Reply #36: That bastard made me total my car!

[jobycom]

There I was, at 2 AM, about to cross the Pecos River bridge in my rented Camry on I-10 in west Texas, about 100 miles from the nearest thing that sort of looked like a town. Tom Petty's "Full Moon Fever" was the only thing keeping my eyes from shutting down completely. Suddenly, on the very fringe of my speeding headlights, a ghost appeared. A glowing ghost, about two and half feet high and about the same size around, and it floated or waddled straight into my path. As Tom Petty was running down a dream, I made a quick correction to my path to avoid this ghost, which grew in solidity as I drew closer. But the ghost wouldn't stay put. It drifted to the left, to the same spot of highway I had redirected my Camry towards, requiring me at the last moment to flick the wheel a little further left than I intended. It had been raining that day, hard, and the road was polished smooth, and at this exact point on the interstate, the right lane of asphalt dropped down three inches to the left lane of old, glassy smooth concrete, just as I-10 made a last second bend before crossing the Pecos River.

The combination of Petty's guitar chords, the change in surface frictions, and the sleep that a 7-Eleven Big Gulp Dr. Pepper had not fully been able to replace was just too much for the poor little Toyota rental. It fishtailed thrice, and on the fourth I knew I had lost it. Rather than flip, I hooked the wheel as hard as I could at the last second and bounced against the beloved and aptly-named guard rail of the Pecos River Bridge, forty feet above the river basin. The car and I went one way, and the contents of my trunk went the other, scattering like Bush voters when the media shows up at a KKK rally.

Four hours later, as my wife, six year old daughter, three month old infant, and I checked into the nearest hotel--over 100 miles from the crash scene--tired, shaken, but alive, I realized that "Full Moon Fever" was still in the cassette deck of the Camry, cruising on the flatbed of a wrecker towards whatever junk depositary such vehicles go to when they are totaled at 2 AM on I-10 in the middle of friggin' nowhere.

Adios, Tom Petty. Nothing personal, but whenever "Running Down a Dream" comes on my car radio now, I change the station. Of course, it's still on my IPod.