I'm Screaming MERCY At The Top Of My Lungs
Thursday, January 19, 2012
burghbaby

Thing the First: THIS HAD BETTER BE THE BOTTOM OMGWTFBBQENOUGHENOUGHENOUGHENOUGH.

Thing the Second: Everybody is fine. Absolutely, totally, and completely fine. Promise.

Except, well, my car isn't fine.

Soooo . . . I grew up in North Dakota. I learned to drive in North Dakota. I took my driving test in the middle of a blizzard. In fact, I got to skip the parallel parking portion of the test because it was snowing too hard to see the cars in front and back of the parking space. What I'm saying is I know how to drive in less than ideal conditions. It's second nature to me. Even in retrospect, I don't know that I would do anything differently. Apparently this evening was just destined to end the way it did.

Which, again, I repeat Thing the First: WTF DOES THE UNIVERSE WANT FROME ME? I WILL DO IT. TWICE.

Anyway, it was a pretty typical Thursday. Alexis rolled off the school bus and straight into my car so that she could go to dance class. Mr. Husband was off of work today and was going to accompany us, but decided at the last second to stay home to work on a few things. There was a discussion about me taking his car which went a little like this, "HAHAHAHAH! No! Your car sucks in the snow."

I stand by that statement.

Once dance class was over, Alexis and I swung through the bank drive-thru and then headed home. Now, the roads were lousy. Truly lousy. In response, I had slowed to well below the speed limit and more than quadrupled my following distance. Still, it was mostly an easy drive home as we live in a part of town that takes clearing the roads very seriously. They do a fantastic job. Truly.

Except for that little part of the main road right in front of where the snowplows get parked. THAT part of the road wasn't so fantastic today.

I saw the brake lights in plenty of time to stop. I was driving 20 mph under the posted speed limit for that road, so, truly, I wasn't thinking anything was about to happen. But as I pressed on the brake pedal, I heard the sounds of ABS kicking in and . . . nothing.

WHAT GOOD IS ABS IF IT DOES NOTHING?

Ahem.

With Alexis in the back seat and me driving, my beloved car that we bought brand new just a year ago slid . . . and slid . . . and slid . . . and slid. We slid easily 200 feet.

Somewhere around the 150 foot mark, I realized we weren't going to stop in time. I surveyed the situation. Again, we weren't moving all that fast, so I had time to think about it. There were two cars in front of me. The front one had its turn signal on as the driver was trying to turn left into their driveway. There was another car coming from the opposite direction.

And there was us. Not stopping.

I looked to the right and tried to mentally measure the berm. That particular road is a two-lane road with houses on the left and a deep ditch on the right. There's a creek at the bottom of the ditch. But! But! There looked to be just enough flat land for me to maybe creep through on the right and maybe only hit a mailbox. Hitting a mailbox is WAY better than hitting a car, right? Right.

The thing I forgot to consider is that the narrow span of flat land was just as slippery as the road. My car slid and slid and slid and . . .

BAM. Alexis and I were upside-down in the car.

In the ditch. In the creek.

We hung there for a minute completely disoriented. Fortunately, a good samaritan (which, if anybody knows who it was, PLEASE CONTACT ME) had somehow found his way down the ditch and was standing in the water with a flashlight. I carefully undid my seat belt and then moved to the back to get Alexis free.

Oh, Thing the Third: My kid HATES that I make her sit in a full-back booster seat with a five-point harness. She says all of her friends get to have the little booster seats that just use the car's seatbelt. NOW SHE'S KEEPING THAT FIVE-POINT HARNESS UNTIL SHE'S THIRTY. See also: we flipped completely upside-down and she was TOTALLY fine. Another possible factor: she doesn't wear a coat in the car, so her seatbelt is always nice and snug. Paranoia is my friend.

Back to the story . . . eventually Alexis and I managed to crawl out of the car and then mountain-climbed our way out of the ditch with a rope and the help of a whole lot of people. Now that I've been on the other side of that ditch, I need to call it a "ditch" because it's a 90-degree drop for about ten feet.

But we're fine.

Totally fine.

My car isn't.

It was too dark to see just how bad the damage to the car is, but I'm thinking "upside-down in a creek" isn't the start of a story that has a happy ending.

Let's review, shall we?

December: I was laid off from my job without severance.

January. There's a thing that isn't fit for the internet, but trust me when I say it's currently looming like a huge brick wall in my life. After that thing, our dog died suddenly. Now I wrecked my car.

This had better be rock bottom because I've had quite enough bad in the past two months. Anybody know any spells or potions or ANYTHING that might break this streak?

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