Childhood traumas

[Kitsa]

Post traumatic stress disorder is a real thing, that's for sure. Not that this is a childhood trauma, but...

About 15 years ago my parents had a minivan and my dad hated it. He kept wishing something would happen to it so he could get something else. One day, he was driving down a country road in a snowstorm. Without warning, all of the power lines collapsed over the road. One line draped over the minivan and dragged it and my dad into a ditch.

He was trapped there for a long time. The live wire actually burned a hole in the roof of the minivan. My dad couldn't do anything but sit there and try not to touch metal; there was water in the ditch on one side, and a live wire draped over the other. There was no way to safely get out.

Fortunately, he managed to get enough of a "car phone" signal to call for help, and the car trapped in front of him belonged to NIPSCo, the power company. They were able to locate them by GPS, shut off the line and help them out.

The fun didn't end there, one of the guys who was stuck was a dwarf and had to be helped over snow piles and fences back to the main road. That had to be humiliating. Anyway, he got his wish. The van was absolutely totaled.

To this day, my dad freaks out if he sees a crooked powerline. I saw something similar happen last fall during Hurricane Ike and have a touch of the freakouts myself.