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On Saturday I drove through Connecticut on my way to Atlantic City for a fantasy football draft, and I know that might paint me as the kind of idiot who owns an RV decorated in Patriots regalia, grills sausage in a parking lot every Sunday, and buys his wife Teddy Bruschi oven mitts for Mother’s Day, but bear with me because none of that is important.
What’s important is that something really scary happened on my way through Connecticut.
I was driving fast because I was late for the draft, eating hamburger pizza for breakfast because that was all that looked appetizing in the last service area, trying to wipe pizza grease off my cell phone, and singing along, with mouth full of crust, to Sean Paul’s “Give It Up to Me.” (And actually, if you ever want to get Sean Paul’s lyrics right, do it with pizza crust in your mouth because it makes you sound like a deaf Jamaican who’s just had his wisdom teeth removed, which is exactly how Sean Paul raps, kind of.)
In the middle of all this multi-tasking, a quarter on the floor mat caught my attention, and I knew I would need quarters when I hit the New Jersey toll booths, so I retrieved it, and when I looked up, a tire exploded.
The tire belonged to a black Mitsubishi Montero. I was in the left lane, and the Montero was in the middle lane, about three car lengths ahead of me. The back left tire blew, smoke and sparks coughed out of the wheel well, and the car swerved sharply right, then left, before going into a wild spin. It reminded me of the time I tried to teach my dog, Bo, how to drive while he was sitting on my lap, but he kept biting my wrist, and we started careening all over the road like Cole Trickle driving his wheelchair down a hospital hallway.
The Montero’s grill swung toward me just as I was passing it, and I was able to briefly glance at the driver and passenger before the SUV continued to spin toward the right lane, forcing a Subaru to plow into the grass next to the highway. You might think this would have happened in slow motion, like the scene in Mission: Impossible 2 when Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz are inexplicably locked in a mutual motorcycle/convertible tailspin and Tom Cruise’s hair is blowing around like he’s a Weather Channel reporter, but that’s not how it went down.
It was in fast motion. Immediately after I was past the Montero and watching it veer into the breakdown lane, I tried to remember the emotion I’d seen on the faces of the passengers, but there was nothing to remember. My glimpse inside the cab had been too brief to see their reactions, or maybe the incident had been too sudden for them to properly react. The whole thing happened in fast motion, but I can replay it in slow motion. When I do though, everyone inside the Montero looks like a crash test dummy, waiting placidly for the airbag to knock their heads into the backseat.
As I continued down the highway, both the Subaru and the Montero were coming to rest in the breakdown lane and everyone looked okay. I was left with the adrenaline rush that comes after witnessing danger. My heart was booming way louder than the Sean Paul beat, my hands were sweating away the pizza grease, and I almost choked on the crust.
Right after the accident I had the urge to call my friends and family, tell them I loved them and that everything was okay, and remind them that we should appreciate every moment we have because you never know when your tire’s going to blow out. I restrained myself because I didn’t want to be labeled as Crazy Oversentimental Guy because that’s the last person guys want to hang out with when they’re drinking beers and watching football. We’ll tolerate Burp and Blow the Cloud in Your Direction Guy and Constantly Playing with His Dinghy Guy, but Crazy Oversentimental Guy is basically intolerable. You never know when he’s going to start crying, or remind everyone that you’re his best friends, or tell the Constantly Playing with His Dinghy Guy to quit playing with his dinghy because it’s disgusting.
So I didn’t make any phone calls, and kept my newfound appreciation for life, nature, sunshine, rain, rainbows, and baby squirrels who look at you like they’re curious, not scared, to myself.
I changed the radio station. I needed country. Specifically I was looking for that song about Living Like You’re Dying by Tim McGraw. It’s not a song I particularly like because it’s got more sap than a Vermont maple tree, but it seemed appropriate at the time. If you haven’t heard it before, it’s about a guy in his early forties who learns that he’s got a terminal illness and has only a limited time left to, I assume, go hunting in the back woods of Alabama. So he starts reading the Bible, becomes a better husband, goes sky diving and Rocky Mountain climbing, and spends a memorable 2.7 seconds on a bull name Fumanchu.
I couldn’t find “Live Like You Were Dying” on the radio, but it’s still worth noting three things about this song:
1. Let’s just say I would spend my last days on Earth differently than the dying guy. I don’t know what I’d do, but I definitely wouldn’t go sky-diving, hiking, or bull-riding. All three of those activities scare me because I don’t like heights. I’d probably just watch TV and try cocaine.
2. This is one of those songs that sucks most of the time, but every now and then, becomes beautiful.
3. Maybe I’m reading too far between the lines here, but I think the dying guy knows that his lesson is falling on deaf ears. His is a beautiful message, but since Tim McGraw is not dying, there’s no real impetus for McGraw to change his lifestyle. He’ll continue to make horrendous collaborations with Nelly and bang seventeen-year-old Nashville strippers, unless he’s the guy who’s married to Faith Hill, in which case I apologize for the stripper accusation.
See, the thing about near-death experiences is that they don’t transfer very well. Maybe everyone inside the Montero has found religion, or given up red meat, or stopped beating their husbands, but I haven’t really changed because the experience wasn’t mine. I was just sharing theirs, which is a lot like sharing a meal - it’s less filling and doesn’t stay with you as long.
I’ve had a couple near death experiences, both when I was a toddler, and they’ve given me the two phobias I hold most dearly (I actually prefer to think of them as safety mechanisms rather than phobias). The first safety mechanism is my previously alluded to fear of heights. My dad claims I acquired this aversion to altitude when he “accidentally” let me play in a high-rise windowsill about thirty floors above asphalt with the window open. I’m also kind of afraid of water because I once fell in a creak while trying to jump over it like my dad, but I didn’t realize that he was a better athlete than I because he was thirty-one and I was three.
This is what dad’s are for – teaching you life lessons, so that you never take up tightrope-walking or big wave surfing.
But those were my near-death experiences, so they matter. The Montero tire explosion wasn’t mine, so it doesn’t matter as much. This is why scare tactics never work in anti-drug campaigns. If you show me a girl who got pregnant because she smoked pot, I’ll feel bad for her because that’s a crazy way to get pregnant, but I won’t actually be turned off from marijuana because I didn’t get pregnant, and in fact, I don’t even believe I could get pregnant.
It’d be nice if we all lived like we were dying, but the problem is: we’re not. And it’s impossible to learn from someone else’s near-death experience. This is why I recommend that you swallow an entire bottle of prescription pills or toast a bagel while taking a bath. Try to kill yourself, just don’t succeed.
When you finally get out of the ICU, you’ll see life with a newfound clarity, and then you can go sky-diving, Rocky Mountain climbing, or heck, maybe even go three seconds on a bull named Fumanchu.
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adam@theadamwhite.com |
