I Almost Died Today. Also, Let’s Boycott Tuesday.

Okay, maybe that’s a little melodramatic.

But I did almost get in a very, very bad traffic accident.  It’s the second day of school for the local college, and the young people are frantic in their attempts to find a parking space and get to class on time.  Because it appears that universally, they all forgot to factor in parking-and-walking-to-class time.

See, I know this about the college, so I usually avoid driving past it for the first two weeks of each semester.  But today I forgot, and chose to turn left at the intersection at the corner of the campus.

I was about two-thirds of the way through the intersection on a left-turn arrow when I heard the squealing of tires on the paint in the crosswalk and looked over to see two young men in a small car barrelling toward me from the right-hand turn lane of opposing traffic, going about 40 mph.

Instead of turning right, they swerved and drove straight across the intersection, squeezing between my van and the car behind me as we were turning left in front of them.

Luckily my instinct had been to speed up and get out of their way instead of my usual lame “Oh no, something’s happening, I’d better slam the brakes on.”

Apparently they were trying to get a jump on traffic, anticipating that the light was going to turn green for them at any second and trying to drive around the cars waiting at the light by using the right-turn only lane.

Except they failed to understand that at that light, the left-turn light goes green before the straight-on light does. It’s all in the details.

It all happened so quickly, no one even honked.  They drove off down the road, everyone in the intersection paused for a second, and then we all continued doing what we were doing. It was about a block down the road when it hit me how close we had been to being T-boned.  And I had a van full of teenagers.

After I dropped off the teens at school, I almost got hit again.

This time it was a large panel truck who sort of thought he wanted to to turn right but sort of wasn’t sure, but definitely didn’t seem to want to stop.  Which would have been okay if I hadn’t been stopped at the light in front of him.  Luckily I was able to pull forward a little so that he had room to swerve into the right lane, narrowly missing the back corner of my van.

So also today, in my free time when I’m not avoiding crazy drivers, I’m sitting on hold for up to a half an hour at a time, waiting for insurance company and doctor office staff to fix the clerical mistakes they have made so that my very ill 84 year old mother can see the specialist she has been waiting to see for two months.  So far I have spoken to five staff members and two supervisors.  Still no appointment.

In between that I have also been delivering lunches to offspring who forgot theirs.  Twice.

And that has been the sum total of my day. Did nothing else. Just that.

Looking back on my blog, it appears I had this kind of day last Tuesday, too.

So I’m thinking I may just boycott Tuesday in the future.  I’m just going to skip right over it and go straight to Wednesday.

Who’s with me?