My Night Of Broken Glass Sometimes, life crashes into us. Other times, we crash into it. Take the night I pulled up to a convenience store to grab a quick cup of coffee, for example. As I was parking, my car lurched forward, and before I knew it, my front bumper had demolished a huge glass panel on the front of the building. Suddenly, I was like one of those people on the nightly news who plows through the store window, only, thankfully, the cameras never showed up. On the bright side, no one was hurt, and there was minimal damage to my Escape. The car, which only had a few scratches on it, had fared better than my ego. Several cups of coffee, many tears, and one police report later, the Good Samaritan who comforted me commented that one day I would laugh about the incident. For the time being, it was the other customers who were laughing and making sarcastic comments about how the shop had suddenly become a drive-thru. I felt sorry for the store owner, a nice, gray-haired man who helped me out of the car and seemed only to care about my wellbeing. I can’t explain exactly what happened that night --- maybe it was the brakes, maybe bad driving, maybe a combination of the two -- only that it was an accident. Sure, I had my nightly anxiety attacks for a while. Would the car insurance company cancel my coverage? How had I, literally, been driven to this point in my life? The shattered window represented a defining moment, a realization that some things are out of my control. Life happens, that is for sure, and the image of the broken glass will forever haunt, and inspire, me. The next time I drove by the convenience store, I saw that a new window had been installed. It reminded me that life goes on, and broken things can be fixed. Sarah Rivera is a freelance writer who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. She relies heavily on chocolate and a sense of humor.
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