Dear Asshole driving a white VW Jetta heading East past Salem today,

You almost killed my kids. I know it and you know it.

You pulled over to “check your car” but we both know it was to check your pants and you also needed to collect yourself.

I pulled over too because I burst into tears and had a full blown hyperventilating panic attack in front of my kids because I know that I was centimetres away from losing them.

You are lucky. There was some angel watching over both of us today because I don’t know how you missed my car and didn’t slam into the concrete divider.

What were you thinking? Driving that fast, on that stretch of road at 4:00pm-ish? Anyone with just a slight understanding of the GTA knows that during rush hours, in that area it’s stop and go and you aren’t going over 40km/hr at best.

There are skid marks from your car for at least 100 meters as you skid out of control towards me and I had nowhere to go. All I could do is sit there in sheer panic, helpless hoping your carelessness didn’t take away the 2 most important human beings in my life.

I know you were distracted. You were distracted when you cut me off the first time merging at Brock so I tried to get away from you. Then you were distracted when you weaved your way through traffic to end up behind me with your blinker still on for a good 5 minutes before I gave you a clue and you turned it off and then you hung back creating over a football field of space between us.

Was it your phone? The radio? Did you drop a cigarette? What was more important to you than the people in the cars around you?

And to add insult to injury you were mere feet behind me as I bawled in my car and not once did you see if you caused us any damage or harm.

Well, you did. My 6 year old had to see his Mama fall apart and for the past few hours keeps asking me if I’m ok and maybe we shouldn’t go to the zoo anymore. That’s where we were today, the zoo.

And I don’t know how long I sat on the shoulder uncontrollably crying until a nice man snapped me out of it asking if I was ok; you were gone by then.

I white knuckled the rest of the drive home. I fell apart again when I got there. I’ve had near misses before, but never like that. Never that close; never with my children.

You will never know the damage you’ve done. I’m not even sure you’ll even care. I wanted to find you later when I calmed down some, not to rage out on you, but to show you my children and to show you what you could have cost me cause you were being a selfish, careless dick. But again, would you care?

I hugged my oldest son extra tight tonight and I rocked my 5 month old longer than I usually do. I tried to memorize their faces again because they change everyday. I’m not an overly emotional person or big on crying but as I type this I can’t stop the tears.

I hate that you shook my world like this. I was always a confident driver, I feel a little less confident right now. You did that. You did all of this…do you care?