When I Had a Close Brush with Death

It was a heavy downpour. Luckily, I was in a car with my father. He was driving with the situation under control.

We passed slowly by an oil palm plantation. The lashing rain made visibility poor. Therefore, my uncle drove very carefully. He had all the lights on. So did the other drivers. I could make out little spots of light of the other cars through the white dense sheet of rain.

Over an extensive area black clouds floated threateningly. It felt as if they were about to fall on us at any moment. Lightning streaked across the sky and onto the distant hills. The thunder rumbled constantly suggesting that something unpleasant is likely to happen. Some flashes of lightning came awkwardly close and the resulting thunderbolt was booming. We could hear it inside the car even with all our windows up.

All of a sudden, a bright flash of light blinded us and a very loud crack made me lose my hearing for a few minutes. The next thing I realised that my father had stopped the car and his face was pale with shock. I too was in shock. We failed to recognize what had actually happened.

For a long moment, I struggled to collect my dispersed minds. Then my father pointed a trembling finger at something outside the car. I looked in the direction and saw an oil palm a few metres away literally split in half through the middle. It was burned black and smoking. We then realised that it had just been struck by lightning.

If the lightning had struck us instead, we would be burned black and smoking too. My father hurriedly drove away from the danger zone. Thus, we just had a close brush with death.