About Last Night

I nearly died last night. I shit you not, I almost killed myself and my friend Pam. We were coming back from an essential oils meeting at a friend’s house in North Nashville. We both had lavender on our wrists and were feeling relaxed and calm.

I was travelling about 65 mph on Interstate 65. We popped up over a hill in the third lane of traffic to find a full-sized tire in the middle of the lane. Stupidly, I swerved into the left lane to avoid hitting it. My car was moving way too fast to jerk the wheel that hard so it starting careening to the left. I jerked the wheel hard to the right to compensate. Again, another spectacularly stupid move. I tried to center the car in a lane–any lane–but instead the car starting spinning out of control. Pam and I did a nice, fat 180 in the middle of the freeway complete with smoke and screeching tires and everything.

Luckily my car’s engine died and we came to a halt just feet from the cement median. Neither one of us was hurt and the car didn’t have a scratch. However, we wound up sitting perpendicular to traffic in the left-hand (aka fast) lane. I was hoping to drive my car in the right direction and get the hell out of harm’s way. But Pam was in the passenger side nearest the barreling SUVs and tractor trailers while I was trying to restart my car when she said, FUCK IT, I’M OUT. Trumping me in smarts here big time, Pam thought it best to get out of the vehicle in case we got slammed into by someone who saw us way too late. I joined her on the left shoulder and waited for my car to get pummeled.

But it didn’t. Two cars had seen what happened and stopped to assist. One of the gentleman, a truck driver in his personal car, moved my Nissan to the right shoulder safely. Then we ran across a busy interstate to get to it.

It all happened so fast. You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you? It’s so crazy what I was thinking. At first I thought nothing. Only drivethecar, drivethecar, drivethecar. When we began our spin out of control I thought "This is going to be bad." Pam tells me she thought we were dead. It felt like the car was going to roll at any time. However, I didn’t think to consider death. I certainly could have died. We both could have died smelling of sweet lavender on the interstate on a Sunday night. And I wouldn’t have seen it coming.

Pam didn’t get to sleep until 6 a.m. that morning. She was pretty shaken by what happened. It still seems so unbelievable to me what could have resulted.

I’m knocking on my wooden t.v. tray as I type that I’ve been very lucky lately. Very, very lucky.

P.S. Forgive the technical difficulties there, but I’ve begun posting at Nashville is Talking. Feel free to comment there even though the number of comments fails to show up on the front page.