John Zeitler

Friday the 13th is probably one of the days I feel least superstitious about. I’ve always taken a small amount of pride in the number 13 not really being all that ominous for me; in most of the places where I lived on my own until I moved to Pittsburgh, a 13 entered into the address somewhere. Leaving aside the fact that those places were usually fraught with disasters occurring to me in personal and professional life, it didn’t give me any significant trouble. Moreover, it seemed like Friday the 13th was usually a preternaturally lucky day for me.

So it was a couple weeks ago, that I was feeling rather unafraid on the 13th as I was heading to a friend’s house for our usual biweekly meetup. The reports of some bad weather on the way hadn’t deterred me, as there hadn’t even been a single snowflake before I arrived. The party went on, as planned, and a good time was had by all. Even once the weather did turn, I felt confident: there had been some bad patches a week prior, and I’d slid a little going home that time, but nothing too out of the ordinary; moreover, it was expected that the road crews were now prepared for this, and that there would be salt trucks out and plows running. The group was planning a field activity for the next day, so most of us went to call it an early night around 12:30.

I drove home carefully, trying not to slip on the ice. There were some bad stretches of road here and there, but nothing unmanageable– as I had surmised, the road crews were out in force and the highways were relatively well-maintained. I was very confident as I pulled off of the Parkway West and onto the second-to-last road home.

So naturally, I was caught completely off-guard when I hit the patch of ice a half a mile from my exit.

Have you ever been in a car when it’s in a slide? The first few times, it’s terrifying. However, under the right circumstances, and with proper training, sliding a car changes from a wet-your-pants-scary moment to a holy-crap-did-you-see-that moment. It’s a basic tenet of street racing– the drift– and if you know how to do it, and do it well, you can pull off some amazing feats that defy conventional comprehension of what a car is supposed to even be capable of. If you’re not trained or you’re trying to drift at a point where it’s completely inappropriate, however, you’ll quickly come to a greater appreciation of why it’s so difficult to do, just before you wreck.

I’m not trained properly in drift racing. I’ve never intentionally drifted a car; I’ve done it in go-karts, and only once with a shopping cart, but never in a car that I was driving. But, what I am capable of doing is getting out of a slide on the ice. It’s an instinctual thing for me, having learned how to drive in a colder climate like Western New York. I can’t even really explain how to do it; it’s eerily similar to trying to explain how to use the Force. A slide is a fundamental disagreement between the steering wheel and the laws of physics. You can’t fight the car; it has two thousand pounds on you. Instead, steer with the car; guide it gently but quickly in the direction it’s supposed to be going. It’s easier to turn the car a few degrees per tenth of a second than it is to get it to snap a right angle instantaneously. Whatever you do, don’t hit the brakes until you’re going in the right direction again– you’ll only lock up the wheels, conceding the argument with Sir Isaac Newton (the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in motorsports) without even offering any resistance.

The first impact was to the rear corner, on the passenger’s side. I’d slid off the road away from the passing lane on the divided highway; the guide rail was just tall enough to smack into the car. It crunched the bumper inwards a little bit, knocking out the side light– it flailed uselessly as the slide continued. Apparently, the reverberations also knocked out the passenger side mirror while leaving the assembly untouched; I have no idea how that worked. I’m sure that if I had enough time and a more objective understanding of the accident, I’d be able to piece that together. Anyway, the impact wasn’t enough to stop the car, but it did provide an interesting counter-vector to my motion.

The next thing I noticed after hitting the railing was that I was facing a direction perpendicular to the lane orientation of the highway. Somehow this was sending me directly into the concrete barrier dividing the traffic directions. Again, this seems highly improbable given my current understanding of physics, but I am confident that with a few dozen years’ study (and possibly also a time machine) I can coax a solution out of the data. This is where I could feel the metaphorical Force flow through me. In the scant few milliseconds that I was facing the barrier, I somehow worked out the complex control sequence needed in order to prevent a head-on collision. I don’t even have any recollection of the thought process. It just happened.

This, I think, is why I am fascinated by people who believe we’ll one day know everything about how our brains work. It ain’t gonna happen. No matter what, the human brain, the human mind is a work of biological art so profoundly simple and yet immeasurably complex that it can never hope to fully understand itself or its contemporaries. You can boil it down to simple chemical reactions, but that ignores the question of will. You can call it a soul framed but not fettered in flesh, but that ignores the effects of drugs. It is a strange, fascinating, and eternally inscrutable miracle that we all carry around with us, not even thinking about. I shake my head and shrug my shoulders at people who believe they can understand everything about the mind, but I will always cheer on anyone who keeps on looking for the answers despite that fact.

The world snapped back to real-time when the second impact happened. I lurched sideways in the driver’s seat, my left arm contorting as it strained to fly across my body while remaining attached to it. The seat belt did its job perfectly, fastening me to the seat. The concrete barrier was to my immediate left, just beyond where the side mirror used to be. The car was now rolling slowly forward, idling along, most of its kinetic energy having been absorbed by the barrier. A soft thump heralded each rotation of the axle. I blinked twice as my conscious mind caught up with the adrenaline-soaked bits. I’m safe, I thought. I’m okay. I’m okay.

I quickly remembered that I was not alone on the highway. I scanned the rear-view mirror– the only one I had left– and saw the headlights of the cars behind me slowing down, cautious to give me distance in case my vehicle did any more wild maneuvering. I slammed my right hand into the red warning light button on the dashboard, hoping that my taillights weren’t too badly damaged, and began turning the car to exit the highway. I was right by where I would have gotten off anyway, and so I pulled over on the exit ramp. A pickup truck pulled alongside, and its passenger rolled the window down. “You okay?” he asked, as I opened the door to my car.

“I’m fine,” I said, “Just a little rattled.”

“That was awesome, man,” he said. “I’m glad you’re okay. That’s what’s important.” His friend pulled the truck away, leaving me behind.

I turned my attention to my own vehicle. The car was still running; I knew better than to turn it off just yet, as I was afraid I might not get it back on. Still, I walked around the car slowly, evaluating the damage. I saw the passenger side-light hanging down, and I also saw some bad scrapes and gashes on the driver’s side. It was pretty grim. But it was also dark, and I figured I needed to get to someplace safer than the off-ramp of a highway. I climbed back inside and put the car into gear; it moved. The thumping noise got more insistent as I accelerated gently down the ramp, but I babied it as I drove the last quarter-mile to my apartment complex.

I made it into the parking lot off to the side of my building and shut down the engine. After another quick walkaround to confirm my initial assessment, I pulled my backpack from the passenger seat and went into my home. I glanced at the DVR clock as I pulled off my coat and shoes. It was 12:55 AM, Saturday, January 14th.

My luck had just run out.