My older son blew out a tire in the fast lane of the highway on his commute to school the other day.
He called me from the narrow shoulder. He’d lost control in the fast lane. The car was pulling the wrong way and he had to muscle it over across four fast oncoming lanes.
Somehow he did it. Somehow he was just fine, sitting in the breakdown lane in a crooked car, calling me to ask what he should do next.
I wasn’t sure what he should do next because, in the case of another incredulous somehow, despite my deep emergency experience — 10,000 hours and more — I still suck at emergencies.
Sorry, Malcolm Gladwell, but your premise doesn’t work every time.
Should my son call 911? But it wasn’t an accident, exactly. But do we just call AAA? This felt different than a run-of-the-mill flat. It had been an explosion.
All I knew was I wanted him to get out of the car. As I nervously ripped my younger son out of a deep-so-deep sleep to race up to the spot on the highway, I told my older son to get away from the car, not to stand in relation to it.
“Do not stand where, if it gets hit, it will hit you.”
Moments later a cop drove by and in the background of our call, I heard him tell my son to do the opposite. “Stay in the car and buckle your seatbelt.”
One thing I have learned about emergencies is that luck figures in quite considerably. Access to expertise is, yes, critical and irreplaceable. But you also need things to happen right, which often depends on both you and other people making what will only later, because of a good and right outcome, be judged to be good decisions. Conventional wisdom can get you to this good and right outcome some of the time; opposing gut calls can get you there other times.
Problematically, you never know which kind of time you’re in when you’re in it.
Which is to say the cop’s advice seemed like a crapshoot, and I didn’t like that seatbelt detail either because it seemed to imply the cop also thought there was a good chance my son would be hit from behind while waiting for help.
I kept my older son on the line while I sped to him, my youngest and I both in pajamas. Through the phone, I could hear that whish-whish of traffic whizzing by, and wondered if I might spend the rest of my life wishing we’d listened to the cop. Or wishing we hadn’t.
My son told me not to pull up too close to him when I arrived, knowing I’d need room to accelerate and merge back onto the road at some point. He had definitely been rattled, but he was also still making a lot of good calm sense. Level-headed. I thought of his head as an actual level, the reason why the pictures in the hallway of his brain sit straight.
The gallery in my brain hangs differently though, so, flustered, I forgot that smart directive. When I arrived to the too-narrow shoulder, I pulled up right behind him. I just wanted that whole (still whole!) him in my car as soon as possible.
I told him to tell the now-arrived tow truck driver that we would wait elsewhere, somewhere off the highway. But the tow truck driver said we had to wait with the vehicle — like the car had emotions, like it would feel deserted by us, family members, if we drove away.
My son got in my car, looked to the back seat and told his little brother to move from behind the driver’s seat to behind the passenger seat. And to buckle up. That creepy directive again.
My younger son did as he was told, mechanically, sleepily, like he might later be easily convinced he he’d just had one very vivid, trippy dream.
There were so many little factors that kept this day just a regular Tuesday instead of a life-altering day. Throughout the day, as the what-ifs stalked me around, I tried to marvel at what had gone right instead of crying about what an unplain Tuesday would’ve meant.
I felt grateful that the one bona fide, collective skill our family has is a full-script command of the Cars movies. Maybe your family doesn’t have this, in which case what are you doing with your time and also know that the first movie turns on Doc Hudson’s counter intuitive racing advice: turn right to go left. My son said he thought of this as he made all of his excellent split-second decisions and maneuvers.
I felt grateful for all of the video games my son’s played. All that quick-twitching his way away from imminent threats. 10,000 simulation hours that paid big in the real moment (okay, okay, one for you, Malcolm).
I felt grateful that my son had been playing football for months and months, something I’d previously considered more of a life-and-limb risk than a protection. But he’d been able to power steer without power steering. I thought of my own lost ability to open jars and rearrange furniture and the fact that my arms are largely just for decoration now. I realized I probably could not have done what he’d done.
I felt grateful for my son’s paternally-inherited calm under pressure, the disposition that prevented him from panicking and slamming the brakes, that allowed him to keep all his wits about him and override his maternally-inherited Jesus-take-the-wheel.
I felt grateful that each of the motorists he’d cut in front of had been running early that morning or had been running late, had stopped for coffee or had opted not to, liked the next song that came on so didn’t look away to change it, didn’t get a call to answer or a text bubble to pop.
I felt grateful that all of those butterfly wings had flapped and flapped. And then in the end, just a breeze.
Of course this sums up one of the craziest things about life: it only goes one way. For all the possibility-considering we all do, the sleep we lose inventing trajectories and domino effects, outcomes are singular.
Things happen or they don’t. Tuesdays stay plain or they don’t.
And I’ve personally become so spoiled by plain days. I spent the better [worse] part of seven years never having one, but now plain days feel regular again, my return to factory settings.
At some point over the last five years, I stopped waking up thinking life was too dangerous to live.
