← Shannon Cason's Homemade
Shannon Cason's Homemade
Dad Hit a Telephone Pole | Everyday is a Story
00:09:16
Dad was in an accident, and suddenly nothing else mattered.
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What are you doing right now? It's one of the worst questions you can get on a lazy Saturday morning. Every day is a story. I'm Shannon Cason. Make sure you like, comment and subscribe. It was my sister, and I could hear the desperation in her voice most times for that question, what are you doing right now? I don't answer because it's no one's business. However, with me and my sister, we both take care of each other while we're caring for aging parents and family members. So I do say, you know, why. What's up? Still skeptical, though. Dad was in an accident, and I noticed my energy changed in that moment. It wasn't shock. It wasn't fear. It was readiness, like, ready for action. She told me the crossroads of where he had been in the accident and where his car was. And I was out the door in less than a minute. En route, no hurry, no speeding, just driving fast but safely to the direction that she had given me on East 7 mile. And then I get a call from my dad, and he was like, shannon, where are you? I'm like, I'm two minutes away, dad. Still, no desperation. I did ask, dad, are you all right? And it was no faint concern, just the question. I need the answer. He said, yeah, I'm cool, man. Then the EMS gets on the phone, and he's on my dad's phone, and he's telling me that my dad is rejecting the ambulance ride to the hospital and wants to drive to the hospital with me instead. And I tell the EMS guy that I'm like a minute away. I'll be there right away. So I pull up on the scene, and the police had a street blocked off on both sides. This is on 7 mile, east 7 mile. And I tell the officer that my dad was in the accident, and they let me through. So I parked my car, and I see my dad's Cadillac in the middle of 7 mile is crushed on the passenger side. And then the front passenger tire is detached, and it's sitting in the middle of 7 mile. And the first thing I do is go to the ambulance. So I crawl into the ambulance from the side. From the side door. It's kind of awkward to get in there. And the EMS guy, he's right there, and he tells me that all my dad's vitals are fine. It's just the elevated blood pressure. And I crawl over. It's kind of tight in there. I crawl over to see my dad, and I'm like, dad, I'm here. And he looks at Me and says, shannon, I'm fine. Just I don't really know what happened. Get all my stuff out of the car. And the EMS tech tells me that he's gonna take him out of the ambulance in the stretcher to get him out. And he hands me an empty box to get stuff out of the car. And I immediately go to the car, and I empty the car. The glove compartment, the armrest, the back seats, the portable oxygen machine that's sitting right there in the passenger seat. And I get everything out of the car. I try to get the trunk to release, but it won't. It won't release. It's not working. But I see that my dad is getting out of the. The ambulance. So I go and help out my dad. I get him to my car and I sit him down in the passenger seat. I start my car so I can turn the AC on, and I go back to the Caddy. And I'm trying to get the trunk open. It must have got broken in the accident, where I can't get it open. So I'm pulling and pushing, and then I look over and somebody else is pulling and pushing with me. And I see that it's my dad. He didn't got out of the car and coming over to I. I'm like, dad, go sit back in the car. And I finally figure it out. I just get to the stuff in the trunk from the back seat. You can let the back seat down and get to everything. So I get everything that I need, and the car is empty. I tell the police. Well, I asked the police where it's going to be told, and they tell me, and they share the. The report number and all the kind of things that we'll need for the insurance. And now it's time to get my dad to the hospital. Okay, so the reason my dad didn't want to go to the hospital with the ambulance is because they're going to take him to a Detroit hospital. And in Detroit and other cities can relate to this, there are certain hospitals that you don't want to go to. And my dad rarely goes to hospitals in Detroit. He'd rather take the longer drive out to one of the suburbs to go to one of the more affluent suburb hospitals, if you're from one of them cities that I'm thinking of, you know what I'm talking about. So on the drive, my dad is telling me what happened. He was en route to sell ads. My dad sells ads and collects payments, especially on the weekend. And my dad's a salesman. He Never retired. He's one of the greatest salesmen. He sells billboards around Detroit. He sells as to his hair magazine, Hair Designer magazine. If you're a lady watching this, you probably seen that magazine at your hair shop, the Hair Designer magazine out of Detroit. So he got in the car and he was reaching for his oxygen machine tube and he hit a curb. He thinks he hit a curb, but he actually hit a telephone pole. He says he feels fine, but it happened. And I'm telling him, dad, if you're going to drive, because my dad is 85, but telling him not to drive is going to be a hard sell to him. You know, I don't think he should drive his route. I think he should have a driver to drive his route. So we'll have that discussion. But I'm telling him that he has to have a ritual for when he drives, when he is going to drive. You know, get in the car, put on your seat belt, set up your phone, put your oxygen tube in before you put the car and drive. It's like a ritual like at the gym. He understands the gym. Like you do a warm up before your exercises. And my dad can always relate to gym parallels because he's a gym rat and that's what actually saved my dad. You know, at 85, he still has muscles and it can absorb falls. Any accidents, he has quick recovery time from any illnesses. So in other words, I'm telling you, stay in the gym. So we get to the hospital and that's when all the family shows up. All the family files in my, my younger brother Malcolm, he's looking like a rapper with all the gold and, and Cartier frames and everything. My brother, he lost a lot of weight. Congrats to him. My older sister Sonia, she, she gets all the nurses in order. She gets the nurses and staff in order. My, my older sister is like, she takes care of everybody. Like, she's like the most competent person ever. So she's gonna get us back in the back room sooner than later. And then there's me who holds down whenever needs to be done, I just get it done. And my dad was released the same day and he was home relaxing at the end of the night. And I called the next day to see if he was okay. And my dad says he feels like he could go kickboxing. That's what he tells me, meaning that he's a hundred percent. And he told me to send him a pic of the accident with the tire in the street and put his picture on it so he can post it to Facebook and I did and he has over a thousand likes on the picture. So he says Detroit loves me and Detroit does love him. My dad is the man. So. But the moment of men for me is in an emergency, I'm a g. I felt that. I'm a stand up guy. It's no heavy emotion. It's just all action. I like that about me. I just get it done. Another thing that I noticed like a moment of meaning was have a set ritual for your daily driving. No matter what age you're at and what stage you're in, doing certain things while you're driving and not focusing on the road is very dangerous. But what about you? Have you gotten a phone call that diverted your entire day? And when emergencies do happen, do you panic, like go crazy or do you just go into action mode and get things done? What's your story.