true story

When I was little I spent my life on motorways. Me and my dad would drive all over the North West and he would tell me stories and the history of the sad, desolate moors. One story he told was about a bridge.
This bridge was immense, looming out in the gap between two great cliffs that stretched up either side of the six lane road. The great stone arches curved up in their own individual sunrises until the top was just a distant line far above us. As you drew nearer you could see the graffiti tags of young boys brave enough, or stupid enough, to clamber between the concrete walls with just sweaty hands as a safety net.
According to my dad, and therefore local legend, the bridge was notorious for being a favourite place for suicide. The hardened farmers sipping bitter in pubs whispered about those who lost everything and drove up the winding hills to the bridge. From there they would stare down at people in cars like ants, and jump. Everyone withheld their sympathy, noone would come visit if the roads were closed - but in their mind everyone shook their head and thought in a sick sense of awe of how much guts it must have took to look down at a hundred miles of tarmac and sigh and step off...
At that age I had not yet learnt to take my dad's stories with a pinch of salt. As I grew up I never heard of even one more death from that bridge, let alone the hundreds he had mentioned. But something from that story stayed with me. I couldn't shake the idea that one day someone would jump and I would see them, or worse yet that they'd hit our car. That paralysing fear consumed every thought I had about that particular stretch of motorway. And so from then on, every time I drove under that bride I was prepared. And every time, I braced myself, for the jump.