The Second Automotive Miracle

I've had two events that I'm willing to call miracles (I wrote about the first one here). Here's how the second one went down.

Prima was 13, because this involved a trip to a city 45 minutes away to get her braces adjusted. Penny and Treya, 11 and 8, came along, because they knew that going to the orthodontist traditionally ended with a trip to the Barnes & Noble Starbucks. Normally.

We drove a six-year-old light blue Geo Prizm. It had been a little ragged lately, but the garage guys checked it out and said it looked fine about a week before. After the orthodontist, I stopped at a craft store, and it was a little cranky starting off, you know, it just seemed like it didn't want to get moving, but then it perked up and was fine. I told the girls we'd probably have to leave it at the garage overnight again.

Then, on the interstate on the way home, it really started sounding and feeling sort of wrong. I was worried, and pulled into the emergency lane and stopped. Again, it perked up and I said, Starbucks is off, girls, sorry, this thing is going straight to the garage. And I pulled out onto the highway. It's a good thing that I wasn't at speed, because about 200 meters down the road, the car just stopped completely.

The engine was still going just fine, but the car was not moving. And I was in the right lane. And I was just at the spot that the highway merged not just an on ramp, but an off ramp at the same spot. Everybody driving by on the highway did that doppler swerrrrrrrrrrrvvvvvvve-hooonnnnnnnnnnk around us at 80 mph giving us the finger. The day was bright and sunny, and nobody was going to see my blinker lights.

I was doing what I think of as "mama panicking," which is where you keep your voice very clear, very even, and very deliberate, as you race ahead panic-thinking what the hell you're going to do, because everything has just gotten very, very bad. "Hang on, just a second, be prepared to run together fast," I told them.

I ran through my options, none of them good.
1. I could get out and run in front of the car but if someone hit it, I'd be run over by my own car.
2. I could get out and run around the back, but I'd be squashed like a bug into my car.

It had been about twenty seconds since we'd stopped dead. I realized I'd have to dive into the passenger seat, grab them and get the hell over the on ramp lane and over the guard rails, but not over the part nearest to us, because that was a fifty foot drop off an overpass.

The very second I formulated this plan, the miracle started happening. First, a car pulled up on my right. A total dump of a car, a derelict, dirty, ratchet beater of a car—with two sketchy, grungy guys with long, dirty hair. The driver slowed and rolled his window down. "Hey, are you in trouble? Do you need help?"

And in less time than it takes to tell it, Hat Guy parked his car right there to block the on-ramp. NoHat Guy got my kids out of my car, across the highway ramp to safety behind the guardrail. Then they both ran to me in the Geo, and those guys pushed for all they were worth,

"Lady, get your foot off the brake—"
     "It's not on the brake!"

"Lady, take the emergency off—"
     "It's not on!"

"Lady, put the car in neutral—"
     "It is!"

"Lady—GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE CAR! GO, GO, GO!"

My two grungy angels made sure I was safe with the kids, apologized (apologized!) because they had to go since their own car was in danger, and whoosh, they were gone.

Now we weren't going to die, but we were probably going to cause someone else to die.

Just as I was frantically calling 911 to report that my car was going to cause a horrible accident, an eighteen-wheeler semi pulled up carefully behind my tiny car and stopped. He yelled across the ramp to us, "Are you ok there? I'll just stay here until the cops come, and keep my flashers on. People can see me better than your little car, there."

And the driver stayed until the state trooper came, and the state trooper stayed until AAA came and towed it to Northampton.

The guy at Firestone said that the Geo was totaled. The axle was just cracked through, and that there's nothing I could have done about it, and I couldn't have known it was about to break. The desk guy asked me what happened, and when I told him, he said, "Oh, that was your little blue car broken down a couple hours ago? I saw that on my way into work." And I said: "You saw us? You left me and my kids to die on the interstate while you drove to your job at an auto repair shop? Thanks so much—did you also give us the finger?"


So in the end, we're alive, and breathtakingly beyond lucky. There were no shortage of jerks on the road. But it profoundly doesn't matter. The only people that mattered were the two strangers in the beater car, who saved our lives, and the driver of the semi, who saved the lives of everybody else on that highway. I wonder sometimes if the three of them really realized what they did that bright autumn day. I think about them a lot, because they are who I want to be.