thank god for rain, wind, and other such natural destructors of human technological advancements. can you believe the number of hurricanes cropping up this season? florida must have done something truly evil to deserve the pounding it's taking. i hope it has enough bottled water.
but that's not my concern right now. i'd rather talk about a minor cloud burst and a fire drill.
if you've been keeping up, you've noticed that i spent what seems like a majority of my summer in north central and northwestern pennsylvania. if you haven't been keeping up, what you've missed are a few of my escapades in north central and northwestern pennsylvania.
now that we're all on the same page, i'd like to share with you the route you must travel to get from wilcox, PA to richmond, VA (avoiding DC traffic because interstate 95 is a bitch if you hit it between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., pardon my french): 219, 153, 80, 970, 350, 322, 99, 76, 70, 522, 37, 81, 66, 17, 95, 295.
actually, 295 takes you around richmond, so if you're aiming for 64 and the city's west end, you have to pretend that the signs for "295 to 64" don't exist. otherwise, you'll end up in charlottesville, making the lady in the leasing office really, really mad, which in turn means you get an apartment filled with cockroaches. and bugs. trust me, 95 eventually intersects with 64 directly.
although each of those roads is memorable ... especially 80, since it's where i got lost the first time and had to call mom, the maker of maps, to find out where i was and she didn't have a map handy ... interstate 99 holds a special place in my heart because it's where my heart actually stopped for the longest period of time that my heart has ever stopped without the result being my death. not that dying is common for me ... i think i had sleep apnea when i was a freshman. is that something that just goes away? i have no idea.
so, you walk unsuspectingly into a friend's house on a day that isn't your birthday or anniversary and a group of 20 people "surprises" you because maybe it's a few days before or a few days after. or! you wander onto a porch to take candy from a seemingly fake gorilla and it grabs your hand. or! you wake up and ... no, that's not a good one ... anyway! minor heart stoppage. for a second or two, you've lost complete control and your body thinks it's best to handle the situation by shutting down momentarily. it happens to everyone, right?
the rain hit in philipsburg. it was the kind of rain that makes motorcyclists and native virginians stop under bridges. being a native pennsylvanian driving through pennsylvania, i trudged on and found I-99 on the other side of the clouds. naturally, the road was wet with some puddling here and there, but mostly on bridges. have you ever noticed that pennsylvania has "bridge may be icy" signs all over the place? that's because it's freezing there 75% of the year. it rains thru the other 25%.
i was driving one of approximately four cars traveling south. all 937 northbound cars were stopped because an upside-down SUV was blocking both lanes at the 350 merger. the only cars that actually made any headway to the north for about a 6-mile stretch were emergency vehicles. nothing was on fire, but i saw two stretchers and a sign that said "slow down. save a life." i wasn't in a hurry to get home, nor was i in a hurry to be the next flipped SUV on 99 regardless of how short a trip it would be for the ambulances. i could live with 70 in a 65. sacrifices.
unfortunately, the lexus that came out of nowhere a few miles later was completely oblivious to the situation and to my plan. going about 80, he passed me on a bridge.
the sound that 20 gallons of water makes when it hits a windshield at 70 mph made my heart stop for the first second. the other two stopped seconds are attributable to the facts that 20 gallons of water had just hit my windshield, that i was blind to everything outside the car, and that my heart had stopped beating a second ago.
somehow, i managed to turn on the wipers and not die. a few minutes later, i was back to breathing normally. a few more minutes later i wasn't shaking quite as much.
it's funny. in the summer of '97, i worked in the college library. it was under serious renovation, so i spent the first month moving art books and "new fiction" to the makeshift satellite library on the other side of campus, and the next two months reading "new fiction" and doing as much astronomy homework as one can do in the daylight.
jen also worked at the library and was taking astronomy. we lived in the same town and would be roommates in the fall, if that matters. one afternoon we were quietly working/studying in the two-room library that no one ever visited because, duh, it was summer vacation, when the fire alarm went off. holy loud.
in the split second that followed, jen and i made brief, meaningless eye contact and with absolutely no regard for anything whatsoever, fled. if you can get a good sprint going in 40 feet, that's what we did.
it wasn't until we were let back inside that i realized i'd left my book bag, my books, my purse, my wallet, and my car keys behind ... and i hadn't even checked to see if anyone else was in the building. it was a moment when my life should have been flashing before my eyes, and all i could think to do was run away.
when that water hit my car, and my life should have been flashing before my eyes again, here's what i thought in that crucial moment: "fuck!" i may have even yelled it. then i braced for death.
what kind of person am i?? certainly not a helpful one when danger looms. i may have to start purposely putting myself in life-threatening situations to develop my reaction skills. i'd much rather be the person who's calm and collected under pressure than the one who wigs out, immediately causing another accident and getting more people killed. maybe i'll even condition myself to have meaningful flashbacks in times of crisis rather than panic-induced tourettes.
the next time i almost die, i want to be thinking about that time i gave mandy a shoebox full of oreo's and orange M&Ms for her birthday. at the very least, i want to think about how much zoey will love texas.
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