(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . I Didn't Know They Shot Me [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-14 Mine was a 1990 Protege, denim metalflake, such a beautiful blue that dragonflies tried to lay eggs on the hood, thinking it was water. Oh how I loved that car. And it saved my life. Yeah. This is all true. And it’s going to come across as clinical because all these years later I’m still shocky about it. I was just reading something elsewhere about gun violence and came across the fact that a Parkland survivor had been at MSU, so now this young person has survived TWO mass shootings. There was further discussion of the fact that none of us are safe — that if we simply go on about our lives, sooner or later we are going to cross paths with this. And all of a sudden I realized that I had. I remembered. I realized. Had I really not understood what had happened? I think I did, but then I just shelved it and went on about the business of living. Ok, so. I don’t remember which year it was. I know where I was living, though — in Rockville, MD. And I was working for the Feds. And I was going to be doing some international travel, which I had not done since leaving the private sector. And I had dying parents. So, like any good daughter, I decided that flying to and from Japan meant I should update my will. This didn’t bother me or upset me or prey on my mind. I’d been around back when a major corporation lost almost all of its executive tier because they were all on the same flight that went down with no survivors… www.forbes.com/… I knew what could happen. So I called a lawyer and dug out my previous copy and took a day off from work. The lawyer’s offices were close to where I’d attended college, and it had been long, long years since I was in that area. I looked forward to seeing how much I remembered, how much had changed. It was a pretty quiet drive until I was about ten minutes from her office. Two lane road, semi commercial, double yellow line. Nice day, warm. I was listening to some music or other — car had excellent audio. And a car full of young men, young, laughing, gesticulating, was in the oncoming lane. Red, I remember, and all the windows down. Huh. They were laughing at me? Sure seemed to be. Pointing. Waving? No… not exactly friendly laughte — BOOM — my car rocked so hard I almost lost control of it. Jesus, did I blow a tire! Rolled along, found a parking lot, pulled in. No, nothing wrong with the tires. Walked around the car looking for a dent. NOTHING. Nothing. Walked around it again. Looked at the roof. Looked at the grille. Not a damn thing. Not a damn thing. Windows all fine, all of the body surface fine. Nothing on the roof. Nothing dripping under the car thank God. Pop the hood. Nope, everything fine. What the hell happened? Got into the car, pulled back out, made my appointment a couple minutes late, apologized, said I’d thought I might have hit something but couldn’t find any evidence of damage, but I’d stopped to check. We went over everything, I made some tweaks due to my parents’ conditions [and the fact that I was back in the US], she gave me an appointment to come collect the revised will and finalize it, and I hopped in the car and drove back home. On the way, I decided to get a few groceries. Stuck ‘em on the passenger side. Tootled on home. Took more than one trip to get all the stuff inside. It was the last trip — the one for the canned goods, and thank God I’d put the milk and [I think] ice cream away — when I saw it. The one place I had not looked. My outside mirror housings. The sun was hitting just so… The one on the drivers’ side had a nice, neat, little round hole. A brand new nice neat little round hole. I folded up like a collapsing tent and sat on the curb with my head between my knees for about ten minutes. At the angle I was seeing, it looked like they’d aimed for my heart. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/14/2153019/-I-Didn-t-Know-They-Shot-Me Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/