Endless Night Awakens Sense Of Gratitude

By STEVE OTTO The Tampa Tribune

Published: Apr 30, 2008

It's 4 o'clock in the morning, the cell phone rings and my son is on the other end screaming.

He is in an automobile accident that still seems to be happening. His car is crushed; he cries that it is complete panic. He isn't sure whether he is on the interstate or off the side of the road, but he is terrified and yelling that he has been slammed by a huge truck.

Never having felt more helpless in my life, I clutch the phone, our only connection, and try to find out whether he is hurt and whether his car is sitting out in the middle of Interstate 75, and can he get out and is anybody else around. It is an awful, terrible feeling, because you want to do something and you don't know what to do.

Let me back up. It has already been a long night. It was his last day at Florida State University for the semester and he got a very late start back home. We knew he wouldn't be back until the early hours and we would wait up and ask him to call frequently because the stretch out of Tallahassee on I-10 is so empty.

He had made it about 30 miles out of Lake City when he got the flat tire on the small Mazda. At 1:30 a.m., it's tough to come up with a new tire. The guy from the motor club came out and helped him put on the spare doughnut and told him he could make it back to Tampa but to keep his speed around 50. That ended any thought of sleep for his mother, and we began periodic checks, although the kid is a night owl and we aren't.

Finally, around Gainesville, he said he was doing fine and I drifted off. His mom kept watching an old movie. That's when the phone rang.

The Call

He said he was mostly off the road and was out of what was left of the car. He thought he was somewhere south of Payne's Prairie but not as far as Ocala.

I called 911 and they sent me to the highway patrol, who said our son should call them to get an exact location. By then we were dressed and pulling out of our driveway in the direction of I-75.

I just might have broken a few laws whipping through Tampa, up onto I-275 and north while my wife kept in touch with our son.

It was light out by the time we reached the exit where he was. The Florida Highway Patrol had already come and gone, and what was left of his car was towed to a lot several miles away in Citra.

Moments In Time

There were two moments. One was seeing the kid where the tow truck had dropped him off at a truck stop gas station. He was standing there out front, disheveled, bruised, exhausted and a little numb, but the best thing I had seen in a long time.

The other moment would come a half-hour later at the garage in Citra, where I saw the remains of the Mazda. The back end was crushed and shoved up to the driver's section. It was one of those moments you hear about, when you realize after saying how lucky he was that it was not just luck.

All of the things he was hauling back from the dorm that were now crushed into a solid pile inside the wreckage were completely unimportant.

Sometime, in the coming weeks when we're out looking for a used car, I might start thinking about money and all of those things that absorb our lives. But not now. Now I am just grateful, and I hope you'll take this as a reminder in your own lives of what you have that can never be replaced.

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