Not on my birthday

I was heading to the local cinema in my car on the A10 motorway today in hope to liven up what seemed to be fairly quiet start of my birthday. Traffic was bizarrely busy on a typical Sunday afternoon when suddenly, everything grinded to a halt. As usual I assumed some plonker must have decided to change lanes at the last minute at the traffic lights and held up the flow. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. A fire truck came from out of nowhere and blasted its siren right behind me. I swear my heart must have jumped out of my chest and ran across the other side of the road like an episode from Tom and Jerry.

"Get out of the frickin way you git!", I imagined the truck driver yelling to me behind his steering wheel. I would have been most happy to oblige, if there weren’t any frickin cars directly in front of me.

Obviously the truck driver has been trained whereby should he come across a situation like this, he would need to take a drastic action; and that was exactly what he did. He drove the truck over the motorway divider and went along on the wrong side of the road at full speed. It was like a lost scene from Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Another fire truck soon followed suite, followed by a third.

“Darling, I don’t mean to cause a panic but could you please pull over as there are three fire trucks charging straight at us at maximum velocity!”, I could just imagine what somebody would have been saying to their partner who was behind the wheel at that particular moment in time.

When you see fire trucks, one can’t help but to think there must have been a massive fire breakout somewhere nearby. I soon found out later that again, it was not the case.

Like a few other impatient smart drivers, I decided to pull off at the nearest junction. Whilest doing this, I saw what was holding up the traffic a few hundred yards ahead. There were the three fire trucks parked horizontally across the road, accompanied by two ambulances and what must have been at least six police patrol cars. Unlike the others who went off looking for alternate routes, I decided to park my car and investigate the incident further, on foot.

There, much to my dismay, was a red saloon which had somehow managed to overturn and landed flat on its roof. There were several million bits of shattered glass everywhere across the road. At least ten firemen were busy trying to get somebody from under the wreckage. One was equipped with a metal saw; to which he used to cut off both the front and rear passenger doors.

Minutes later, they managed to pull out a rather small body from underneath the wreckage. From where I was standing and witnessing the unnerving event, it looked like the body belonged to a small boy. There was no screaming or crying of any kind, nor was there any movement, at least none that I saw. He was placed on the stretcher to which then four paramedics hovered over and attended to him. I failed to see any familiar activities to the scenes I could recall from the many episodes of ER on Channel4. They simply secured the little boy on the stretcher and ushered him into the back of the ambulance. I fear for the fate of the innocent one.

Strangely, the boy’s mum or dad were nowhere in sight. Perhaps they managed to crawl out from under the wreckage themselves before help arrived. Looking at the state of the car again, I doubt that that was the case. I can only hope that they are under good care, for the sake of their little boy.

As I left the scene in pursuit to glorify my day with a movie, I couldn’t help but to think about that little boy on the stretcher. I have lived a full thirty years today. That boy could have been four or five years old.

I hope that he and his family recovers to full strength as quickly as possible. I hope that he is able to grow old and lead a fulfilling life.

It could have easily been me on that stretcher.

I was in no mood to celebrate today.