Why I won't die in a car crash

It was a dark and stormy night. But not really. Actually, it was dark, but not stormy. It was late winter, probably about February of '04. I was driving on winding country roads on an overcast night, gray and black and the brown of northern Illinois farmland, broken up by occasional curves and groves of trees.

The temp was below freezing, and I was going about 45 miles an hour or so. I had a sweet car, the first car that I'd -really- enjoyed, the first time I'd gotten to treat myself in that way. It was a platinum Honda Civic EX, spoiler, half mask, really silly. But I loved it. It was a manual, which I also loved. Not really the weather to be zipping around, bu tthe roads were clear.

Or so I thought. At the bottom of a gradual hill, the road turned gently to the left. But my Honda and I kept going straight, despite how I turned the wheel. The car was sliding.

Then the wheels caught. For a bit.

The car swung to the right, hard, I over compensated to avoid flipping, and the car held, but went into a spin. Hurdling down the road and taking up both lanes in a flat spin. No one was coming in the other lane, thank God.

As my rate of spin increased, the car was drifting almost leisurely into the other lane, and then over the side of the road. There was a steep embankment ( which I spun down ) that led to a copse of trees. The car stoped when it wrapped around one of these.

I felt the whole thing happening, moment by moment.

Coming down the hill.

The car sliding.

The wheels catching.

The spin starting.

The spin getting tighter.

I'm across the road, and over the side.

Heading for the trees.

Still spinning.

A loud crash.

Lots of safety glass everywhere.

Not spinning anymore.


No sound, now.

Air blowing on me.

Cold winter air, not so bad. Some small flakes of snow.

Pellets of glass.

Everywhere.

My heart is beating.

Gotta move.

Gotta move.




I got out, and stumbled around for a bit. I was probably in shock, but I held together pretty well. My wrist was cut up a bit, and I spent a few hours in the hospital for x-rays and scans and such. But I was fine. The only place in the car I'd been driving not completely destroyed was the seat I was sitting in.

I thought about it for a long time. Trying to impose some meaning on the pattern of what had happened. It wasn't too much longer after this that I figured out I was going to get a divorce. I'm pretty sure there wasn't a cause-effect relationship there.

But I knew that I wasn't going to spend too much time doing things I didn't want to do, anymore.

And I haven't, for the most part. Even though it might not ultimate be in mybest interest, even though it might lead to pain, embarrassment, or silliness... I pretty much do what I want. Not like a firehose that no one's holding onto, not like that. I mean I don't let pedestrian things like people's attitudes, their perception of me, petty fear or probably common sense get in the way when I -feel- something strongly.I'll do that thing. I'll swallow my pride, maybe. I'll say the words. I'll push when I should give up.

It doesn't always work that way, but it happens much more now, more then it did before the Honda was wrapped around the tree, up near Harvard.But probably the single most certain thing I learned from that crash was that I wasn't going to die in a car accident. Well, probably not.