The Little Green Omni

The writing prompt for today was “Have you experienced anything traumatic?” Interesting question, especially considering what I considered “traumatic” at different times of my life. A breakup with a boyfriend…losing a job…a difficult birth…a national tragedy…all traumatic in their own way.

But there is a night that stands out to me as one of those traumatic moments for me as a kid. I hesitate to document it because I am sure my family will question and correct the details…I’m not the most gifted when it comes to remembering things accurately…but this is what I remember…

It was a hot summer night, and we had the VanHouten kids over for the night. I can’t remember the reason why they were there, other than it meant that Shelley and I were sleeping in the third floor spare room down the hall from my parent’s bedroom. The window was cranked open that night, and I remember feeling the summer night air drifting into the room as we lay under the scratchy coverlet.

Then, as we whispered in the dark, we heard a sound from outside. It sounded like a gun going off. We heard it again, and started to smell smoke. That we were terrified was an understatement. Had the neighbor just been shot? Was their house on fire? I wanted to go and tell my parents, but I was too scared to get out of bed. In my mind, the shooter was going to see my shadow and start shooting at me, but I mustered up some courage and snuck over to my parent’s room to tell them the grisly news.

They didn’t believe me, of course, and told me to go back to bed. As a parent now, I would have thought it equally ridiculous, but somehow I convinced my Dad to come and look out the window while I cowered in the hallway. He didn’t find a cold blooded killer, but he did see our green Omni in flames. We ran downstairs, our summer nightgowns flying, to wake up my sisters and Shelley’s brother, and we all went through the smoky kitchen, through the garage, and into the backyard. I remember looking out the garage door and seeing my Dad in his light blue pajamas trying to push the car away from the house, and feeling that panicky tight feeling in my chest. Traumatic? In that moment…certainly.

We stood in the wet grass in our bare feet while we waited for the firemen to arrive. I think we all snuck some looks at what they were doing, because I vaguely remember them stomping around the car with their hoses and helmets. Then all of a sudden, they were gone, and we were left with a disfigured car, a smoky house, and jittery nerves. I’m not sure how we went back to sleep, but somehow we did.

For the next few weeks, the car sat by the road, a heap of melted plastic and metal, and I couldn’t help but feel that same tight feeling in my chest every time I looked at it. What if I had not gone and told my Dad? What if we had not been sleeping in the spare bedroom? What if the car had been parked in the garage? The what ifs were almost as traumatic as the actual experience.

The story of the little green Omni still comes up at family gatherings once in a while. I can still remember that feeling of terror when I thought something nightmarish was happening to our neighbors, and the equally horrifying feeling when I realized that our car was on fire. It makes me think about what my kids will classify as “traumatic moments” from their childhood. The flu? Broken bones? Moving? It is a strange thought.