HOW TO EAT A HYDRO POLE AND LIVE TO TELL ABOUT IT…
How to Eat a Hydro Pole and Live to Talk About It – Porsche 911 Car Accident
I once mosh-pitted beside Bill Murray, live to the Tragically Hip. Close enough to feel face sweat and wonder if the bar dew was coming from the ceiling or beer jugs. Not this night though. Right about now I was dancing my butt off at Dan Akroyd’s new bar that he opened up – you couldn’t miss it. It was the one with the Ghostbuster mobile crashing out of the corner of the building – a still shot of a vehicle in mid-flight from the movie. How telling that in a few short hours (after Semisonic’s Closing Time played of course – the song that played over every bar’s last call in the 90’s) I would be doing a similar trajectory, only in an 80’s Porsche 911 Targa – it’s first night on the road.
#1. Don’t Panic. Ha. Said no one ever. How can that be? Well, one cannot really panic when in such a life- threatening situation – really – there isn’t time too. Survival instincts kick in like 007 Bond walking like a tight rope walker along narrow building roof lines in a perfectly pressed Tom Ford suit without flinching (Spectre). Or my favorite, how is it that in every Disney movie when there’s a terrifying sound, the Disney kids always go out and investigate like it’s nothing. That doesn’t happen in real life (see child cowardly hiding under piano). There is no room for panic – only direct – coming out of knowwhere “Q” style – exact, clear instructions. If I diverged like Bond does sometimes, there would be no back-up, no eject seat and no boat coming up under the bridge in the exact moment when I am falling to my death.
#2. Put on the Passenger Brakes. This is what most people do. Instinctively. I did that. Although, it could also have been a for a couple other reasons too. I pushed both my black booted feet hard as I could into the floor (or the force did?) and in slow motion like I was fighting speed, slammed both my hands in a wide stance onto the dashboard pushing equally as hard (It felt like I was going to go out the window if I didn’t do that). At the speed we were going (I had no idea until after, but apparently it was 120km/hr. Not impressed. Gentlemen – As a rule of thumb, we don’t care how fast you can drive a car. Honestly. Unless your Bond. If your Bond, then it’s ok). It was an automatic response to both try to control the speed of the car against the extreme opposite speed my body was moving at (which seated in a car seat, with a two-strapped professional race-style seat belt pressing me back into the seat hard – was dead still). Think, roller coaster ride – people typically hold on, partly to be in sync with the speed and motion so we’re matched with it, hoping it will be less of a dizzy nauseating experience because our bodies aren’t meant to or used to going at that speed. I think I was also bracing for dear life and bracing just to stay in the vehicle and not fly out anywhere. My right leg would later pay for this break action.
#3. Don’t Scream. Personally, my experience, my intuition RAMPED a WAY UP in volume like – 10 decibels up – complete with noise cancellations of any hesitation what so ever that made it impossible to ignore, like say the very same voice inside your heads that one might drown-out when it’s time to go home, or eat the whole Lindt chocolate bar instead of the planned 2 squares – with the most crystal clear set of instructions (opposite of IKEA). My smart self also was not screaming – in fact, somehow even though we were doing 360’s in Porsche 911 Targa @ 120km an hour, my inner voice was the calm, clear and concise. Say like, the precision of a needle on a record – finding the exact minute microscopic “V” shaped groove. I’ve always marveled at that since I was a child watching Duran Duran’s The Reflex circle round and round and round….
To this day, I’ve always been curious if I came up with this on my own or if it was some long lost tidbit I kept on my brain file from Oprah.
I wanted to scream…loud. But I didn’t. I didn’t to disturb or disrupt the driver whatsoever – he was clearly trying to regain control of the vehicle that he had completely lost. That, and even though the stereo was on ( a good one – I forget now, but guys and their stereos. I do know 100% U2 was playing – my favorite band), and we fishtailed a hard slide to the left on the pavement, and there was a thunderstorm and rain pounding down – everything was uncharacteristically, eerily dead silent. It felt as though we were moving in the car, but we weren’t all at the same time? It’s hard to explain. It’s also common characteristic of the experience of being in a traumatic situation. Many describe their experiences as “It was though time stood still.”
