I stopped to chat with a long-time neighbor yesterday.  We both have three kids, who've gone to school with each other for years.  After standard pleasantries were exchanged, she asked me if I had heard about her 17-year-old's recent car accident.  Though most subdivision "news" spreads faster than an outbreak of chicken pox, I hadn't heard a thing.  Apparently, rushing home to make curfew on a Saturday night two weeks ago -- driving too fast and intoxicated -- he flipped and totaled his car about a mile and a half from home.  Miraculously, other than surgery on his knee and a few other cuts and bruises, he's going to be fine.

As my neighbor relayed the terrifying ordeal -- from knowing instinctively when her son didn't show up on time that something was wrong to getting the phone call and driving to the scene not knowing what she'd find once she got there -- I cried.  I couldn't help it.  It's every parent's worst nightmare.

I pray that was a wake-up call for the very lucky teen -- and his mother.