KABOOM!

On my way to drop off the toddler at Bible School this morning, I passed a car that was being hosed down by firefighters. It clearly had caught fire. And it got me thinking of something that happened about three years ago when the hubbs and I were living in Texas...

We would usually go grocery shopping at night. I know, it's weird. But there weren't any crowds, and the 110 degree Texas heat had generally cooled down to the refreshing mid-nineties.

So one night, we were leaving Walmart. The back of my car was full of the typical things that college students subsist on: Ramen Noodles, Diet Cokes, Oreos, boxed pasta dinners. You get the picture.

We were leaving the Walmart parking lot to turn onto the service road. I was driving. There was only one car in front of us. Now, if you've ever been to Waco, Texas, you understand what poverty, hunger, and homelessness look like. You get really used to seeing homeless people, beat-up cars, and the terribly sad signs of poverty everywhere. There was an old, beat-up white car in front of us getting ready to turn right. The man had his blinker going, and we were just waiting for him to turn.

The traffic was pretty bad, but I thought, Okay, go now. I could tell he saw the opening, too. But, his car wasn't moving. Instead, it started shaking side to side, like there was a chimpanzee in the backseat going ballistic.

"What the heck?" I asked. And just as those words left my mouth, his car door opened, he stumbled out, and

his car exploded.

KABOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Even though we were both in my car, a wave of intense heat hit us, my car filled with the smell of smoke and blinding light, and I'm pretty sure that our jaws hit the floor and our hearts hit the ceiling. I slammed my car into reverse. Nope. There was a line of three cars behind me.

I was stuck. stuck. stuck. I immediately turned off the engine. I had nowhere to go, and if the flames hit my car and my gas tank, we'd both be dead meat--crispy dead meat.

"Get out!" my husband (then, my fiance) shouted. "GET OUT! GIVE ME THE KEYS! RUN RUN!" I flew open my door, chucked the keys in his face, and without caring about my cute fiance, my nearly brand new SUV, or my appearance to all the gasping people in the Walmart parking lot, I ran like Satan was at my heels. I flew through that Walmart parking lot so fast I could have been in the (I want so badly to insert an adjective here) Olympics.

My fiance was able to move the car quickly out of the way, and we were both okay. Thankfully, the man escaped out of his vehicle in time.

I--who struggle to be emotional about anything ever--sobbed. Sobbed. I was so upset by the fact that we could have been killed and we weren't even "putting ourselves in harm's way." For the rest of the evening, I was so shaken up. I got home and told my roommates, who immediately came out asking, "What's wrong!?", that a car had exploded right in front of us.

They looked at me with shocked faces. That's right. A car literally exploded five feet in front of my car. And I smell like smoke. And I don't know it right now, but my car will smell like that for a week, too.

So, yep. Driving down Chenal Parkway this morning brought this memory to my mind, and I just had to share.

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Have you ever seen something scary like that up, close, and personal?