Yesterday, a semi-truck decided to tangle with my minivan. The semi-truck ended up with a flat tire.

My minivan?

Well, the tire didn’t go flat, but pretty much everything surrounding the tire?

Crumpled.

What wasn’t crumpled was me and my son, which thank the Lord for that! I do not know how we managed to be OK because that was not what I was thinking the outcome was going to be when I realized the semi truck was turning right and I was not in the place where you want to be when a semi truck is turning right.

Specifically, the semi-truck was in the left lane, and I was in the right lane next to his trailer when he started to turn right in front of me. That moment? Just before the actual crash when I knew things were not going to be good? It is not a pretty moment, and I keep seeing it.

This would explain why I’m up at 6:50 a.m. on a weekend and that I’ve been awake longer than that.

I keep thinking, “What if,” and realizing how things could have gone oh so differently.

It wasn’t until this morning that I even remembered that a couple of months ago I had another incident with a semi-truck. The situation was very different, but the vehicle I was driving and where I would have been hit were pretty similar.

In that situation, I was stopped at the end of a driveway waiting to turn left and head out to work. The driveway belongs to a local gas station, and I had just filled up my vehicle. The gas station had two entrances, both of which are very wide, and I was sitting in the lane meant for vehicles making left turns out of the station. This particular gas station actually has the lanes painted up like at a stop light.

As I was sitting there, a semi-truck driver went past the empty drive into the gas station and came along to the second drive where I was sitting and waiting, and the semi driver made a left hand turn into the gas station.

I realized very quickly that despite efforts to make a wide turn, the trailer of the semi-truck was going to hit me if I didn’t get out of there. I threw my vehicle into reverse and backed up. I had to move more than 6 feet, and even after I moved, the semi-truck missed me by inches.

When the traffic cleared, I made my left hand turn, but I was pretty shaken by it. I couldn’t believe the semi-truck didn’t realize I was there and how close he had came to crushing my vehicle with me in it. I didn’t go more than a block before I did a U-turn and went back to the gas station.

I called 911 and requested an officer, and when the driver came out of the gas station, I told him that I had an officer on the way. The driver only had one leg. The officer arrived, and I explained why I called. I hadn’t actually been hit, so there wasn’t really anything for the officer to do but that wasn’t my point. I left with the officer and semi-truck driver talking — probably talking about the flaky lady who called when there hadn’t been an accident.

Yesterday was not the same thing although a gas station driveway was involved. Yesterday, I was driving down the road heading east with one of my children in the passenger seat next to me. The semi-driver was also heading east. The road is a four-lane road with two lanes going in each direction. I was in the right outer lane. The semi-truck was in the inner left lane. The semi-truck turned right.

When everything stopped, the semi-truck was still in the road. The semi-truck’s trailer was still completely in the left lane, and the cab of the truck was angled not quite 90 degrees to turn into the gas station.

My van was several feet or so away from the semi-truck. It landed into a snowbank so deeply that you couldn’t see the damage to the van, but you knew there was damage because teeny tiny pieces of my van’s paint and various parts of the front of my van were scattered all over the ground and snowbank.

When I saw that the semi was going to turn right, and I had no where to go — the semi’s trailer was on my left and a tall snowbank on my right — I remember saying, “No.” I remember talking out loud to the driver of that semi-truck and saying, “No.”

My son remembers it a bit differently. He says I yelled/screamed “no” repeatedly. When I heard him tell me this, I wish I could make him forget it.

When we stopped in that snow bank, I couldn’t believe I was OK. Nothing hurt. The vehicle wasn’t crushed in on me. I turned to Justin, and I’ve never seen him more scared, but he looked so good! He was fine.

I wanted out. I undid my seatbelt, opened my door and got out of the van. I walked around the end and realized Justin’s door was locked. He had to unlock it to let me get him out.

People came running from everywhere. I remember at least four men in military uniform were the first running towards us. When they saw me, they yelled to ask if anyone was hurt. I said no, and they kind of stopped. Their arms still out wide from their bodies. They asked again, and I again said no.

It was kind of hard to believe no one was hurt.

I called 911 — I think before getting Justin out of the vehicle. I remember telling the operator, “A semi-truck just hit me.” I was able to tell her the details of where it happened and that no one was hurt. As she continued with the questions, it hit me. How close it all was and that it was hard to believe no one was hurt, and I started to get a bit emotional. That made the 911 operator ask me again, “Are you sure no one’s hurt?”

All of that stuff — me realizing we were OK, getting out of the truck, talking to the soldiers, checking on Justin, calling 911 — seemed to happen in seconds.

I was also helped immediately by Dawn Wilson who had gone to school with my husband. I remember her grabbing hold of both my arms and getting me to look her in the eyes as she asked if I was OK. Dawn and her husband Tim helped me and the truck driver when we were both still in shock.

It was Dawn who told me the couple in the white truck had witnessed the accident. She also made her way into the station and found out they had seen it as well. She grabbed a phone book for me, so I could call the library and let them know Justin would be late for the practice Battle of the Books. (I didn’t realize that we actually wouldn’t make it to the library.) When Dawn wasn’t there with me, her husband was.

Dawn made sure I was able to contact Steve and that he was on the way. She and Tim stayed for quite a while. I don’t know what their plans were, but they put them aside to help me. They were just pulling out when Steve arrived.

I don’t know how, but no one was hurt.

And let me tell you that I have hated my minivan from the time that I first drove a minivan. But that minivan has about 270,000 miles on it, and I’ve personally put on more than 200,000 of those miles, and it has never failed me. It always started. It always worked. It hauled kids everywhere.

When you have four kids, everyone tells me it is reasonable to drive a minivan. It gets good gas mileage and holds everyone and all their stuff especially when that stuff was child car seats. But it is also pretty much a billboard that says, “I have children” even when you don’t necessarily want to have that be the first thing people know about you.

So I have always had a love/hate relationship with owning a minivan, and it was probably more hate than love. It got me where I needed to go. But I have to give props to that minivan. After being hit by a semi? After 270,000 miles? The minivan still started right up.