Thanksgiving: a harrowing tale

This is an entry that I wrote while sitting in a McDonald's fused to a Mobil station somewhere in the westernmost tip of New York on the evening of November 27: Thanksgiving proper.  I considered giving it a once- or twice- or thrice-over before posting it, but then I thought that maybe it would be better to post it the way that it poured out of me while I sat, shivering, in a McDonald's with bags and a pillow and a large decaf coffee, two creams, on Thanksgiving night while people filtered in and out, making blase conversation about the weather and road conditions and asking each other 'well have you even driven in the snow before?'

I would like to preserve the integrity of this work as the product of the event and the representation of my state of mind at that time.  So here it is.

I accomplished a couple of life goals I didn’t know I had today, but I guess I can cross them off of my bucket list.

Today is Thanksgiving, so it’s important that I look on the bright sides.  Besides, all of this happened less than three hours ago, so I’m too close to it to really feel much of anything.  Tomorrow I will probably be unhappy when the adrenaline wears off, and I finally dealt with that sore neck.

I crashed my car.  This wasn’t the goal.  We’re calling the goal a discovery.  The knowledge of the ultimate freedom of just driving your car off of the highway and down the hill that it (the highway) is perched atop.

In retrospect, having accomplished this discovery goal, this is not ultimate freedom.  The feeling is a weird calm and resignation, because panic kills.  I was weirdly resigned to the fact that I was going to leave the highway.  I even, dully, sort of wondered if I was going to die, and thought about how everything just seemed so awfully slow.

I felt the traction go as I was on a curved portion of the highway, and the car continued in the wrong direction.  I wrenched the wheel, which was probably the wrong decision, but at this point nothing was going to stop the fishtail train.

Seatbelts, folks.  I was convinced that the car had actually busted through a guardrail, but the very nice policeman informed me that I had just missed the guardrail and the impact I was thinking about had probably been the ground.  I wouldn’t know, all I could see was the smoke that my bizarrely tiny airbag had punched into my car.  My seatbelt held.  I stayed upright.

The car slid sideways for a while.  Everything was so slow-motion that I just sat and observed, wondering how on earth I was going to manage to not ruin everyone’s Thanksgiving.  I wondered if the car was going to roll over and I’d have to climb out upside down, like in the movies.

The car did not roll over.

I sat, the calm in my stomach roiled, and suddenly the panic burst through.  I couldn’t start the car.  I could barely force the car into park.  The windows weren’t broken.  I stared at the smoky airbag.  It was smaller than I would have guessed it would be.  I looked at the broken plastic around the bag and tried, halfheartedly, to stuff the bag back into the steering wheel.

My music wasn’t playing.  Why had my music stopped?  Where was my phone?

Half-sobs, panic without tears, burst from my chest as I scrambled to find my phone, which had been torn from its cable moorings as the car slid down the embankment.  I called Dad, half-insane with fear, stranded here down a hill in the snow with a car filled with smoke.  I jumped out of the car into the muddy snow, and stared at where the front end of my car used to be.  Now there were only wire ends and boxy under-the-hood things, no headlights, no license plate, no bumper.

I called AAA.  AAA called me back – well, my tow truck contact called me back – quite displeased with my inability to tell him exactly where I was.  I called 911, and they were way more helpful.  Would definitely call 911 again.  10/10 stars.  And they had GPS, so I didn’t even have to try to explain where I was.

The cop and the AAA guy showed up, and I achieved unknown life goal number two: sit in the back of a police car.  There was no grating separating me and my boy in blue, but the door did not have a handle.  I learned this when I wanted to get out and find out what was going on.

He took my keys to engage the emergency brake, I think.  I don’t know.  They winched my car up the hill (AAA guy: “uh, I can tell you now, AAA won’t be covering this.”  Cop: “it’s okay, that’s why she has insurance.”)

Everything was quiet.  I watched while they pulled my car up the hill and out.  The cop gave me some commentary on various things.

“We saw you from over there.  Thought something bad might have happened ‘cause you took quite a dive.  Called it in for EMS and they said no, they’d talked to you, you were fine.”

“Oh.  Wow.  Your front end is gone.  That might be totaled.”

“You know, people get really angry that we ticket so much for not wearing seatbelts, but this is why it’s so important.  You would have had a head injury if you hadn’t been wearing yours.”

I ran back and forth, grabbing my things from the car and moving them to the backseat of the police car (he had to let me out).  I asked if I needed to talk to the AAA guy.

“Nah,” said the cop, “He doesn’t need anything from you.  Your insurance will find him.”

“But,” I said, “I need some of the keys on my keyring.”

“Oh, you do?  Go talk to him.”

So I did, and AAA guy was also sort of nonplussed that I needed keys back.  I took my bike key, my apartment key, my tags for Stop & Shop and my ESF lanyard.  I headed back to the police car and the cop handed me my accident report and dropped me and all of my things off at a McMobil.  I am sitting here now with a huge decaf coffee.

I didn’t need any more stimulants.

I am perversely excited to see the seatbelt aftermath tomorrow across my chest.  It is already a little tender and there’s a tiny little burn where it dragged across my skin.  I am not excited at all to find out how much pain I’m going to be in.

The AAA guy just called me.  He wanted to know who my insurance company is.  “You’re not gonna have to worry about this car no more,” he said, laughing a little.  AAA guy isn’t mean (he grew on me eventually); that’s the way I feel too.

We laugh because it hurts, we laugh because it’s absurd, we laugh because we don’t want to cry in a McMobil right off of the highway.