On the busy last Saturday of the year, the one between Christmas and the New Year, something happened to me in my home town of Guilderland that I would never have expected: I was nearly killed.

Around noon I was driving my mini-van south on Willow St., approaching Western Ave., with my wife beside me and my daughter and her friend in the middle seat. The light at the intersection was green, so I began my left-hand turn. That's when I saw the small car barreling straight towards us in the west-bound left-hand lane of Western Ave. I just had time to shout "He's running a red light!", then WHAM. Next it was all sounds: of metal twisting and bending; of glass shattering; of the kids screaming.

The force of the impact started to push our van over, then somehow we came back down. My back was killing me from having the side of the car thrust into my body, but I had to get out. My wife, despite banging her elbow pretty severely, had the wherewithal to say "If you have a back injury, don't move." Of course, as usual she was right, but I had only one thought
in my head: must get out NOW.

She opened her door and staggered out, and I twisted out from under the steering wheel and followed her. OUCH! My left lower back was killing me. I couldn't stand up straight. I hobbled over towards the car that hit us, where the young guy was also out. I shouted "You almost killed my family!", and a lady who came out of nowhere said "Stop it, this isn't going to solve anything," like I was going to hit him or something; ha, I was in no shape to even swat a fly. The guy actually tried to say he had a green light, but witnesses came over and backed me up - my light was green all the way.

Then I tried to find a way to get the searing, knife like pain in my back to go away. Traffic had stopped at all four corners of the busy intersection, while I crawled along the ground, trying to find some position to minimize the pain. A New York State Trooper showed up, and I wound up kneeling half in and half out of the back seat of his car. While in this prone position, doubled over in pain, the guy who hit us came over to me. "Look, I'm sorry about what happened, I'm a Christian and I didn't
mean to hurt you or your family." I looked up and couldn't even respond.

All this while my daughter and her friend are crying on the corner, my wife is running around trying to make sense of it all, and there's about a million people just sitting in their cars, staring. Next thing I'm on my back strapped to a stretcher in an ambulance, with my daughter strapped down next to me and my wife in the front. The pain in my back took second place momentarily, as the EMT stepped on the fingers of my dangling left hand. He then apologized. What a day.

We got to the hospital, and I now have an idea for a new business. When you enter a hospital on a stretcher all you see is acoustical ceiling tiles and heating and air conditioning vents. What better place to target a captive audience? How about and ad on the ceiling for a San Juan vacation, a promo for the next Will & Grace, or maybe a simple "I Love New York" with a smiling George Pataki? You laugh but anything to take your mind off the pain would help.

Then I'm in an emergency room. I'm told, for pain like mine, I'll need a shot in the leg. Somehow the nurse and I got my pants down far enough, and I could feel the explosion of pain killer in my right thigh. Yow. The great Dorothy Parker once said, "What fresh hell is this?" It's uncanny how appropriate that quote is for so many situations, especially this one.

My wife banged her elbow pretty hard. My daughter got several cuts on her face from the shattering glass. Her friend jammed her side into the seat rail. I have intense lower back pain yet, amazingly, X-rays showed no broken bones, and there was no internal bleeding. But I know that pain like this is caused by nerve and soft tissue damage, and it's a long road, if ever, to a full recovery. Considering how hard and fast we were hit, it's truly a miracle we weren't hurt more severely.

I believe what kept it from being far worse if not fatal is the fact that the mini-van sits up a little higher, and this guy's tiny sportscar was aerodynamic and low to the ground. Early mini-vans didn't have the metal in the doors for protection, but I'm sure my 1995 did, thank goodness. If he'd had an SUV, or if we'd been in a smaller, lower car, I'd be dead for sure. I'd guess he was going at least 60 in a 40 and there were no skid marks, but the Trooper said with ABS brakes these days you don't always get skid marks. Those at the scene said I was lucky to not have been hurt much, much worse, or even killed.

The kid was ticketed with running a red light. His air bags went off and still his head broke the windshield. I'm telling you, he was going very, very fast. Also, the Trooper told us that since this is a notoriously bad intersection, the traffic light actually has a 5 second delay in it. That means that the Western Ave. light does not turn green until Willow St. has been red for 5 seconds. My guess is that the guy who hit us never saw the light at all.

