Riding on baloney skins.

Last winter I was driving home in my then-new truck during a brutal snow storm and had a near-death experience. I was on a hilly stretch of Route 94 in Blooming Grove, a road I've traversed hundreds of times in the last five years. A red Jeep, very similar to the one my father drives, ironically, lost control and came spinning at me at about forty-five miles an hour. There was no room to veer off to one side or the other since both shoulders were narrow and sloped down to deep ditches. My body froze as I braced myself for the worst, the friend on the other end of the phone still rambling. Somehow I managed to avoid being hit by the rotating death truck. It's spin was timed perfectly so that our vehicles were parallel at just the right time and I skated by unscathed. I looked back over my shoulder and watched the vehicle slam into a tree backwards. There was no way I could stop with how slippery the roads were so I informed a police officer at the bottom of the hill who was directing traffic caused by a fender bender.

Every time I'm on that section of highway now I think of that day. That red truck's still coming at me, I'm still waiting for the impact that isn't coming. Once burned, twice shy-- only this time I made it out intact. Sometimes the underdog breaks even.