#4. Tune into the Channel and watch the movie. How my near death expereince (NDE) played out…
At 120km/hr in a Porsche 911 in the middle of a thunderstorm, we’re spinning out of control onto the wrong side of the road, going up a slight hill, over a bridge where drivers woudn’t be able to see us and then proceed to complete nearly 8 360’s around and around and around with no end in sight and all I can think of is the oncoming cars aren’t going to see us, the oncoming cars aren’t going to see us – we’re fucked. And then,
A movie starts to play in front of me.
It was black and white.
There was a happy ambiant type soundtrack with it, something that makes you think of that spider ride at the summer fair.
Hey! There’s my brother and I ( I have a twin brother). We’re naked babies sitting on the shallow shores of Sharbot Lake amonsgt the pebbles and the green grassy weeds and I can see the sun sparkling of the lake with bright white lights. We’re splashing around and seem happy, even enthused to be experiecing this magical water around us.
Hey! There we are on the Spider fair ride back home, weaving in and out of the other carriers, music playing. My mom is watchingn on with a red bandana tied on her head like a gypsie. Each memory I seem surprised that I’m seeing this right now and then it hit’s me – SMACK!
Shit. This is my life in review. This is what happens right before someone dies. I’ve seen this in the movies and heard about it on TV. Ahh! No time for movies. My movie watching gets interupted by my next though in total bewilderment.
“Die? I’m about to die. This is it. Shit. Noo”
I love this. This was my next thought process that goes to show you how when we’re yonger we’re looking at our academic years as a meaasure of our time.
“I can’t die yet…I haven’t even finished my BA, I’ve got another year or two to go!”
I didn’t know how to stop the movie in my head – more importantly – what it meant. If I was in this spinning out of control car doing 360’s at mock-way-to-fucking-fast-to-stop how on earth was I going to control whether I lived or died?
What happened next. Didn’t seem to have any forethought. It seemed to be automatic. I’ve always wondered if athiests (or non catholics) do the same thing.
“Our, father who art in heaven halllowed be they name thy kingdom come, thy will be don on earth as it is heaven..forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who tresspass agaisnt us..” ( Hell, who knew how deep those words would run in …2.0 minutes from this second!).”
And then Oprah walked in.
#5. HEAD OPRAH’S ADVICE. No seriously, Oprah may have helped save my life, or my brain at the very least. Ok, Oprah didn’t walk in, however the the clear instructions I was given next via the little clear voice in my head, I’ve always wondered if I retained this TIP off of one of Oprah’s show where she saves life-saving advice, “what-if” scenarios. Or just both – that my reptilian survivor’s instincts kicked in loud and clear or i pulled it from the Oprah memory bank. I did try to research if it was on a certain episode and the year, but never found out. (Any Oprah TV show staff out there want a mission?).
#6. LISTEN TO YOUR INTUITION. And cue Paul Simon’s, Father and Daughter ” Trust your intuition. It’s just like going fishin’..” No point having intution (or Oprah in your head) if you’re not going to listen. What follows was my thought process and the actions I took that not only helped save my life (they wouldn’t have helped if something else hadn’t plated a factor which I’ll explain shortly), and definately helped me remain myself. This is what my inner voice said very clearly with no room for questioning, hesitation or diversion. The clearness of it ordered my follow-though. So where was I? Right, have no ideas where I am in time or space, only that we’re on the wrong side of the road, spinning out in 360’s and a car is probably going to hit us head-on, fast and hard with no time to break. I need to brace my 120 pound self for that.
“My legs! My legs!” I think to myself.
My legs are the furthest thing away from my body, the closest thing to whatever is going to hit us.
“I don’t want to be a quadrapalegic.” – the thinking, but frantic voice.
“Bring your closer. Into your chest. Hug your legs.” – the clear inner voice.
I take my feet of the passenger breaks. I think it was hard – I had been pressing in with such force and we were spinning at such force. I’m grabbing my legs, wrapping my hands and arms around my knees.
“Shit.”
My head, my skull, my brain is now completely exposed, facing forward into the space infront of me – namely the dashboard and now the furthest body part extended out meaning it will take the brunt of whatever force stops us.
