The Blue Surpie! By Leticia Heath

Life is like a horror movie! It's sometimes based in darkness and sometimes in sunlight. It has its ghastly monster that never seems to die easily. It has its heroes and villains that sometimes never choose a side. But you must remember that they always end in the bad going bye-bye and the good coming smiling and saying “hi”.



Summer Vacation! Those two words sound like the ice cream truck music coming closer on a hot summer day. In fact it was a hot summer day a few weeks into my summer vacation. I had just come home from a nice vacation-in-a-vacation in Green River, Utah. I always long for Green River like I long for sweet dreams late at night. It had been great fun, but now we were back in Murray driving home in our PT Cruiser.

I was impatiently waiting for the air conditioning to work when a bright red light appeared on the dash board. I remembered every movie I had seen in outer space remembering when the red lights flash and the space ship was sent crashing to earth. I could tell we were in trouble and I closed my book. My grandmother groaned and turned the car around.

We arrived at the car shop the revolting stench of oil and sweat filled my nose causing me to take a deep breath and hold it. The car person asked us if we wanted a lift home in the shuttle but we refused saying we didn't want to wait and that there was a train station not far.

We walked out of the shop and into the sunlight that was so hot it melted us onto the sidewalk. We walked, talked, and stopped at a 7-11 to grab a drink then began to walk again. I slurped my slurpie gleefully the sour flavor beating my taste buds up. Right there and then is when it happened. I was drinking my slurpie minding my own business listening to my grandmother talk and seeing the crosswalk sign flashing white with a stick figure walking. I began to walk across the road like the it directed my shoes slipping off my feet and then I heard my grandmother scream. I instinctively looked over at her seeing her run back to the sidewalk trying to drag me with her. I noticed the car heading towards me and to this very day I can still remember the color and make: a blue sports car from Ford. I managed to walk back but I seemed to be in slow motion. I felt like my life was a horror movie right then but my point of view seemed like it wasn't in me but a person seating in a theater eating popcorn and drinking a diet coke and watching as a car approached a girl happily sipping her slurpie her grandmother pulling her back.

The car stopped and I was back in myself looking down at my foot and hearing my grandmother scream at the lady who had just ran over my foot. I could see the flesh of my foot bruising a black line running from my toes upward. I didn't cry even though I felt like I was going to.

"I'm sorry! Are you alright? I'm a nurse," the women said.

A nurse! Hah, I was lucky! She examined my foot saying that it wasn't broken but bruised up pretty bad. I stood there like a corpse I was still so confused my mind saying my foot was hurt and that I should be in pain, but it didn't come. I took another slip of my slurpie watching as my grandmother talked to the lady shock still carved into her face. The lady drove us to the train station where we rode until we got home.


When we arrived my grandmother took me downstairs letting me sit on the couch. That's when the pain and realization hit. My foot had been run over! You might be laughing saying that’s like a finger prick compared to a hand being cut off. But what if it hadn't been just my foot? What if I had been in the way my whole body? What would have happened? And where did my slurpie go? So many questions so little time as they say.


From that day on I have compared life to a horror movie. But there is one thing you should always remember: that at the end of the horror movie the guy gets the girl (dido), the bad guy is always relinquished, and the sun is arriving over the mountains telling you that you’re still alive to face the rest of the bad things in the world. They always, or usually, end well.


PS:
Cars are more dangerous then you think so look both ways before you cross the road. I have a new respect for them!