When bad things happen it's amazing how time slows down. From the moment I saw him hurtling towards us until impact was only, perhaps, two seconds, but it's drawn out in my mind. After shouting "He's running a red light!" I could feel the adrenaline begin to flow, and my whole body tensed up, preparing for the shock. Then the impact and WHAM, and I can almost see
myself from outside my body, as if looking at it all on a TV screen. They say that when you know you are going to die you may see your entire life flashing by, and I don't doubt it. In my case, as the outside of the mini-van took the impact and the inside started to violate my body by intensely pressing itself into my left side, my mind started picturing, believe it or not, the movie Titanic. It was the scene where the great ship is nearly vertical in the water, and Leo and Kate are up at the top. Then the ship breaks in two and sinks in two pieces to the bottom. I was seeing the breaking hull as my left lower back took the impact. Ouch, ouch, and, for good measure, OUCH.

As the left inside door panel continued it's attempted invasion of my body and the van was rising up like it was going to tip over, my mind went back to another time my body was violated senselessly like this. I was on the J subway in Brooklyn coming home from night school. As the doors were closing at a stop in a bad neighborhood, a kid threw an M-80 firecracker in the car. A subway car is really just a big tin can, and an M-80 has the force of a quarter stick of dynamite. When the explosion happened I first checked to see if I'd been shot; then I realized that my hearing was never going to be the same again. It was just a stupid, inner city kid who had no idea of what damage he caused, but you only have one body, the sacred vessel that houses your precious soul/mind/spirit, and it has to serve you all your life. It's one thing if you choose to kill it by smoking
cigarettes, using drugs, or being a couch-potato, but entirely something else when someone does it to you.

If there's one thing I regret about the incident it's not going over to my daughter and her friend before the EMT came. I was hobbling and in intense pain but I could have made it over to them. However, the thought that anything could be wrong with these two, full of life and love innocent teenagers, just starting out on their lives, was too much for me to take. No news is good news, as the saying goes. If you hear a baby crying that's a good sign, so I just listened to the crying and hoped for the best.
Again, it's a miracle they were not inured more severely.

Do you carry a poem or an insprirational quote or verse in your wallet or purse for tough times? I always do. In the ER, after the painkiller kicked in, I gingerly pulled out my wallet and took out a small, old piece of paper. This was on it:

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master,
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

I read this over and over and it really helped. It sure beat sitting there and crying in pain.

Speaking of accidents on Route 20, I saw a horrific one a few years go in front of the Price Chopper at 20 Mall. There was a semi-trailer on it's side and bodies on stretchers everywhere. Entering and exiting the library is always an adventure, and I know it's just a matter of time before there's a big wreck there as well, if there hasn't been one already. The busy early morning commute is very exciting as well, with half-asleep drivers trying to make the changing lights, and every time you wait to make a left you just pray that the guy you see in the rear view mirror speeding towards you sees you waiting there. Don't know what the solution is - Route 20 is a bustling east-west thoroughfare used by many - but clearly something needs to be done.

So now it's a matter of dealing with insurance companies. My van was a 1995 with 108K miles, but it lived on high quality Mobil-1 oil and had a good, strong engine which just had all it's seals and gaskets replaced. I also just got a rebuilt transmission and, ironically, a lifetime wheel alignment. It had a tow hitch, CD player, hardly any rust, and did everything I needed it to do while getting 20+ miles per gallon. It sure wasn't fast or sexy (I have my motorcycles for that) but it was an old friend that I'd come to admire and depend on. The first new car my wife and I purchased together, I was fully planning on keeping it for a long, long time. To add insult to injury, I couldn't even remove the CD that was in the player, because the firemen cut the battery wires for safety. The CD was my favorite, "Layla", by Derek and the Dominos; I even named my son Derek.

The insurance company says the van is a total loss, but if they try to offer me a low-ball "book value" I'll scream, though I know I should just be happy to be alive. With a stiff, aching back and the prognosis of nothing but rest and visits to the chiropractor for the immediate future, I've decided to start reading Tom Clancy's The Bear and The Dragon. I figure if I'm not better after reading 1,137 pages then I've got real problems.

Frank L. Palmeri
January 4, 2003

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