“I don’t want to be a vegetable.” – smart, panicked voice.
“Bring your arms up infront of you, cross them making an “X”.
I sit up slightly. It was hard to do both of these things at once honestly and no leave something else more exposed. I bring my arms up infront of me, crossing like Wonderwoman Style – yah Wonderwoman style! Surely that cross will save me – infront of my forehead. I think, ok (now this is where Oprah comes in. After the fact when I was writing, I wondered if she ever said the following on one of her shows). if I cross my arms here, if something – a car, glass, the windshield, anything – comes at me, it’s going to have to cut through my right arm and bone first, then my left arm and bone second before it can even get to my skull, and then my brain. I wonder if my Sierra Design Gortex jacket will help cut a layer also. There isn’t much else I can do now. I don’t really remember what happened next. I don’t remember hitting my head, losing conscousness, heck I dont even remember hitting anything at all. Which doesn’t make sense when you find out what stopped us.
When the authorities asked me if I remembered how we stopped, I said,
“Yes, we came slowly to a halt.”
I remember the officeer looked at me a little funny, in a caring way. Tell me again. I told her the same thing again.
Apparently there is no chance in hell we came slowly to a halt. Which if I think about it now, of course that would be an impossibility.
You see what happned next is nothing short of a miracle.
It also seems impossible that it even happened.
It also makes you wonder how we defied laws of nature.
Did my reciting of the Lord’s prayer that my good catholic bedtime, school morning annoucements work?
After one of the final 360’s, the road was so slippery, the Porsche 911 tires bald and slick (I only found this out recently after taking – ironically – a First Aid Course – that one of the other men in the course said to me – whoever was driving that car was asking for an automatic deathwish.
“Oh?”
Those tires are bald. Stripped. There’s no grip on them. That’s not safe on a normal car. On a Porsche 911, it’s asking for a deathwish.
My blood boiled. You see, I didn’t know that night and to this day and I might never know, why the car all of a sudden slid extreme left that spun us out of control. Pieces of the puzzle come together.
After fishtailing onto the wrong side of the road, going up over a hill on the main road off the highway, we spun over, then back onto the right side of the road, only, again in the wrong direction, facing any oncoming traffic, and we caught air, in a big way, which in and of itself isn’t headed for a good outcome, however, if things weren’t bad enough, if we haven’t already put our bodies through the ringer at that point, guess what? Our trajectory at this point? We were headed up straight for a guardrail…that was on a bridge, that hung over a long fall, onto train tracks below.
Where we surely would have died and I wouldn’t be typing this today. I would have been no longer.
However. I’m sure this has never been said, or certinaly is one-in-million or more, as we no longer on the road, flying through the air about to head over the brige to our impending death, something gets in the way and swings us around the pole. Nauseating to say the least. After the accident, a bystander said to the driver,
“You must have your pilots license to drive that thing.”
He didn’t get what he mean’t.
The bystander motioned to the car and and where it came from and how it got to where it was while making a sudo-airplane motion with his hand.
The driver didn’t find that funny at the time.
I don’t remember hitting the hydro pole. At the speed we were going, winding out of the series of spins and the air we caught we careened into the concrete hydro pole with such force, we broke it in two, the top half breaking off – wires exposed – cracked over ontop of us. What side hit? What side took the impact?
The passenger side. The right side. My side.
How come we didn’t just keep on spining and the hydro pole acting like a catapolt of sorts, just gaining speed and thrust us off the bridge?
Well. This is amazing. The hydro pole got caught – on the tire axel on the right side and we wound around the pole, eventually stopping us from the last few minutes of that hellish ride.
All I remember next was, I could hear the engine turning over or something. Bono was crooniing out of the stereo. Can’t remember the song. Probably, Streets Have No Name. No Shit. or With or Without You... Yes, well I chose the with you as in, to be with, to be, to be alive as opposed to not be, to be without, to be without you. I couldn’t see a darn thing. It was absolutely picth black. Everything. I also couldn’t tell if you if my eyes were open or closed. My next thought was, I can hear Bono, which means the stereo’s on, which means there’s power, which means the engine’s running…
“Shit! The Cars Gonna Blow”
They always blow up! They always blow up on tv, in the movies, it’s going to explode into flames I need to get the fuck out of here now. I seemed to be aware that we hit the front of the car somehow, and understandably, thought the engine was in the front.