But that dormant feeling awakens oh-so-easily. And all of my gratefulness for this plain day made me worry: maybe this narrow-feeling escape had been like a promotional offer on Grace. Like the kind of freebie God offers to get you to resubscribe and become a pledging member again.
I mean I don’t think God is a micro manager AT ALL. I’ve always childishly pictured him more like a Chairman, a 30,000 foot view guy (that’s his perch after all??), dealing on a macro level, leaving the specifics to line supervisors and fellow board members Luck and Fate.
And, for the record, never getting involved in athletic contest outcomes like some big bookie in the sky.
But this could have been a totally other kind of Tuesday. Not a plain one. My Irish Catholic east coast roots tingled: there but for the grace of God pealed like hourly church bells in my head.
And for days following this morning, I’d look at my son, tear up, and feel, well, there’s no other word for it: Blessed. But like Blessed Classic, the original formula, before hashtags came along and ruined the flavor entirely.
My two sons and I spent a half hour in the zero-margin-for-error breakdown lane. Are they actually talking about cars when they say this lane is for breakdowns? Seven inches to our left, 70 mile an hour traffic rushed by in keeping with the hour’s name.
We watched the tow truck driver’s death-defying dance of hooking our hateful car to his truck. I watched the same way I’ve watched Cirque du Soleil, uncomfortable with humans doing things so on the ragged edge of reasonable given the softness and squishiness of the bodies containing them. I watched through my fingers and gasped after particularly fast semis and buses flew by close enough to reshuffle the tow truck driver’s hair. I felt sure that his mom did not know that he or his hair was out here doing this.
I checked the rearview every 10-15 seconds to assess what next contest the tow truck driver would need to please-God survive (I only think God’s not a micromanager…). I fixated on the fast pattern of the traffic, a speeding car every twenty feet. I still did not understand how my son had crossed this pattern without upsetting it. Without upsetting me.
I wondered if we were an alert on Waze: CAR STOPPED. Were approaching drivers looking down to click STILL THERE on the screen? A helpful service to other motorists as long as you don’t plow into the Still There while trying to be helpful.
Minutes passed silently as we stared at the tow truck driver’s work. It had become like a meditation, like an adult coloring book, except the stakes for going outside the lines were much higher.
The tow hitching process was…clunky. For all of the modern advances we’ve made as a species, we have seemingly ignored the tow truck sector. We humans can do complicated surgeries with only the tiniest incisions, and packets of data fly all around us to their cloud destinations and we never even see a thing!
And yet, it still takes 25 minutes to hook a vehicle to a tow truck.
Every time it seemed like the tow truck driver was done, there was another full set of steps he initiated. The whole thing felt very old-fashioned, with multiple crowbar machinations, constant lifting and lowering. I half expected the tow truck driver to produce a horse to pull the car away.
I told my older son that this process needed streamlining. He asked how that could be done. I said I didn’t know — that I’m more of an idea kind of person, less the sort that can piece through how something might actually work. “A giant magnet?” I ventured. I was thinking along the lines of what Wile E Coyote would’ve used.
“That wouldn’t work” he said flatly. “It’s too complicated for that.”
It also felt too complicated to understand why it would be too complicated, so I just quietly assumed he was right, my hopes of a Wile E. Magnet patent dashed (…for now!).
After a few more minutes, I asked my son what class he was missing.
“Physics.” Figures. I remembered Back to School Night, the teacher detailing that the seniors would be calculating the glide of rolling objects.
I presented a simpler idea, less physics, more physical — the trucks should be outfitted differently. Why should the tow truck driver have to reach into the side of his truck for stuff when in all likelihood there are always cars zipping by one of his sides?? Stuff should be stored in the top!
“I guess so…” My son didn’t really seem to want to discuss systematic improvement.
Finally, the car was towed to a side road where it would wait for a second lengthy hitching. We thanked the bravest tow truck driver in America and brought my older son to school. I initiated a AAA request, got my younger son home from his pajama odyssey and ready for school where he would go on to have a mediocre day, the only kind you can hope for after this sort of morning.
Later my older son texted me from school: Can you text me a picture of the husk of the tire?
I knew why he wanted it. He wanted to show his friends. This was a story, a great one, a high-flying caper where the hero wins.
This other story I’m telling about fragile, scary life made up of coin-flip outcomes? Who wants to hear that one? What a gloomy take on a thing that worked out well.
I sent him the pic, loving that he’d used the word husk. It made me tear up again. The world is filled with such singular people, our kids the most so.
We are all Blessed Classic.
And there my son was on that Tuesday. Just sitting in class, texting me.
Still There.
Because it was just a plain day.
Have the plainest of holidays,
Jen.
Oh my. I would’ve been so scared sitting on that “shoulder” too. So happy that you had the plainest of days after that. “Blessed Normal” is a new go to phrase for sure. Hugs to you and your awesome family.
Jen, beautifully done and beautifully written. You captured the seeming randomness of life but even more our struggle to understand or accept how random life can be. Most of all, you reminded me all I take for granted. Thank you for blessing us with this story - “full classic” style. Warmly, Chris Leupold