Have you ever borrowed someone's car only to realize that they failed to disclose critical details about the vehicle, e.g., "If you don't do this one thing this exact way then you're going to die." Either that or they completely glossed over certain details like, I don't know, "I need new brakes."
I borrowed someone's car one day to go to the store and upon leaving they made a simple offhand comment, "Don't worry about putting in more gas, I'm good. Oh yeah, I need new brakes." Now perhaps I just heard what I wanted to hear or maybe I'm just out of touch with my ghetto origins, but "I need new brakes" translates inside my head as, "My breaks are going to squeak, but the car will still come to a stop when you press the brake pedal."
So I'm riding down the street, and this is out in Maryland where there's a long stretch of straight road. Technically, it's not a highway, but it's far enough that the speed limit on the three lane road is like 55 mph. I'm about a half mile from a red light (and a major intersection where there are shopping centers on each side of the road) and there is one car stopped ahead at the light. As I get closer to the car, I push the brake pedal to slow down.
The funny thing about the human brain is that it has a hard time getting over things that it doesn't understand. In this particular case, I pressed the brake pedal, but the car wasn't really slowing down like my brain expected it to. I didn't have high expectations. This wasn't a sports car. It was an old Dodge, but there was still a small expectation that when I pushed the pedal that the car would go from 55 to about 51 and then maybe 45 and so on. No, I had the pedal pushed about halfway and the car was still cruising at about 54.
Since pushing the brake pedal like a gentleman wasn't working, I decided to slam on the brakes like a maniac. Another funny thing about the human brain (or maybe life itself) is that when you realize that you're about to die, all of a sudden you have Spiderman reflexes. Time just slows down. I like to think that it's life's way of letting you capture the moment and say your goodbyes.
All of this was happening over the span of about three seconds, but with my new Spider Sense, I was able to live about five minutes of life in just those three seconds. First came the realization that I was about to slam into the car in front of me. Second, I realized that only two of the brakes were working (the ones on the left side of the car). Now, I figured that part out because the car was now spinning counter clockwise toward the car in front of me. Thanks to video games, I learned how to get out of a drift and I turned into the swerve. That's another realization... video games aren't that bad.
Because I turned into the swerve, I was now straightening out. That meant that instead of slamming into the car ahead of me sideways, I'd now have a full on frontal crash. I'd just saved myself two hours of a slow painful death in the ICU. Now I'd die right away. So then I had one more flash of brilliance. I started blowing the horn.
I lie to you not, I locked eyes with the guy ahead of me in his rear view mirror. He saw me screaming for life and I saw him mouth "Oh Shit!" Lucky for me he was out of his mind. He actually sped off through a red light to avoid being rear ended by me. Now, keep in mind that this was a major intersection so he actually darted out into traffic and through a red light. By doing so, all of the cars coming from the sides slammed on their brakes. This acted kinda like a lead blocker in football and left a hole "up the middle" for my car to screech right on through.
I eventually came to a stop at a 45 degree angle in the middle of the intersection. I didn't hit anything and neither did the car that was ahead of me. Because this was PG County, not a single soul got out to see if I was okay or lent assistance. That meant that I was free to just keep going without drawing any attention from the police. That's another added bonus, because I later realized that I left my wallet (and my license) at home. And we all know how kindly the good folks of the Prince George's County Police Department take to young black men driving cars through red lights without a license and with a name not matching the registration of the vehicle.
No comments:
Post a Comment