not in a hurry. The lady was front of me in line and she told the clerk she had 7 slurpee's. I paid shortly after her and walked out.

So tonight I'm checking the nightly news as usually and there's a story about a woman and 7 kids involved in a roll over accident. It was right down the road from the gas station. I went the opposite direction. I guess the SUV rolled over 3 times and all of them were taken to the hospital.

I just wonder if maybe I had used the machine when she offered that maybe the accident wouldn't have happened. Maybe I would have held her up long enough for the event not to have occurred. I would have been in line first?

It's just messed up.

It's unlikely that your 30 seconds of machine usage would have delayed the inevitable.

Now, if you were to have actually hit on her and spent 10 minutes banging her in the restroom, that might have saved all of them.

Honestly, my crass comment aside. I don't get it. So many variables in life. The assumption that you had any roll in this outcome could honestly be due more to a self centric view than anything else. I certainly wouldn't harbor any sort of responsibility from it.

Jesus was asked about the huge construction accident in Scripture.......a scaffold collapsed... . He said fate.....or time and chance

a reply to: wantsome

Look, life is a supposed mystery... right?

Rather than try to blame yourself for this, which I reckon you are trying to do from reading your post (even if you enjoy the pretence that you are not or suffer from a saviour complex which is quite common these days because we all feel invalidated - could I have saved the person or similar).

See, the fragility of life for what it is.
If it was the other way around, it could have been you or another person. It may not even be the same person mentioned but regardless we need validity in some way (if we are honest with ourselves).

The Human Race: Biggest lot of crap ever termed.
It is not a race, we are all dead, dying, reaching the same place at different times.

Take away decay and time: Life is for living, let yourself live and if this has really upset you, help other people meet the finish line with dignity as you would yourself

Or just shrug it off as a chance encounter

What do you want??

originally posted by: MisterSpock

Honestly, my crass comment aside. I don't get it. So many variables in life. The assumption that you had any roll in this outcome could honestly be due more to a self centric view than anything else. I certainly wouldn't harbor any sort of responsibility from it.

Sometimes, I wish the enterprise existed, cause you have this way of just saying it like it is, without any elaboration or humanity whatsoever and it is good but just a little bit of humanity would help...



Yours faithfully - Kirk

a reply to: wantsome

The fact that you're wondering if a different set of actions in your encounter with her would have cancelled the wreck she got in just shows that you're a feeling, compassionate human being. Thank the Lord there are still some out there.

I would have wondered the same thing, had it been me in your place in the situation. It probably wouldn't have altered the outcome: big things that happen in our lives (like rolling over your suburban three times, with seven kids inside) are usually bound to happen, and God can always bring good from traumatic situations.

Damn, that's crazy.

I bet she had a brain freeze from those gd drinks.
I almost black out and cry like a baby if I drink them too fast.
I can't imagine it happening when driving.

a reply to: wantsome

Have you considered that maybe if the woman hadn’t taken 7 kids with her, the accident wouldn’t have happened? Maybe the woman was on her cell phone. Maybe she was driving recklessly.

There are far too many variables to assume that your slurpee timing had anything to do with it. I wouldn’t beat yourself up about it.

a reply to: wantsome
What if? What if? Lifes full of em. Look at it this way, the family were taken to hospital. What if those seconds you had with them saved their lives not just injury.

a reply to: wantsome
You walked out shortly after her. If you had taken her offern, I guess it would be the other way around.
Maybe you would have meet on the parking lots entrance and left her out first to return the favor?

Then nothing would have changed the outcome probably. We do not know it. You can not blame your self for this, really.

I'll see your seven Slurpees & raise you three fishing poles! ☹

About thirty five years ago, we were going to meet some friends, about twenty miles away at a state park, for a picnic after everyone got out of work. We had our three year old & one year old with us. It was a beautiful sunny day, late afternoon. The road was narrow, windy, it followed a small river through a deep valley. There were no berms along the road to speak of.

All of a sudden, we came around a curve & crested a small rise in the road. Right in front of us, across both lanes of the road, were three boys about ten years old on bicycles, with fishing poles. Thankfully we were going slow, enjoying the ride! Hubby hit the brakes & was able to stop in time! If we had been going the speed limit, there's no way that we wouldn't have hit at least one of them!

I wanted to stop & tell them to ride single file! But hubby was worried they would be scared by strangers stopping. It was not long after a high profile, state kidnapping & before the whole 'it takes a village' scenario. He felt it wasn't our place to advise someone else's kids. But if it was our kids doing something dangerous, I would want someone to yell at them at least! We kept going, hoping they had been scared enough by what almost happened, to be more careful! When we got to the picnic, we asked the other families if they had seen them, but nobody else had.

We forgot about it after that, but later I read an article in our paper, about a young boy on a bicycle being hit & killed on that day, on that road, at about that time! The guy that hit him used to live back the road, went to grade school with me & rode our school bus! He was going to be on trial for involuntary manslaughter! I was horrified! It could have been us! I called the police station, explained what had happened to us that day & we were asked to come in & give a statement. The charges against him were later dropped.

But it lead to a lot of what ifs for me too!
What if we had stopped & told them to ride single file? Or would all three of them still been hit by a speeding semi then? What if we hadn't been on that road, on that day, to see them riding dangerously? Would the guy have gone to jail? What if I hadn't read the paper that day to see the article? So many possible scenarios!

The other day at the grocery store, there were only two checkouts open & no express. There were five people in line, all with big orders. An older lady got in line with just a bottle of water. I told her to go ahead of me. Now it has me second guessing everything! What if, by getting out ahead of the other people, she got run over in the parking lot by someone backing up without looking?

We make hundreds of decisions every day that could change things. I guess what it all boils down to, is doing our best & hoping that everything turns out the way it was meant to?

WOQ

Act, don't act, it all has an effect on reality. What if you never stopped? What if you chatted more? What if . . .

Maybe the way it went down has another important consequence somewhere down the road.

If you were meant to intervene, you would have had a feeling, or the still small voice would have told you to act. Otherwise we are all just actors playing our part in reality and things play out the way they are going to.