Memoir: Crashes, Storms, Memories and Control Issues

It was raining hard the day my life turned literally upside down. One minute I was listening to music, on the way to my first ever meet with someone I'd previously known only through the Internet.

The rain was heavy and I still beat myself up over whether I made a lane change I didn't need to and if I did so too fast or too sharp and that's what caused the hydroplaning. Whatever the case, my truck spun out of control, spinning like a top, then it went off the rode and to a center embankment, which flipped it and the truck rolled and spun so more before stopping.

For a second I heard or felt nothing except I noticed there was still music playing on the car stereo. Whatever the song it felt wrong for this atmosphere, this new situation, so I reached over to push out the tape (yes, this was pre-cd) and the tape fell out and that's when I realized I was upside down and began to digest the surreality of it all. Here I was, lucky to be alive, in a truck that could have been in much worse shape and the car radio still works.

I climb out of the truck and the first thing I hear from the first person on the scene was, 'I thought you would be dead." Not exactly what I needed or wanted to hear.

Soon cops arrived and they had questions. Was I sure I was not hurt? Yes. That was wrong – I had a year or two of back problems and sciatic pain but that's a story for another day. Was there someone I could call? I realized I didn't have a phone number of the woman I was driving to meet, just an address and directions and her email address. And even if I had her phone number we didn't really know each other well enough to warrant her getting freaked out over the cops calling to tell them I had just demolished, totally, my truck. Better that she think I'm a slacker who never showed up.

I'd recently moved from So. Cal to Arkansas and knew only some workers and really didn't want them to know what I'd just done. They would have had to drive four hours to come get me. No, I threw myself on the cop and asked for another way. He knew a guy who knew a guy who would give me a ride if I could wait around for 8 hours. I needed time to adjust to all of this so I waited.
In the following days I bought a used truck, and that's the vehicle I still drive to this day. In the months after the crash I made plans to not only meet one person I knew off the Internet but to publicize this self-proclaimed Butki summer tour of the south and I drove to Memphis and met the woman who would become my girlfriend for the next five years of my life – and was the reason I moved from Arkansas to Maryland, after she moved from Memphis to Philly and promised to move and live with me in Maryland so we could see if we could take this relationship to the next level. She never moved, though, and the relationship eventually ended.. but again, that's another story.

I drove to Texas and met people who would become friends and I had my first visit to Austin, one of my favorite cities and where my sister and nieces now live.

Something changed that day in the car. My brush with death made me learn to re-evaluate what was important. Relationships, people, connections, those things mattered more now – getting mad about traffic or red lights or slow people in the checkout lane – those things didn't bother me.
So there were positives that came out of that crash. There were also negatives, problems both physical (the referenced sciatic pain) and the difficulties driving in bad road conditions which I wrote about more in a piece I'll link to in a minute.

What it came down to in a nutshell was that it all came down to was control. Until that crash I thought I was in control of the car. The sudden downpour, the crash, reminded me that no we may think we're in control but other elements also control things.

I was not comfortable again driving on those circumstances, like driving in snow or on ice, when I had even less control and when I'd have accident flashbacks.

Gradually I regained control over my, well, control issues and that's where I'll stop for now.

(20 minutes – sorry I went over my time limit. Hope the guy who organizes this writing activities doesn't get too mad at me.)

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