Stories In The Rearview Mirror: Fill & Download for Free

I used to live in Kenya, a very religious country. One day, a bus full of passengers was hurtling downhill into a deep valley. On the narrow bridge at the bottom of the valley, a family was looking at the view, next to their Land Rover which the father had parked on the bridge. The bus reached the bottom of the slope, drove onto the bridge at full speed, saw the Land Rover too late, tried to swerve, but hit the Land Rover, taking it, the family and the bus over the edge of the bridge and into the ravine below.Everyone died.The following day, Kenya’s transport minister turned up on the scene, took one look at it and announced that the accident was “God’s will”. So no investigation, no new laws on traffic safety, no new regulations on the roadworthiness of vehicles. Nothing was done, because the Transport Minister (and, safe to say, the majority of Kenyans) had passed responsibility for this atrocious accident into the hands of their god.This story is repeated day in, day out.People not wearing seatbelts in their cars because they think god will decide whether they live or die. People driving at breakneck speeds on dangerous roads because they said their prayers in the morning and they have their religious icons dangling from the rearview mirror, so they think god will protect them. Parents who fail to vaccinate their children because they prefer to put the lives of their offspring in the hands of their god. And so on.Atheism is neither healthy nor unhealthy. However, theism will shorten your life if you do what's expected of the devout believer and submit yourself to the ‘will of god'.

Plenty of answers here. I’ll give you a short story: My son, driving a transfer dump, returning in evening darkness from his last run of the day, had a little incident on a California freeway. He thought he heard a strange noise from behind him as he drove in the right-hand freeway lane. A glance in the rearview mirror revealed a spectacular shower of sparks from the vicinity of his trailer. Thinking that one of the brakes hadn’t fully released and was burning, he pulled onto the shoulder, stopped, and grabbed his fire extinguisher. Oddly, the strange, high pitched noise continued. To his horror, he found a little “Smart Car” wedged between the back if his truck and the trailer, turned sideways and partially on top of the tow bar. One front wheel had been ground away up to the hub, against the pavement and what remained of the tire was in flames. The noise was the shrill little car horn sounding continuously. The driver, a middle aged woman, was unhurt, fortunately but very upset and ‘shaken.’ The Highway Patrol arrived quickly and requested that the local fire & rescue people extract her from the car. Her story was that she was ‘merging,’ had her turn signal on (indeed, it was still flashing amid the remains of the car) and, “the truck driver, didn’t let me in.” The police officer was trying to explain: “Mam, the driver is way up there; and you were well behind his field of view. Even if you’d been right next to his cab, his line of sight would be over the top of your car.” Apparently, all her life she’d believed that proper ‘merging’ technique consisted of signaling, then just moving over into the lane, expecting other vehicles to make way. “That truck driver just acted as if I wasn’t even there!” she maintained.

Then one day you look in the rearview mirror of your existence and realize that you can see clear down the hill-less and curveless and bridgeless road of your life, straight to the maternity ward where you were born. And then you go to college. Where your bland past meekly follows, sluggishly scraping its feet on the floor.I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley.-