Near-death experience No. 268

As I write this, I’m in Arkadelphia, which I’m pretty sure means “the city of brothers who love ark-building.” And lemme tell ya, I’m happy as a pig in shit to be here.

I’ve had some close scrapes before (slideoff on Blunk Knob Road, anyone?), but this one might just rank at the top of the list. I was tooling along on the highway between Memphis and Little Rock—which SUCKS, btw, because it’s busy as hell with semis and mobile home movers and crappy ass cars towing other crappy ass cars (there’s probably a story there)—minding my own business, being pissed off at all the slow fuckers on the road, violating about 50 safe-driving rules.

I might have been speeding, and following a little too closely, with responses dulled by lack of sleep, and driving an unfamiliar car. Those probably would have been surmountable had I not been resting my fucking left foot on the dash. Yes, on the dash, about 2-1/2 feet off the floor where it’s supposed to be. Jesus, I’m a fucking idiot. I might as well have been huffing ether, too.

So, when I glanced away for a second (no, I was NOT texting, at that moment, anyway) I was caught by surprise to see brake lights and the back end of a PT Cruiser heading rapidly for my front bumper. The fucker.

I swerved into the right lane, and over-corrected, and ended up skidding across both lanes of traffic (did I mention how busy that highway is?), waiting for the awful “CRASH” sound and everything to go black, and then into the median, where grass and dirt began flying into the car through the open window, until I slid to a stop with the right front wheel of the car half buried in the dirt.

The worst part about me dying in Bumfuck, Arkansas would have been that I had just passed an exit where the only business was a sketchy as hell looking adult bookstore, with a ginormous sign that just had a huge XXX on it. So whatever halfwit TV crew that would have showed up to cover the fatality would have doubtless shown the big XXX sign in the background, behind my mangled rental Chevy. And then my friends and family would get a copy of the tape, and their final memory of me would forever be linked with an adult bookstore. And that’s just tacky.

But as it turned out, the car and I both emerged without a scrape. Well, the front license plate used to hang straight, and now it doesn’t, but that’s only a flesh wound, really. Funny thing is, the car (and what a brave little soldier it is) was pulling to the left before. Now it’s not. I did Hertz a favor, I figure.

A pickup truck full of good ole’ boys stopped to make sure I was OK. After they got my car pointed in the right direction, they shook my hand and wished me a safe trip. One of them, as he turned to walk to his car, looked at me earnestly and said, “You know, Jesus Christ saved my life.”

Hey, you don’t have to tell me, brotha, I’m definitely a believer today.

Lest you get the impression I’m not having a good drive because of that little incident, I’ll leave you with this picture of the car sitting outside the Wendy’s where I’m having lunch right now. (I hear your question, Lizzie, and no, it is not a picture of my rental car.)