We crawled out of the passenger side, into the ditch. My ears rang, my shoulder was a mess, my eyes wouldn't focus. The two of us sat in the tall grass, silent.

The last thing I remember before the wreck was Jamie singing along with Garth Brooks on the radio. She gave it all she had. I watched her belt out lyrics while I drove along the interstate. Her singing voice: a mixture between Gomer Pyle and a 1953 Buick Skylark.

It was sunny, it felt like the whole world was on fire. We'd just finished camping in Pelham, Alabama. And, after a small spider had found its way onto Jamie's bedroll, she swore off tents for good. And sleeping bags. And husbands.

So, there we were on the interstate. The truck hit us from behind. My wife choked on

the Garth lyrics and flung toward the windshield. I lost control.

He hit us again. On the side.

We spun.

The impact crushed my side of the cab. My windshield turned into shaved ice.

This sent our vehicle sliding into oncoming traffic. It took a quarter of a millisecond for my wife to glance out her window and see a semi-truck honking at us. We screamed, since that's all we could do.

Garth Brooks kept singing.

To tell you the truth, I don't remember much else except a baseball-bat-type sound, accompanied by…