Signs and portents.

I don't believe that dreams predict the future. But that doesn't mean you should ignore them.

The night before I headed back to Virginia from Florida, I had a dream: In it, I stopped at a rest stop, and the cat jumped out of the car and started to run away, across the parking lot to freedom. I followed her, intending to catch her, and instead was struck in the hip by a car. It breaks my hip, or worse, but I don't know how much worse, because I wake up.

Well. It's not as though either the cat ever tries to get out of the car (even she can figure out that "car=warm, outside=cold, I should stay in the car") or I blindly run across rest area parking lots without looking. But just to be on the safe side, every time I opened the car door on the trip back - rest area or not - I made sure that the cat had no chance to jump out, and I checked each way a couple of extra times before crossing rest stop parking lots.

Sure enough, my trip went safely whenever I stopped. Just not so safely while the car was moving.

I was on a US highway, getting set to get back onto I-95 to continue the trip north. Early in the morning, facing east, directly into the sun, which was hanging right where the traffic lights were supposed to be. Squinting, I was able to see that the light was red, so I slowed down, approaching the intersection. The guy in the pickup behind me slowed down, too. But the girl in the car behind him evidently decided that if she couldn't see the traffic lights or traffic ahead of her, then it wasn't there, and just kept on coming. WHUMMP! I heard something behind me, and looked into the rear view mirror in time to view the look of horror on the face of the driver of the pickup as it was shoved into my car. And a softer WHUMMP!, not hard enough to set off my air bags.

The cat and I are fine. The car is reasonably fine: small dent in the trunk, paint damage and scrapes and stuff on the rear bumper where it deformed from the accident and then went back more or less into place. The driver of the first car was unhurt, and her car had some front-end damage but seemed to still be drivable. The pickup truck had both front and rear damage, and was towed away - and its passengers were taken off by ambulance, I think for evaluation and observation, as their first comments were that they were unhurt but they later complained of neck stiffness.

Predicted by the dream? No, I don't think so.