Cars Shouldn’t be Wrinkly
Sliding upside down in your car on a major freeway in rush hour traffic is an interesting sensation. Those seven seconds become elastic as the brain catapults into an overload of mental input. There is the dizzying array of lights from hundreds of headlights surrounding you while the sparks from your roof light up the road like fireworks. The band-saw sound of hard concrete sheering the metal and plastic off your vehicle grates the nerves. And the unforgettable smell of burning metal and plastic sticks to your nostrils like crazy glue. At that same moment, your emotions become numb in self-defense; each victim enters their own personal shock.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time I’ve experienced this.
Bye Bye Bumper
My first wreck was in 1992, a double head-on collision in a snowstorm. Yes. Double. I was hit head-on then spun around and was hit again by another vehicle. Our family spent the next six weeks getting to know the Des Moines hospital staff. Almost exactly a year later, our family was t-boned by a guy who ran a red light going 70 mph. Cheryl, my wife, took the brunt of that hit and barely survived. The next ten years were quiet until a relatively slow drive through St. Louis in a major downpour where we hydroplaned and flipped over a few times. We found ourselves upside down in a tree that thankfully stopped us from landing in a flooded creek.
Last night was easy-going compared to the past accidents.
I was driving to the Stars hockey game alone in my Nissan Xterra SUV. It was about 7:15 p.m. Traffic on the three-lane road slowed to about 45 mph. I was getting close to my exit when a guy going well over 70 hit me from behind. The sensation was very similar to a roller coaster heading down its first big hill. Having the back of my vehicle picked up and flung forward left me with few options; I did not hit the brakes but just tried to maintain control. That’s when my Dukes of Hazzard trick came in handy: using the VW bug in front of me as a ramp, I drove up his driver’s side with my right wheels. (The driver later said it was weird seeing the undercarriage of my car right next to him. He thinks I might need an alignment and that I might be leaking a bit of oil.)
This was enough to send me careening down the highway, sliding on the driver’s side of my vehicle.
(Driving sideways sounds cooler than it actually is.)
A second later, I was upside down heading south on I-35. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the sparks of the metal on the concrete. It was pretty, in a life-threatening sort of way.
Very Clear View Now
Every person reacts differently to this sort of moment. I can only tell you how I reacted. Upside down for those three seconds, I said out loud, “It’s going to be ok.”
But my nonverbal thoughts would have sounded something like, “There is no way this can be happening again… Going through insurance will be a pain in the butt… I am going to be late for the Stars game… I have an overwhelming sense of peace every time I come to the edge of eternity and I find that quite interesting… I really like this car and now I am going to have to find a new one… look at the pretty sparks, oooooo…Didn’t this happen to the Blues Brothers?… I wonder if someone is going to hit me… I hope that if I am going to die, it will be instantly… Being upside down is disorienting… How did I get back upright?… Cheryl is going to kill me… But it wasn’t my fault… I want to hug my family.
Rear Driver’s Side
Before I could think anything else, I hit something new — I think it was the metal guard rail — and the Xterra bounced back into an upright position, stopped in the middle lane and faced the proper direction. I really have no idea how this happened; physics has never been one of my strong subjects. Stopped in the middle of the highway, I simply waited to get whacked by another car. But none came. They had all stopped to look at my VW “ramp,” now dead about 300 yards behind me. The guy who hit me was parked on the other side of the three-lane highway, probably in the process of emptying his bowels. My car was still running so I pulled it off the road.
The whole driver’s side of my car was sheered down to the silver metal. I lost my bumper and both my front and back windows. The roof of the car looked like a grand piano had been dropped on it from a tenth-story window. But I was weirdly calm. After four life-threatening accidents like this, you stay pretty stable. No shakes or nerves. I just jumped into making sure everyone was okay and gathering my valuables from the car and off the highway where many of them had been scattered. The police were there in a minute and thankfully no one was hurt. One officer looked at the car and asked who was driving. When I told him it had been me, he shined his light on my face and said, “You should be leaving here in an ambulance. You are one lucky man.”
I knew luck had nothing to do with it.
Not Designed for Roof Driving
I continued to the Stars game because my ride home was meeting me there. What stuck with me the rest of the evening was the smell — the smell of
twisted metal, burning plastic and splattered oil. It never leaves my brain. It conjures up all the other accidents at the same time. Twenty-four hours later,
I am sore but alive.
I learned a long time ago how fleeting life is and how quickly our candles can
be snuffed out. After recovering from my first near-fatal crash in 1992, I determined to live life to the fullest and take nothing for granted. Then, I lost one of my brothers to a car accident in 2005. He was about the same age I was in my first accident. He died and I lived. I don’t try to understand the reasons. I just acknowledge the truth that because I am not promised tomorrow, I must try
to embrace every day as a gift. I have to hug the people I love, attempt to bring joy and peace to those I see daily, and hope to make some sort of difference in the world.
If we allow it, sliding upside down every once in a while may just turn our lives right side up again.
