Shut Up and Blog; Day 8-Surprise I'm at a Loss for Words!

Well, day eight and I'm still blogging along. Today I started the third course in my creative writing specialization on Coursera-Setting and Description. Today's assignment was short-only 300-700 words. Normally, I struggle to reign myself in and stay within 1000 words but today I kept a sharp eye on the word count and when I finally reached the minimum 300, I was like, "Woo hoo!" It was hard! Here was the assignment: Take ten seconds of real time and slow it down and describe it in detail. The instructor Amity Gaige was very helpful and gave several examples but I still struggled. I decided to take something that had happened to my friend, Chris when he was just a lad of sixteen and the sake of lengthening the story, I made it much worse and dramatic. Luckily he and his friend Dalton was fine. BTW: I was so glad when Chris totaled that car with the hay bale. Kevin and I gave him that little Geo and after watching him drive to school one day, swerving and laughing like a lunatic with his friend Dalton in the passenger seat and his little brother Michael in the back, I felt a collision with a hay bale was the least of what could have happened. Chris has since gone to college and grown up into a responsible young man. Thank you, dear Lord Jesus! Here is my story: 

SURPRISE ON A COUNTRY ROAD
At the top of the hill, the headlights flashed shockingly upon a round, four by four-foot bale of hay directly in the path of the small car. Reflexively, the two inhabitant’s bodies stiffened in response. The young driver sucked in a harsh stream of air as he jammed his sneakered left foot hard on the flat, rubber surface of the brake pedal, pushing it completely to the floor and despite the obstacle of the floor beneath it, continued to push. The passenger mimicked the driver’s motion though he had only the floor beneath his feet. The sound of screeching brakes and flying gravel hitting the metal underbelly of the car accompanied the involuntarily screamed “Noooooo!” of the car’s passenger. While the passenger clung to the handle above his head to slow his body’s trajectory forward, the driver’s hands gripped the wheel and fruitlessly turned it sharply as the left side of the small bumper crumpled beneath the impact of metal hitting the tightly compressed hay. Hay exploded into the air around them and then began its floating descent to the gravel road.  The energy from the collision quaked through the young occupant's bodies, propelling them forward hard against their restraints briefly before the loud burst of airbags discharging from the dashboard flung them in the opposite direction, their heads smacking against the headrests. Like a slinky at the whim of a child, their bodies changed their forward and back motion to lurch harshly to the right as the landscape spun outside the window. The metal guardrail on the passenger side passed in and out of the window’s view before looming largely in the passenger window and crashing through it in a loud symphony of glass and metal that rained down upon them, leaving moonlit glints of glass embedded in soft flesh and trails of red making a slow path down the still, young faces.