Accidental Accident ?

By Rowlen Delaware Vanderstone III

Accidental Accident ? - Rowlen Delaware Vanderstone III
  • Release Date: 2021-08-18
  • Genre: Mysteries for Young Adults

Description

When the news article in the local Woodward Gazette said it was an Accidental Accident was strange. To call it an Accidental Accident was a contradiction in terms. Certainly, an oddity that my Great Aunts death was an Accidental Accident, or was it? How can an accident be accidental? You might trip over a bunched-up rug and fall. That is an accident, one that was waiting to happen when you fail to keep you floor rugs flat and tidy. When you trip over a fallen tree, now that is just plain downright stupid for not noticing a fallen tree in your path. Unless it is a moonless night, and you are farsighted and don’t have a flashlight to see where you are going. That is poor judgement to be out on a moonless night on a dark path without a flashlight and your glasses. Walking under a ladder with a painter above juggling an open can of paint, well the chances are 50/50 chance you are going to bump that ladder and get a full can of paint dropped on your head or the painter is going to get a cramp in his fingers and drop the can. But neither of these examples I just mentioned are Accidental Accidents. Accept getting hit by a fallen object from space no bigger than a grapefruit while standing out in the middle of the Sahara Desert on a starless night in the middle of a sandstorm. The odds of that would truly be an Accidental Accident.
What the paper reported was that my Great Aunt Mable Maples had died in a car accident when she drove her convertible car with the top down off the road and hit a tree at high speed. Now given the fact that such accidents do happen for one reason or another. Such as a faulty steering mechanism while at the same time your breaks fail. Or you are drunk and senseless, or a very careless driver with a lead foot. What this Gazette didn’t account for was that my Great Aunt Mable Maples who was an out-of-towner never drove a car in her life. Never had a driver’s license and never owned a car. The small town coroner slash local MD described her injuries as fatal, broken back and neck as she impacted the tree at a high speed her body thrown clear of the car and up unto tree where she was found wedge in an upper fork of the tree branches. That she fell asleep at the wheel after wherever she was going. Maybe even got lost on her way. An Accidental Accident except for one other minor detail. My Great Aunt Mable Maples was legally blind since birth and wore corrective lenses, Coke Bottle thick. Was this really an Accidental Accident or was it, and why did my Great Aunt Mable Maples find herself up a tree, 245 miles from home.