It occurred to me as I was driving home from the casino on
the interstate with traffic all around and all of the drivers speeding that I
was actually driving in a NASCAR race at half speed with halfwit drivers
surrounding me on a seventy mile track. All of the cars were bigger than mine
and the tractor-trailers were four or five times my size and nearly forty times
my weight. One tiny screw up and we would be in a twenty or thirty car pileup.
The winds were whipping from the north at one moment and from the south the
next minute, making it difficult to control the car. All the way home I had
visions of twisted metal, spilling fuel and flames as high as a two-story
house. My only comfort was that we had both lost most of our gambling stake, so
our money wouldn’t have gone up in the flames with us. Road work was going on
at several spots, so there were pit crews bobbing on and off the track. One
slow-moving rig was spraying new center lines on the track, squeezing it down
to one lane, while the shoulder side had a drop off due to the new pavement. It
was tough for me to slide through the gap and impossible for the
tractor-trailer in front to give way to the painter and not drop off the
shoulder on the other side. The big rig swayed for an incredibly long, yet few seconds
as my life flashed before me and I begged forgiveness for my lifting that
package of Hostess cupcakes from the corner confectionery those 60 some years
ago. I saw a movie once where the actor said, “You never know when you will
experience your last kiss.” I was just hoping at that moment that my last kiss
wasn’t my rectum passing through my lips as the line of cars behind me squashed
our car like a bug between them and the tractor-trailer ahead of us.
