Almostgotit.com

Christmas came early for the Almostgotit family this year!

Our best present was having our daughter survive, and relatively unscathed, being hit by a car as she was getting off a school bus a few weeks ago.

The second best was attending yesterday’s news conference, in which Knoxville police department chief Sterling Owen outlined a new enforcement patrol that will target motorists who fail to stop for school buses.

One of our new friends who is a fab reporter (Hi, Wendy!) emailed me later to ask what we had done to get that sort of attention from the KPD. I had to respond that I didn’t exactly know, but that I certainly couldn’t take all of the credit. It seems like it was a sort of “perfect storm” – Knoxville’s Safe Kids Coalition HAD already been talking this fall to the KPD and others about school bus safety. The problem of drivers ignoring school busses truly seems to have gotten worse, recently, too, as it is my understanding that other parents have been complaining about it too.

Also, the kid who got hit happened to survive to talk about it, thank God.  She also happened to be one who lived in a politically-savvy and educationally-empowered community containing such people as my writer-friend Jenny (Hi, Jenny!) who joined me in writing letters and contacting the mayor, members of city council, school prinicipals and the like. I wrote a letter to the local paper as well, which caught the attention of a local television station (which screened a nice interview with us) as well as the interest of the Safe Kids Coalition, who also contacted us (Hi, Susan!).

I am newly impressed by the power of persistence as well as the power of the pen. I used to believe more in those things than I do now, so it was a good re-affirmation in my old(er) age. All those things we tell our kids but secretly lose faith in ourselves?  Turns out they may be true:  Speak up! Keep trying! Go to the top!

And stay in school & read a lot of books so you’ll know how to write a compelling letter when you REALLY need to!