NEW: My Brush with Death
2006-12-16 | Filed Under Participatory Books |
This one comes from Allen Freeman.Have you ever had a brush with death? Post your story.2 Responses to “NEW: My Brush with Death”
2006-12-16 | Filed Under Participatory Books |
This one comes from Allen Freeman.Have you ever had a brush with death? Post your story.2 Responses to “NEW: My Brush with Death”
I must be some kind of car magnet because I keep getting hit by cars. I’ve been in several car accidents and have been hit 3 times on foot.
The closest I came to death was once when I was driving back to Little Rock from Benton, Arkansas. It was a pleasant Sunday afternoon like any other and I was cruising along in my big SUV. I wasn’t really a big SUV kind of guy but that’s what had been handed down to me by my folks when I was old enough to drive. It was an ‘84 Dodge Ram Charger, which had been painted black, after a previous car accident, but because it had been originally silver in color my dad and I fondly called it the “Silver Ghost”. And because this was before the term Sport Utility Vehicle had been widely accepted we also referred to it as, “The Trar”, which was a combination of the words truck and car. I still like the sound of that a lot better than SUV. Anyway, the now black “Silver Ghost” was a lot like O.J.’s attempted getaway Ford Bronco and big enough to fit a small town in the back.
So in Arkansas at the time, the state was too cheap to install proper (and safe) on ramps for the major expressways. Instead they just built service roads that ran parallel to the expressways. The problem being that you had to cross an oncoming lane of traffic that was supposed to yield, but they rarely did. In this case a big pickup truck didn’t yield and I started honking and swerving to avoid him when the car behind him hit me. Her car was low enough and my Trar high enough that she just scooped me up and flipped me over. But it didn’t stop there. I just kept flipping and flipping and flipping. I think I flipped a total of 3 and a half times but you kind of loose count after 2 to be honest.
While flipping time slowed to a crawl. It really was like bullet time in the Matrix. I looked around me as my personal belongings in the back whipped around. I was convinced I was going to die as I could see very large and heavy objects flying all over my vehicle. Something was surely going to crack my skull open like an egg. I remember so clearly my arm breaking through the side window as I rolled. When I finally came to rest I was so disoriented I was convinced that I had landed in the middle of the expressway. By luck I had survived! But now I was surely going to be flattened by an oncoming 18 wheeler screaming along at 70mph.
When I wasn’t immediately hit again I started to look around and noticed that the front windshield was completely missing. I unbuckled myself from the seatbelt and fell to the roof of the truck upside down, righted myself, and crawled through the front of the vehicle. A man had stopped about 30 feet in front of me and he was now running toward me yelling, “Are you ok? I swore you were dead!” I was so pumped up with adrenaline I really felt like the Incredible Hulk in that moment. I wanted to just pick up the shell of my Trar and throw it. I started looking around, at myself, to make sure I wasn’t bleeding or missing any limbs. I only had a few small scratches on my left arm where it had brushed the pavement after the window broke out. I collapsed to the ground when the guy finally got over to me. I just laid there on the grass beside the expressway until the ambulance came.
They took me to the hospital and ran some checks on me. I called my dad and informed him that I was O.K. but that he’d need to pick me up. A police officer showed up at the hospital to question me. I told him everything that had happened and he informed me that the guy in the pickup truck (the one who had actually caused the accident) had told him that I was driving erratically. I told the officer that guy hadn’t stopped like he was supposed to, and that I was just trying to avoid him when the other car, which also should have stopped, hit me. The officer told me that the driver of the car was 8 months pregnant but the doctors thought that she and the baby would be fine.
I went home with my dad and woke up the next day in so much pain. Every inch of my body hurt. All I could do for days was lay in bed. But it really would have been over if I hadn’t been wearing a seat belt. I know I’d be dead now. I’m lucky to have walked away alive and without major injury. And that near death experience really changed my attitude about living. After that I decided to leave Arkansas and finish school in Boston, something I had wanted to do for years, but hadn’t had the right motivation. And in general I really try for the things I want now instead of just wishing for them.
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