This is part of a series of posts in which I recall a random experience which I will probably never do again. In this case, I certainly hope never to.
In 2003, I took a short weekend trip to Seattle, Washington, to hang out with some friends from high school who were going to college in the Seattle area (the University of Washington and Seattle University). The weekend was a fun time – I got to see/catch up with good friends, eat a lot of awesome food, and generally got to decompress after a long, difficult school year (and right before I was going to start my summer job).
Sunday arrived, and before it came time for me to head to the airport to fly back to Los Angeles, my friend Gavin (who had graciously hosted me all weekend) suggested that we get lunch at a burrito place about fifteen minutes away from his apartment.
“These burritos are awesome,” Gavin said. (I’m not exactly sure what kind of description accompanied this statement, but I’m fairly certain that the burritos were either described to be the size of “your head” or “a baby.” Either way, these were supposed to be pretty epic burritos.)
With nothing else to do until we went to the airport (and, of course, given that Gavin was my ride anyway), I accepted the challenge of the epic Seattle burrito and we headed out.
We were probably about halfway there (it’s difficult for me to remember, and also, it’s not as though I really understand the geography of the Seattle region, since I’ve only been there a couple of times), and as we drove, Gavin and I talked about the weekend, the future, and of course, the epic Seattle burritos we would soon be eating.
We entered an intersection, which was wholly unremarkable, except for the fact that out of the corner of my left eye, I noticed that a minivan appeared to have run the red light and was heading right for us.
Did I shout something? Probably. Honestly, I don’t remember anymore. We probably both shouted something. It was probably “SHIT!” or “FUCK!” or “LOOK OUT!” or something particularly useless like that.
I do recall very distinctly, both in the moment and in the time immediately following (Full Disclosure: I think I wrote a long email describing this particular aspect of the experience in greater detail about a week after it happened, but that was from my college email account and is probably lost to the dark recesses of the internet.) that the whole “your life flashing before your eyes” thing was bullshit, because there wasn’t enough time for any bits of my life to flash before my eyes.
Much of what actually happened I seem to have lost to either poor memory or defense mechanism, but I recall the screech of the brakes, the initial THUNK as the two cars collided (luckily both cars had slowed down enough that the crash didn’t end up nearly as violent as it could have been, and even luckier, the cars had met closer to the bumpers than one of us t-boning the other), the force of the impact shoving our upper bodies forward (but thankfully, not into the steering column or dashboard) before we slammed back into our seats.
I also remember the silence after, as Gavin and I sat there, stunned, and looked at each other.
“Are you okay?”
“I think so. You?”
“I think so.”
After moving the vehicles to the side of the road, we exchanged information with the people in the minivan while we waited for tow trucks and the police response – the occupants were two elderly women, they knew and acknowledged that they didn’t see the red light, and given that nobody was seriously injured, we were all relatively calm about the whole thing (as an added aside, both Gavin and the other driver had the same insurance company, which, I would imagine, probably made things run smoother, although I don’t actually know what happened with regard to the insurance claim). Once we knew we were okay, in fact, our biggest concern was “why didn’t the airbags deploy?” followed quickly by “we’d better stop sitting in the seats in case the airbags decide to deploy now.”
After an officer responded and took statements, the tow truck arrived and determined that the car should not be driven (the damage didn’t look that bad, but it was enough that it would have been tough to drive the car, anyway), and Gavin and I hitched a ride in the tow truck back to his apartment, slightly shaken but generally okay (well, mostly. Gavin had some minor whiplash, I think, and I bruised my knee where it punched a hole in the plastic lining of the center console. My knees are pretty lethal, it turns out).
After we got back to Gavin’s apartment, I called Mike (another friend of mine who we had hung out with that weekend), and he graciously gave me a ride to the airport. As we drove, Mike and I talked about that past weekend, the future, and of course, the car accident I had just been in.
I never did get that burrito.
A post-script to this story: because I managed to escape serious injury (and also because everyone in my family, myself included, is notoriously bad at communicating when it comes to potentially hazardous situations and/or medical conditions), I forgot to mention this event to my father. In fact, I’m not entirely sure I had even told him about the trip at the time. Shortly after I returned to Los Angeles I received a phone call from him, which went something like this.
“I hear you got into a car accident in Seattle.”
“Oh. Yeah, but it was fine, nobody got hurt.” (long pause) “How’d you hear about that?”
“I’ve been doing some consulting for a company in town. Your friend’s girlfriend’s brother works there.”
“Oh. Well, everyone was okay.”
“That’s good.”
That wasn’t the end of the conversation, but at that point we moved on to something else that I can’t remember anymore.
