People say things like that all the time. "I laughed so hard I almost died," "I was so embarrassed I could have just died," "Seriously, I was so scared I nearly died." But no, no. I really, genuinely almost died. And once something like this happens, one thinks twice about using any hyperbolic phrases involving death. Because it is just no joking matter.
This is how I feel about it.
My car has been giving me a lot of trouble. If you ask my father, this is a problem I am creating in order to vex him from 500 miles away. But in reality, the car is old and things are just starting to go. Lately, the battery has been dying at every possible inconvenient moment. On Friday, at 3 a.m. the car refused to start. As I've been doing, I asked a friend at the party I was coming from for a jump. However, in order for the cables to reach, the car had to be moved back slightly. So, I, in my infinite car knowledge, shifted it into neutral while standing by the driver side door. And the car started to roll. Fast. Backwards.
This was one of those instants where the human brain tries to have 30 different thoughts at one time. My first thought was that I had Herculean strength and could somehow stop the car from rolling with my own body power. Not so. My second thought was to push the emergency brake under the wheel. Fail. My third thought was to run backwards with the car while continuing to somehow try to stop it. MISTAKE. The open door caught me in the chest, my feet skidded out from under me, down I went and then my brain went, "OHHHH SHIT. THIS IS REALLY GONNA HURT."
I wondered if it was going to be like an elephant stepping on my head, or like the part in 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' where Judge Doom gets nailed by the steam roller, or if maybe it would somehow just bounce over my sturdy, little frame. I held out little hope for the final option.
As I attempted to mentally prepare myself to be crushed by my own car, I heard my friend Elizabeth scream my name and felt myself being pulled by the collar out of the path of the careening motor vehicle. Apparently, my head was a safe distance of approximately 8-10 inches from the wheels - it was my legs that really stood (lol) in danger of being rolled over.
When all this was over, and my friend had somehow ninja jumped into the moving car and stopped it from crashing into a building, I started laughing. Really hard. This quickly devolved into me sobbing uncontrollably for about 45 minutes in, what I have been told, was the first panic attack of my life. Future reference, don't have one of those again.
My friend Steph took excellent care of my hysterical being that night and even restrained herself from laughing when I asked if the head of our graduate program would be sad if I was killed being run over by my car and when I proclaimed that I no longer wanted to study clown because I did not think I would ever stop crying. And nobody likes crying clowns. NOBODY.
I spent the following day shaky and sore in a state of, what I imagine is, shock. I am feeling marginally better three days later, but am still a little achey and distractable.
But the story ends not here. NO. Tonight, I took a small dinner break between a meeting and going to the library and my car died AGAIN in an Arby's parking lot on the side of a highway. After calling the tow truck, witnessing the tow-man put my car into neutral and roll it out of the spot (and experiencing Nam-esque flashbacks watching him do it), having the tow-man ask me if I wanted to come help him on his next job and then listening to his life story in the rain, dropping it at the dealership, and packing a bag to move into Steph's house until this is all resolved because I live far from campus (seriously folks, she's a SAINT) I am exhausted and have no desire to do the massive amount of work that I need to do right now for the week aheard.
So thanks car. Thanks universe. Thanks fates that be for conspiring against my sanity and productivity. THANKS. A LOT.
And now it is late and I just ate pizza with jalapeno peppers on it TOO QUICKLY and I feel like there is a 9 ton elephant sitting on my chest, farting out balls of fire and despair.
Work? Probably not happening for a little while.
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