I woke up on December 11, 2019 and I wasn’t dead.
When staying alive is your goal, you might do a few things to prevent your death. Or maybe not.
When I was a little kid, I had a seizure and was diagnosed with a form of epilepsy. I was not allowed to climb trees, play football or anything else that could either set off a seizure or put me in a life-threatening situation if I had a seizure while doing something.
I was put on meds with the goal to be off them by the time I was 16 so I could get a driver’s license.
The good news was that I made it. I was both seizure free, drug free and I had my drivers license and my own car that I paid for.
Freedom was what having my car was all about. This is also where the story takes a turn.
When I was 25 years old, I was a married man with two kids and a pregnant wife. It was a cold and snowy night as I drove down US 31 towards town to go to work as a nighttime disc jockey. The reduced visibility made driving challenging, but I just stayed with the flow of traffic. Suddenly the van in front of me that I was following in the left lane, jerked over to the right lane.
A split second later, I saw why.
A semi-truck was stopped, and it was blocking the left lane and all I could do was jerk my steering wheel to the right and duck. My car slammed against the tail end of the semi’s trailer and tore open my car starting right behind the driver’s seat. I ended up with scratch on my finger.
The next day, the local newspaper published a picture of what was left of my car and a quote from the deputy declaring, “It should have been a fatality.”
Fast forward about 14 years.
Again, I’m on a four-lane highway, US 30 this time. It’s not snowing but it is a little foggy, a freezing fog I would soon discover. My car starts sliding out of control on black ice and goes down into the median strip that separated the east bound and west bound traffic. Once my car got in the grass, it slid back on the highway I was just on but facing the opposite direction. I see two semi’s coming straight towards me.
My car continues to slide across the road into a ditch avoiding the semi’s.
That’s two near fatal accidents. One in my 20’, another in my 30’s.
A pattern is forming.
Next time: I’m 46 now and driving home and not feeling well.
I blacked out. My car hit a gas station. Not the building but right next to the gas pumps, I hit the structure that held up the lighted canopy over the pumps.
Damage to my car. A big dent to the pole that was about two feet from the gas pumps.
The pattern was now a curse. A near fatal auto accident while I was driving in my 20’s, 30’s and now my 40’s.
Each year of my 50’s, I congratulated myself for being accident free. Sure there were times when the roads were not good, or I drove too fast, but remember driving was my freedom.
As I lay my head down on December 10th, I had forgotten about the curse that was ending. 8 hours later, when I woke up on my 60th birthday and I wasn’t dead, I knew I was truly free.
– Scott L. Howard