About 18 or 19 years ago there was a huge snow storm in Seattle and I was stuck in it. I was in college at the time and living in the marriage housing at Northwest College. On this particular day I was driving home from The Crisis Pregnancy center, where I was doing my practicum. It was about 2:00 in the afternoon and it started snowing while I was driving westbound on 520.
The freeway became very icy and snow continued to pile up. I watched as car after car went in the ditch. Some guys with big trucks and equally as big egos attempted to take their 4-by-4′s along the snowy shoulders, only to get stuck and abandon their vehicles. They weren’t the only ones leaving their cars. A lot of people were running out of gas because the crawl was leaving us on the road for hours.
As I watched these scenes unfold, not only was I afraid I would end up in the ditch but a bigger fear was forming in my mind. I was panicked that I would end up in the ditch and pee my pants at the same time. I had to go worse than I can ever remember. I was in pain and doing the potty dance right there in my little front wheel drive 1978 Rabbit.
I needed a plan. There on the side of the road beamed a bright yellow school bus. It shone like a beacon of light. I got out of my idling car and went to the car behind me to talk to the woman driver, “Can you see behind that bus?” I asked. “No,” she replied. That’s all I needed to hear. I was off and running. Behind the big bus I went, to make yellow snow.
Now I was safe to drive into a ditch.
