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WARNING The following post is extremely graphic and nasty and there is a good chance it will turn your stomach. So do not read after eating a large meal!
We had a lot of snow in my city during the past week and it got me to remembering an incident from my childhood. I was 11 years old and living in Montreal. They get more snow in Montreal than hardly any other big city that I know. I guess some big cities in Russia would get more snow. But in Montreal they get huge snow drifts and snow banks.
My family moved to Montreal when I was ten and I had never seen or imagined the kind of huge snow falls they had in Montreal.
To continue, they have these huge machines there called “snow blowers”. You’ve probably seen the versions that you can buy to clear the snow off your driveway. Think about comparing a pebble to the Rock of Gibraltar. That is similar to comparing a home usage snow blower to the kind they use in Montreal to clear the snow from city streets. They are a big huge truck - the kind they use to haul sand and gravel during the summer for construction projects. Then they bolt a huge “blower” on the front. It is a big kind of plow with spinning blades. On the front, there are huge spinning blades that spin in 90 degrees opposed to the wheels of the truck. Then, behind those blades there is another rotary blade that spins in 90 degrees opposed to the first blades and suck up the remnants from the first blades and blow it up and over the truck and then out into the truck’s dumper. My point is these things are just MASSIVE and when they are in operation, they have a man walking in front of the truck constantly waving a red flag because it is so dangerous.
If you think the buildup to this post has been unusually long, the reason is that I’m now going to tell you the story that caused a law to be passed that compels someone to walk in front of that moving monster waving a red flag. They never used to have such a man when I first moved to Montreal. But, then, one day …
A young child (younger than my 11 years) was playing on a snowbank with some friends when this snow blower happened by. I guess the young child was engrossed in the game he was playing and like most any young child, he was not aware of just how dangerous these trucks could be.
**** OK. Now is the time that sensitive readers are warned to turn away from this story because it is about to get enormously horrible here. ****
Anyway, this young boy (about 8 or 9) slipped and fell into the path of the truck and before anyone could react, he was sucked into the front end of the truck. I bet you can’t imagine what came out of the back end. These monster machines take a young child and chop him up into thousands of pieces, just like those machines at the butcher store that make chopped hamburger. I can’t even begin to tell you how horrible things got after that.
**** OK. Now is the time that just about any reader should be warned to turn away unless you feel you can take an extremely grotesque description that will leave you heart broken and crying for weeks on end. I was a young boy but I was crying for weeks on end.
The reason? Well, it was close to dinner time and his mother was looking for him to come into the house for dinner. She came out of the house just as what was left of her son (his name was “Danny” and I’ll never forget that name) and she was calling, “Danny? Danny? Where are you Danny?” The driver of the truck smelled of liquor (I was just passing by at the time of this incident) and the fuckhead driver figured it would be a good idea for him to try to comfort the mother. So he walked up to her and put his arms around her and said in a barely understandable English (because he was French), “Oh Madame, I am so sorry. So sorry. There was nothing I could do. Your foolish boy just fell down right into my snow blower.”
The mother stopped as if she was struck by lightning and looked up to the heavens and exclaimed, “Oh God, No! That can’t be Danny. Get away from me you stupid man. Danny? Oh, Danny? Where are you Danny? That can’t be my sweet Danny. What are you talking about? Danny. Come home for dinner, Danny.” Finally, she had to slap the driver across his face. The sound of that slap reverberated throughout our little suburb just like a clap of thunder. The stupid driver rubbed his chin and said to the mother, “You know, that really hurt, Madame. You didn’t have to hit me so hard like that.” Someone should have gotten a shotgun and blown his head off. But I guess no one had a shotgun in their home.
Anyway, this just went on until they finally had to take the mother away in a straight jacket and I’m sure you can understand why.
Now, here is the point of this thread. I want to ask you all just what you think would go through a person’s mind, when they fall and see this massive snow blower with all its massive blades about to suck them in. They know this must be the end and they know they only have a second or less to live. So, what is it that goes through their mind when they only have a second or so to live?
I think my first thought would be something like, “Oh No. I really screwed up this time. This will not have a very good outcome.” But what comes next? You only have half a second or so to live. What would go through your mind in that time?
