Bang...

It's official. I am L U C K Y.

I have been told this many times in the past week, because last Saturday I was driving to work on the freeway, doing all the things I was taught to do over the several years I managed to spend learning to drive before getting my license two months ago, when another car hit me from behind. I remember being annoyed, I remember thinking, you idiot, you hit my car and I've only been driving it for a few weeks; then all I remember is chaos. Apparently, what happened is that my car performed several 360 degree spins across two lanes of traffic, then landed upside down in a ditch.

I opened the door, took off my seatbelt, and crawled out.

Truthfully, I'm still not entirely sure that it happened. From the first second that I realised that the view from the windscreen had switched from the road in front of me to the road beside me, the whole thing feels like a dream: I used to have a dream when I was a kid that I was seatbelted safely in the backseat of my parents' car and it was driving carefully around a twisty road with no one in the driver's seat, and I was nervous but never afraid because I knew the car was safe, and in a strange way this felt kind of the same. When the car flipped over I had no idea what was happening, just that everything was jolting around and things in the car were moving around me. And when it all stopped it felt like the dream was over; except I was hanging in my seatbelt in an upside down car with a concrete strip beside my head and cars still driving along (slowly!) on the road in front of me. I spent the entire time before the ambulance arrived asking the people who stopped to help me if it was real, because in my mind, people like me do not have serious accidents in high speed zones. And people who have serious accidents in high speed zones do not open their own car doors and simply walk away.

But apparently, I did.

I don't think this is going to prompt me to drastically change my life or myself, like other people do. It hasn't given me any great insight into the meaning of life; I'm not having visions of any sort; I'm a bit worried about driving on the freeway again but I'm not afraid to drive; I'm going to miss the car I'd just gotten used to but I won't be pessimistic and blame the world at large for what happened.

There was a moment, just before the car flipped, when I was able to see a wall of earth that runs beside the freeway through the driver's window, and I was sliding towards it, and I thought: when I hit that wall, that is what is going to kill me. The car kept spinning past it, obviously, and the wall and I never met. That moment is the clearest memory I have of the accident itself, the only moment that felt real rather than part of the dream. That moment is the reason why a small part of me wants to go back and sit in that car again, and go through what happened over and over again knowing that when it's over I will walk away; and keep doing it until it's not scary to think about it anymore.

But life goes on. I'm already thinking about my next vehicle: I want it to be much bigger than the last one, and preferably made of rubber. Or come with a big invisible air cushion around it, or at least be of a shape that I can attach blow-up cushions to. Failing that, I want some sort of craft that can fly above the traffic but that doesn't require a whole lot of landing space (did I hear someone suggest a Harrier jump jet - yes, you know who you are! :P). In fact, I am considering hiring that fluffy white flying dragon from the Neverending Story movies. After all, I have a whole spare garage in which to keep him. Would my landlords approve? :)

Drive safe!