The Sunday before last, as I drove to pickleball in the morning, my car slid on some ice and hit another car. It was something of a perfect storm as the car I hit was a commercial-grade flatbed truck and the corner of the flatbed rolled up the hood of my car like it was opening a sardine can.
The fun didn’t stop there. The hood was shoved through the windshield and it tore into the dashboard. The grill, bumper, and quarter panel also suffered damage.
You’d think I was speeding to cause such damage but I was going about 20 mph. There was fresh snow on the street and—this was the thing—a layer of ice underneath. My neighbor had parked the truck in the curve of our road.
That curve is notorious among the residents of our street as being the worst place to park cars and yet attracting the most parked cars. Like moths drawn to a flame, or middle-aged women shopping a Talbots sale, the attraction of unmoving cars to that bend in the road seems to be one of the natural laws of the universe.
I was the first car out of the cul-de-sac that morning and thought nothing of the snow. Our street is among the last to be plowed so it’s common to slog our way through several inches of snow. It’s a straight shot from my house to that curve, and everything seemed fine. As I entered the curve and turned the wheel, the car continued straight. Nothing helped. Not even my shouting.
It was like I was inside a curling stone on an errant throw, and no amount of sweeping was going to bend my trajectory away from the car. Instantly I knew what was about to happen, and that I couldn’t stop the collision, and then it was over in the blink of an eye.
It’s the most memorable two seconds of my life since my son was conceived.
The good news is that I wasn’t injured. Everyone I tell about this immediately asks if I was hurt, but the car did it’s job, protecting me at 20 mph. Slipping on the sidewalk and hitting my head hurt far more than this. Playing hockey hurt far more than this. Heck, I’ve been beaned by pickleballs and it hurt more than that collision.
If it would have saved me the hassle of the past two weeks, I’d maybe have taken a little bit of an injury in the deal. A little bit of whiplash for just denting the quarter panel and shattering the bumper. Bruised ribs (from the seatbelt) in exchange for keeping the windshield and dashboard out of harm’s way.
Murphy’s Law insists that there are things beyond our control, and that’s how it felt once I realized I couldn’t steer or brake.
Really though, it was the principle of inertia at work, which states that an object in motion tends to remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Once my tires lost their grip on that ice, only that goddam flatbed truck was going to stop me.
The most terrifying collision in my life was hitting a deer on Interstate 94 between Paw Paw and Kalamazoo at two o’clock in the morning. You’ve probably heard the adage that nothing good ever happens after midnight. Here in Michigan, there’s another one we bandy about that says “Nothing good ever happened between Paw Paw and Kalamazoo.”
We were returning from visiting family in Wisconsin and the entire family was in the minivan. That poor thing ran in front of us with not so much as a yard stick of space. I vividly remember that the deer turned its head and we made eye contact, as if to say, “what are you doing here?”
Inside the minivan, we all screamed in unison upon impact.
Outside the minivan, the deer died and shit at the same moment, which is really not a bad way to go. Her corpse was left on the side of the road, and her feces on the side of the minivan in an epic bowel movement like it had been squeezed out of a Play-Doh extruder.
The second most terrifying car accident was forty years ago when I fell asleep at the wheel while driving home from visiting my friend Charles. This was during the Christmas break from college. My parents had moved while I was away (with a bit of luck, I tracked them down) and I had driven the 20 miles from my parents’ new house back to my home town to visit friends.
The stupid thing was that I’d been careful not to drink. Yet I lingered late into the night as we told stories at Charles’s notorious Christmas Eve Eve party. Alone on the highway at three in the morning, I dozed off and the car drifted.
The wheels caught on a pile of snow on the side and turned the car—my tiny Ford Fiesta—spinning it into the guard rail. If nothing else, that sure woke me up.
The damage didn’t seem all that bad to me. I pulled the quarter panel off the tire and resumed my journey to my parents’ house.
Around eight o’clock the next morning, my father stormed into the room where I was sleeping and berated me, calling me a few of the classics (idiot, fool, moron) with a half-dozen rhetoricals (“what were you thinking?” “how stupid are you?” and the ever-popular “is your head up your ass?”).
During the berating, I kept my eyes closed and pretended to be asleep. Of course he knew I was awake, as that level of shouting would have animated a corpse if only for it to get away from the vitriolic noise so it could once again resume its eternal rest.
The end result of my 20 mph encounter with the neighbor’s flatbed truck in the curve of our road is that my six-month old car is officially totaled. Car repair is expensive these days, especially for this car, apparently.
In a related note, the cost of my car insurance is about to skyrocket.
If you have any recommendations for a new car, send them my way.
Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…
I’ve written a couple of short pieces, taken a class on writing, and puttered about with the novel. The novel is complete but I haven’t pushed it out the door yet. The next thing is to pick a title and I’m kind of stuck there. Wish me luck. Or, like my dad, tell me to get my head out of my ass and just pick something. Moron.
Maybe You’d Like
This week, I’ve joined a group promo called One More Chapter Thrills. Give it a click and take a look!
https://storyoriginapp.com/to/YIFcVC3
Next Picayune
I think I’ll be coming at you in two weeks to promote another giveaway. Thanks for reading the Mickey Picayune!
All the best,
Mickey
P.S. For those of you who picked up a copy of Ashley Undone recently, nothing helps like reviewing the book. It can be anywhere you’re comfortable reviewing books, and here’s a link to the Amazon page where you can do that if you don’t know anything better. (Thanks in advance.)