My life used to be boring until I almost died in a car crash when I was seventeen.Â
I was riding in the back seat of my friend Drew’s beat-up, old Chevy and it was me, him and our friend Thomas. It was raining and we were driving the back roads in Clifton, Virginia which is fun to do because they twist and rise and fall. This part of Virginia is basically a forest with a few mansions connected by small roads, I used to call it the worlds largest theme park.Â
Drew pointed at a road sign and said, “35? What’s that mean.”
 He stepped on the gas. HIM’s Wings of a Butterfly was playing on the radio.Â
We came to one bend in the road and instead of hugging the curve we just kept driving straight. I saw all the trees lit up by the headlights as we rocketed towards them and at first that didn’t seem strange. We were flying through camouflage and I felt like we were part of a video game and I could use my body to steer us through the trees. I thought if our whale of a car could narrowly avoid the big trees we’d be able to slow down and we’d live. I knew that we’d live and we’d drive out of the forest the way we’d come in and we’d laugh about it and I’d never tell anyone because car crashes are so embarrassing.Â
Those thoughts happened in a split second. Thomas, in the front passenger seat, turned around and swung his arm out knocking me to the side so hard that I hit the window, and then seat in front of me and then the ceiling and passed out.Â
Luckily I wasn’t wearing a seat belt.Â
When I came too Thomas was kicking open the jammed door. I got out of the car and dropped a few feet because the car wasn’t even toughing the ground and I turned around and Drew was fine too, we ha trouble standing up but we weren’t hurt. Drew pointed to the front of the car and said, “Everything’s working, even the radio, but there’s a tree through the engine.”
What had stopped us from continuing to fly through the forest was a fallen tree, that we’d hit so strong it’d pierced almost completely through the car. I hadn’t even noticed when I woke up but if Thomas hadn’t pushed me out of the way I would have been impaled.Â
We waited and someone picked us up and dropped us off in the KFC parking lot where Drew worked and I called Erin to come pick me up. There were no consequences. Drew sold his car for a profit. Thomas and I didn’t really talk about it. It don’t talk to any of them anymore and it feels like it never happened at all.
I only think about the accident sometimes because ever since everything in my life has been strange, kind of wonderful and everything I ask for happens. Sometimes I’ll say, I wish someone would buy me a milkshake right now and then someone will bring me a milkshake because they were thinking of me. It happens all the time. Once I said, “The only way Germany will beat Brazil is if something happens to Neymar.” Two minutes later Neymar fractured his spine and German won the World Cup.
When things like this happen I imagine that ten years ago I did die. Thomas, couldn’t have reached back that fast he wasn’t even paying attention. Even if he did I hit my head so many times and I never felt any pain. I was either impaled by that tree or I broke my head open. And I could have sworn I was wearing a seat belt.Â
The first thing Drew said when we got in his car was always, ”Buckle up.”
This is just those last 15 seconds of brain activity you experience when you die that they say is a lot like eternal dreaming. