Rough week for me. A whole lot of real-life stuff – funerals,etc. – tons of late, unfinished homework, and to top it all off – I failed the Week Without Violence last week. Read on, but first…

How did everyone else do? Was everyone good to you? Were you all good? No hitting, biting, scratching anybody, or stomping on (disgusting, crunchy) helpless little crickets, I hope. I also hope that Week Without Violence is not like National Smoke Out Day.

National Smoke Out Day, for those of you who may not have heard of it yet, is one day every year where smokers are challenged to quit for a day, and ultimately stay quit.

Invariably, however, there are smokers who totally ignore the challenge; there are smokers who will smoke like chimneys in acts of civil disobedience; and there are those who will be sneaking back into the proverbial closet to steal a puff, and anxiously wait for midnight so they can, for the next three days, smoke like an ’82 Mercury Lynx (if you don’t know, don’t ask).

So, do you see my concern? Will we see an explosion of repressed violence? I am afraid so. Already, I have heard of two chipmunks being kicked at by students hoofing their way across campus. One of the cash machines in the Union had a footprint on it, and two construction sites, or workers, have been cussed at (wait a minute, that’s a good thing, cuss them once for me!).

Seriously, Week Without Violence is a challenge to people to go without committing, observing, or perpetrating violence. There was even a wrecked car on view to remind everyone of that sort of violence.

There was a woman in Ames last week who missed that message, though. This lady should have cruised by that icon in her “Suburban” assault vehicle. Well, she used to drive a Suburban… For those of you who don’t know what a Suburban is: it is made by Chevy, and it is about the largest vehicle you can drive without having to license it as a bus or a semi-trailer.

I won’t list the names of the parties involved, partly because that could be considered bad form, but mostly because she could be driving a Mack truck next time.

Apparently, she thought she was driving a zippy little sports car. Heck, maybe she was in a hurry to get home and participate in the Week Without Violence. But she thought if she floored it she could “make it” through a left turn across traffic.

The lady — who we now refer to affectionately as “our little Suburban 500 driver” — was okay, mainly because she wasn’t driving a sports car (she still wouldn’t have made the turn). And, blessedly, she was alone.

However, her decision made the road extremely short for at least one on-coming vehicle, and made her truck look more like a Five-Door Wall. So at 5:30 last Monday afternoon, my phone rings and an EMT person tells me that my brother has been involved in a car accident.

My brother is probably the only one in our family who faithfully wears a seat belt, but he has never taken his car to one of those drive-thru test-your-belt places (can you imagine?). Oh yeah, we don’t have any places like that, do we? (Any entrepreneurial brainstorming beginning?)

My brother, who is fairly bright in spite of being a manager for Kum & Go, noticed immediately that the seat belt wasn’t working. And since he didn’t have the time to do anything about it, he tried to get out of the car through the windshield, assisted by some very helpful G-forces, I think.

Not to worry, though, he was relatively unscathed (Welsh luck, Bohemian head).

The EMT person on the phone told me that although my brother wasn’t badly injured, he was unable to drive (especially since his car was buried inside a Suburban), and he could not complete his original mission.

Which, by the way, was collecting his toddler from day care. And which, by the way, closes at 5:30 (remember what time I got this call?). And he, the EMT guy, had been trying to call the day care for my brother, but the number was busy, and busy, and busy (probably because they were violently trying to find my brother), and could I go get the boy?

Actually, I didn’t get most of these details until my brother was finished being radiated in the head-neck area (he still has a Suburban-sized headache, but nothing important cracked or broken).

And it was a couple of days before I realized what all this meant in addition to the obvious, physical results. It wasn’t how much homework I had not done – I noticed that immediately.

No, I realized just how many people failed the Week Without Violence. My very own brother failed. The driver of the reshaped Suburban failed. So did all those who witnessed the event. So did the policeman who gave “Maria Andretti” some tickets to take home in place of a crunched Suburban with a Corvette complex. So did the emergency workers, the tow-truck drivers, and the utility workers who had to repair the light pole and cable that stopped the two of them from ending up in an apartment building.

And, because of the not-so-nice things that I was thinking last Monday afternoon, I guess I failed too, huh?

Well, there’s always next year. Look for me on Smoke Out Day, though. I’ll be in a closet. Thought for the day: You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. – Colette.

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Audrae Jones is a senior in English from Clear Lake.