Streaming along at 40 miles per hour I rush home to get ready for work. There is a metallic casing surrounding me. I glide along comfortably on a hard, asphalt surface. There is a shield of blue far above me. I feel-----content! Coming home from a stressless day of learning I prepare to lock myself in a stuffy, yet humungous concrete beast with glasses. If you can imagine a huge concrete multi-eyed entity wearing sunglasses they you can see what I am talking about.

I had no great desire to be swallowed up by that concrete monstrosity but I still scurried to get there. So on this day where the blue was above and the black beneath….it happened. It was about seven years ago.

At the top of my street I sit in my steel contraption. I look in the glassy pool that reflects images and I see the image of a white steel black coming at me without the seeming desire to stop.

The impact is tremendous. I can hear the steel crumbling and smashing like it were thick tin foil. The ears are filled with the sound of gigantic icicles falling and smashing to the ground. It was loud.

Jostling between the hub I sit in and the shield of glass in front of me there is only one thing saving me. It is a thin nylon strap. It is tight against my body. I t causes raspberry bruises along my chest and waist.

After all the noise and non-existent pain there is a moment of silence. My vision is blurry. I knew something was wrong with my sight. There was! My glasses had flown from my face. I had forgotten that I wore glasses and thought something happened to my eyes. I couldn’t see anything clearly. It was like trying to see through water. Everything was a blur. I was sitting where I thought it was impossible to sit. The front seat was now the back seat. I was so far from everything and everyone. Yet I was still in my steel vehicle. I am in pain. My leg feels like it was stubbed like a toe.

The silence is disturbed by the sound of cackling humans gathering around the disheveled steel. I am accused. I point to the man who hit me. I am accused again. I am confused. I feel the guilt for a crime that was never committed but there must be a criminal for. I am at the top of the street where I live.

I sit in the center of attention. My leg is shattered and jittering away like it wants to dance. It twists and turns in ways I would never be able to will. I tell the man my leg is broken…..I hear him say that there might be a "possibly broken femur." Ha……not possibly…….definitely. Later there would be questions about who caused the accident. I was accused once more…..I was confused once more.

As I was pried out I was thinking about the concrete beast wearing its’ sunglasses. I am worried about getting there on time. It was until a few moths later that I realized that this accident would change me. For that moment, when I did not know where I was….. when I could not see clearly……. when everything was a blur ……. that was the moment when I understood life. Nothing is that clear. The sounds were not clear. I had to clear up my confusion. But I am still confused. I am confused about what this assignment was supposed to be. I do not know if I have done what was asked of me but it is a genuine effort. From the moment I looked in the mirror of my car and didn’t see a clear reflection of myself I knew that nothing is clear ….. even my identity.