No quite Bambi

On the drive home from the cottage last night Karen and I almost hit a deer.

One second we were trying to remember the name of that cheesy Richard Marx song (which I googled Karen, and it's called Right Here Waiting) and the next I was screaming 'AHHHHHH!!! DEEEEEER!' and trying to grab the steering wheel from her.

The road was dark (as country roads are) and thankfully Karen had been taking it easy the whole drive - fluctuating between 60km and 80km, the speed limit. The road is really curvy with lots of hills and it's impossible to see very far in front of you. And then suddenly as if out of nowhere the headlights illuminated a deer standing directly in front of us. Just standing there. Not trying to cross the two lane highway. Just standing there. It gives new meaning to the saying 'caught like a deer in the headlights'.

You know how they say 'my life flashed before my eyes'. Well that didn't happen...but I thought a lot in that split second, I thought "is that really a deer? omg, there is a deer in the road and it's not moving and we're going to hit it. wow. i hope we don't die. will it smash through the windshield? or will we just fling it forward? karen was just looking in the rearview mirror. did she even see it? i should scream to alert her. what if she doesn't swerve in time? what if she does and it turns around and runs back the way it came and we hit it anyways." And one of the thoughts was also "OMG. Not again."

On that same stretch of highway five years ago I was in a car accident where someone lost their life. The accident was not my fault. Unfortunately that time around there was traffic in the oncoming lane and I couldn't swerve. All I could do was grip the steering wheel and try to brace myself for the inevitable bang.

It took me four years to finally drive that road again...just last September. And last night was only the second time I'd been on that road since the accident. I think that was also part of the reason Karen was taking it easy. I won't lie. I was uneasy the entire drive. And now I kind of want to say I'll never drive that road again. But is that realistic? I can't let fear control my life. So maybe I'll just set out some boundaries:

I will not drive on Airport Rd at night.

I will not drive on Airport Rd in snow.

But what's to stop deer from crossing the road in daylight? And what's to stop someone from losing control of their car and spinning out in front of me on a regular day? I have no answers.

The worse part is that after - when the feeling of nausea overtook me, when I realized that it did not in fact happen again, I started to think about the what ifs.

What if Karen hadn't been taking it easy the whole drive and we'd been barelling down the highway at 100km/hour (as many of the cars that passed us were)? What if there were cars coming in the oncoming lane and we couldn't swerve? What if Arnelle - who was following behind us (and we knew was probably annoyed by Karen's constant breaking) had been in front and had been driving full speed? She had Siva and two kids in the car. What if we hadn't decided to leave tonight instead of tomorrow morning like orginially planned? What if we did hit it?

And that's what I have to stop. There is nothing to be gained but that nauseated feeling again if I dwell on the what ifs. The point is we didn't hit it. The point is Karen swerved and stupid fucking deer finally decided to run into the forest, where hopefully it will stay forever.

me.