Hey everyone!  Sorry it has been so long since I posted last.  You would not believe what has happened to me!  My whole life was turned upside down and for the first time in my life I don’t have to live in the shadows.  I’m getting ahead of myself.  I have had some comments noting that I never specified which of the times that I have attended high school I was referring to.  This happens to me all the time.  I often find that I forget to include context or assume that people will automatically think that I am referring to the most recent time and since I came out as a vampire there is no reason for there to be that assumption.  In my last entry I was referring to this most recent time I was in high school which would be in the early 2000 sometime… I forget exactly when and it really doesn’t matter since I live so long.  I should also note that only relatively recently did it become common for people to attend high school.

For today’s story I have a tale of terror from my time as a flaggy!  A bit of an exaggeration I know but it really shouldn’t be.  This should be seen as a terrifying rather than an accepted risk and it could have ended very differently with a second either way.

It is easy to forget in the rush of day to day life that the people that seem to be inconveniencing you are really there for your protection.  As a flaggy it was my job to try and stop people from getting hurt whether that be the road users or the contractors working in the area.  I know it can be frustrating when you’re running late and encounter construction that you know will ensure you’re late for wherever you’re heading but if I was human I would be dead because of someone in too much of a hurry to be safe.

I was working with a contractor who was replacing the ground wires on a pole near a school on a school day after the bell had rung and class had started.  This process takes around a half-hour and is for the protection of you and your house.  In the area where I live we have what is called a neutral system which, if I understand correctly, helps minimize fluctuations in the voltage so that lightbulbs don’t burst if there is a surge.  At the time this system was not in use everywhere and I don’t know if that has changed.  The purpose of the ground wire is to prevent damage to your house from excess voltage which is not stopped by the breaker panel (and also reduces the risks of you getting accidentally electrocuted).  Without the ground the voltage would go up and down with demand causing lights to flicker among other things.

As you can see this is a very important operation that could have serious consequences if it’s not done and the best time to do it is during the week when there are fewer people walking past the pole (the kids are in the gated school grounds across the street and the adults are at work).  I was there to ensure that cars focused on what was being done to the pole would not run down a child or plough into another car.  A couple of minutes into the work I encountered an individual who was the reason that there needed to be a flaggy.  This guy was driving a black sedan and had his small son in the front seat.  I waved the stop sign at him because there was another car coming and there was the risk that they would collide.  The man barreled past me and would have run me down if I’d been slower and almost hit the oncoming car in his rush to get his kid to school.  I wasn’t able to get all the license number or I would have reported him.  He could have killed innocent people and I know he saw me trying to stop him.  That was the worst part of it; he looked me in the eye before he tried to run me down.  I keep thinking maybe he was daydreaming but that only makes it worse.  So glad I can’t die from being hit by a car but it sure does get the adrenaline running!

This was only one of a number of incidents where I was confronted by people who just should not be driving.  I was lucky but there have been other flaggers who have lost their lives because of someone’s careless driving.  There is nowhere that you have to be that is more important that someone’s life.  Please people drive safe and respect the flaggers who are there to keep you safe and get you on your way as fast as they can.

I know that this story doesn’t have the same zing as one filled with details of my people’s lives but it is so very important and if I were human I would not have survived.