Tonight was a very bad night on U.S. Highway 23.

A 19-year-old girl was killed in a hellish car accident involving another car and one or two semis -- I can't remember what exactly what it was they said on the evening news. All I know is that a young girl is dead.

I came home and flipped on the television, and there it was headlining the 11 o'clock segment, replaying footage of the grotesquely twisted metal hunks that used to be cars, images I had just observed with my own eyes not a half hour earlier as I drove past the scene.  It was horrifying to see what had happened, and to realize that, had I not stayed that extra 15 mins or so after class to get some math help, I might have been on on-scene witness, or who knows what.

 Tonight I'm feeling pretty low. Traffic jams are like this little microcosm of human interaction, and depending on your level of decency as a person, you can either weather through it patiently, or you can be a complete asshole, bitching and whining the whole time over actually having to just sit still for awhile. Tonight I shamefully admit I was the latter, and worse, I continued to be the latter, even after I knew that someone was dead.

Granted, part of the initial freakout was because I was nearly out of gas and we were at a complete standstill for over an hour (Note: I'm also one of those idiotic people who refuse to fill my gas tank until it's running on fumes). I was so worried about hitting the E mark I wasn't even really thinking of what was going on up there.  In my panic, I got the attention of the guy next to me (who I can only assume is one of the decent people) and asked him if he wouldn't mind letting me over so I could at least be on the side of the road that the exits were on (not that there were any in sight). 

"You think this is an accident or something?" I asked.

"Well yeah," he kindly laughed. "That would explain the three or four ambulances that have passed us in the other direction." 

 Like I said: Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

 Still not satisfied with myself at the depths of douche-baggery I had yet to attain, I proceeded to whine in the face of the cop as he started turning us all around in the other direction because, well, there was death up ahead of us strewn all across the road. It hadn't been confirmed officially by anyone up until that point, but there was just no doubt really judging from the amount of emergency lights up ahead.

"Hey, I'm about to run out of gas," I told the cop.

"Well ma'am, that's not my problem. We have a fatality up here. You'll work it out."

 My response: "Well it's not my problem that people don't know how to drive."

Even worse, I thought I was being downright pithy at the time. Where was my humanity? Really, there is a time for snarky, but this was not it.

 Now I'm at home by myself wondering what the hell is the matter with me sometimes. And then I feel like a complete narcissist for thinking it (I mean, a young girl is dead for crying out loud and I'm still writing about -- who else? -- Me of course. I guess it's better to be a narcissist with perspective than a narcissist without perspective.) The truth is, sometimes, there is just no escaping your own damned self.

What I really want to do is redeem my actions. I want to write reflectively about how I went outside just a few minutes ago, smoked a cigrarette, and had all these illuminating thoughts in the crisp fall night air regarding mortality and the vapor that is life and how we're all so strangely connected. But the living can rarely ever discuss mortality without sounding glib. We have no choice in the matter, really. How could we possibly know any different? We just don't. None of us are dead, or have ever been dead. Not our fault.

So I guess I'll just end it tonight by expressing regret over my the ugliest side of my human deficiencies,  and hopefully try and learn from them.  

 And to the young girl who met death on the road tonight: I'm sorry I was a complete asshole. Your memory deserves better.