Kaeli, Paige and Ryan were outside playing this afternoon with the neighbors. Around 5:00 Kaeli came running into the house screaming at me with panic in her voice. She just said there's a car running all over everybody's property out here. I ran out the front door and saw a cloud of smoke and a full-size pick-up truck crashed into the mailbox across from us. I slowly approached the truck because my first thought was that maybe this person had some kind of medical emergency. I got close enough to realize this man was probably drunk. I backed off then because I started getting all those weird fears like maybe he had a gun or something crazy like that. Thank God he broke his steering column when he jumped our curb and drove through our yard because he was trying very hard to leave. The police arrived very quickly and we found out that not only was he very drunk, but he is also a town employee. The officer that responded to the accident said the driver tested 3 times over the legal limit and would probably lose his job. There's little chance this guy will get any preferential treatment because he just happened to get stuck in the yard of our newly elected state representative. One good thing about our neighborhood is that there are lots of politically-active and influential people.
Thank God none of the kids were injured or killed! It's so scary to think what could have happened. Kaeli said they were near the curb in the neighbor's yard and ran into our yard when he crashed across the street. But, by the time he drove through our yard the kids were up close to the house. But, because of what COULD have happened I plan to follow this to see what happens to this guy. I know it's speculation, but he's a town employee and the town's Christmas party just happened to be today as well. It's so scary to think that your kids could be run over in their own yard by a drunk driver!! And, we live on the inner part of a neighborhood on what we *thought* was a fairly quiet street. But, at the very least the kids learned a valuable lesson. I used this as a teaching moment to help them understand why I don't allow them to play in the street. You just can't rely on the drivers to be paying attention or......to be sober.
But, all's well again. I'm just glad it's over. It was a pretty crazy hour or so and the kids were very hyper afterwards. I guess it was the adrenaline pumping through everyone's veins.
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