Wrong. Thankfully.
All the sports loving, Porsche loving guys out there know this. Engines in Porsches aren’t in the front of the car like the majority of cars. It’s – thank the good heaven’s Lord – in the rear. Thank God. Definately may not be here now. Another blessing in this car accident?!
I swiftly half-looked at my the driver’s direction and either said out loud, or in my head (it was really hard to sense what was going on for some reason), incase I don’t see you again,
“I love you”
and, I just wanted to get out fast! I went to grab the door handle…there was no door handle! What? It was pitch black out, it was a thunderstorm, thinking back now, we probably cut the power to the street light when we hit the pole maybe (?), and the outside and the inside of this Porsche was all pitch black. I fumbled around with both hands frantically trying to find the handle. I couldn’t.
“Where is the fuckigng door handle! Where is it?!”
The door must have been opened. But how?
I gave up and simutaneously took my right leg and tried to feed it into the space of where you naturally would to get out of the car. When I fed my leg out there was no door that I was hitting, so I fed it backwards and kept trying to find the ground. No ground.
“Ugh. This is getting frusterating! I need to get out of this car fast!”
I just took a chance, and fed my foot out to the space behind me and pulled the rest of my body up, but as soon as I got up, my body felt incredibly weak and it was as though I never touched the ground – i just began falling.
As I fell, half way down before I would have maybe hit the ground (only I still hadn’t found that yet) – my body stopped mid-air.
It was as though someone caught me. I felt someones arms feed through under my arms and around my chest. I felt like a Raggedy Anne doll – flopsy.
“Hi”
“Hi.”
“Who are you?”
“I was the first car behind you. We saw the whole thing.”
“We?”
“There’s another girl.”
“Oh. she you’re girlfriend?”
I started to pass out. My eye-lids felt heavy like lava.
He smirked. “No, she was just behind me. We both stopped and waited for your car to stop. Stay awake. Don’t fall asleep.”
“You guys should be boyfriend and girlfriend.” I was so woozy, my eyes kept shutting, my head bobbing.
“Dont’ fall asleep ok? Stay awake. I know it’s hard. Who is that guy anyway? You guys were going really fast.”
His arms dragged me across the pebbly pavement. My tanned 90’s designer cowboy boots skuffing along along the way.
“Can you stand?”
“No. no. tired.”
“Open your eyes. Can you opened your eyes?”
I was really scared too. I think they were clenched shut. I think they’d been closed for some time. I tried to open them. I opened them a tiny bit.
The world was spinning around me with such speed and disoreintation, I couldn’t bare it. I thought I was going to hurl. It was better with them shut.
“Where’s the driver?’
“I don’t know.”
This good samaritan-angel was holding my body up with his legs – I was still sitting on the wet ground, my head cradled by his legs from flopping over. He kept telling me stay awake even though I have never wanted to fall asleep so bad in my life – uncontrollable. I wasn’t that sleeepy before the accident.
Just then, there I saw the blood on my hands.
“Blood. OMG, there’s blood.”
“It’s ok. It’s ok. Where is it coming from? Can you tell? Where do you feel hurt?”
There was blood all over my hands, my shiny purple Sierra Design jacket. (good thing it was Gortex). Then all of a sudden, there was a ton more, coming over my shoulder. Where was it coming from all of a sudden? Where was the driver anyhow. I haven’t seen him in a while. Shoudln’t he be over here? Isn’t he worried about me?
“I’m right here. I gotta go.”
“Huh? What do you mean you gotta go? Where ? Now?”
And he was gone…
to be continued….
How to Eat a Hydro Pole and Live to Tell About It…
23 Years ago today, I could have died.
I survived. Again. But Why? Why is the question…
Kate
Leave me your comments below or share…
• By Kate Flood
• Locale: Nation’s Capital, Best time of year – Autumn
• On Deck: Theivery Corporation
“Trust Your Intuition, Its just like going Fishing….”
– Paul Simon, Father and Daughter
Locale: Rose leather tuffed banquette,
Kate Flood 