Last year I was running errands, a couple of blocks from my home. I was driving the speed limit, (30mph). I came around a curve, when suddenly, a toddler appeared right in front of my car!
I hit the brakes, and a very young girl, (she looked about 3 years old), came out from the hedges, and ran out into the street to get her baby brother. Both of them could have easily been killed. Lots of people tear around that corner at 45 mph, and would not have been able to stop in time.
I don't want to judge people. Whoever's children those were, may not have been able to care for them. They live in an apartment complex with no fenced areas to play. I don't know their circumstances.
Should the parents keep them in the dark apartment all day? Probably not. Perhaps the mother is single and has to work for food and rent, and there's no one to watch them, but a careless teenaged sibling. I'll never know.
But, I thank God that I was the one on the road that day, when that baby toddled out into the road, and that I was paying attention to the speed limit. Why did I obey the sign? Because I got a speeding ticket on that road about a year before.
I thank God for that ticket, that sent me to traffic school, that cost me money, so that I'd take my speed seriously.
Now, I take it seriously not only to avoid the money and hassle of a ticket, but because the look I saw in the eyes of that little girl is seared into my consciousness. But it was the ticket that fueled a new habit that slowed my speed, kept my mind on the posted speed limits, that later turned that moment of potential tragedy into one of gratitude.
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