Personal effects

This is a bit of a grim post...just giving you fair warning.

At work today, I was out on the bridge project I worked on last year. The contractor had some final punch list items to finish up and then the job was officially finished (well, outside of some paperwork I have to do now).

It's on the Interstate system, and there is a lot of traffic and plenty of accidents (there were double digits in the few months I was there last summer). I've seen plenty of old accident sites, where the guard rail is all shiny and new with some obviously older guard rail right next to it. Never thought twice about it until today. I can't think about it, it is dangerous for me (I'm an emotional person).

I was walking up the road and looked and saw that there had been an accident right next to the spot where the contractor was working. It had all the tell-tale signs of a regular old smash up, probably pretty bad. Only one post was broken and one panel was fixed. This is a bad sign, this means that the vehicle just about T-boned the guard rail, not a glancing blow which takes out several posts and several beam guard pieces. This isn't what bothered me though.

This is what bothered me: I can tell you that it was a Chevrolet truck of some type. I can tell you that the passenger side of the vehicle was torn open somehow. I can tell you that a woman or (please let it be this, oh please let it be this) a woman's purse was in the passenger's side seat of the truck. I can tell all of this because of the other things that were laying there next to the destroyed guard rail. The owner's manual (usually in the glove compartment, to have it thrown clear of the vehicle means the vehicle's passenger side was torn asunder). Lip balm, lip stick, lip gloss , eyeliner pencils and a combination hair comb and pick were laying there in the grass on the side of the road. And if I remember right, my past girlfriend's have only carried their favorites of those items with them in their purse.

Usually the police pick this stuff up, as evidence in the crash. I'm expecting this crash happened in one of the snowstorms and the police couldn't see it in the snow.

I nearly vomited. I don't know why this stuff did this to me. I think it may have made it "real". A real person was hurt here, probably very badly, possibly worse than hurt.

I said a little prayer right there in my head, a little bit out loud. One of the worker's asked me what I said and I said "Nothin', just looking at this stuff here." He said, "Yeah, it must have been bad..."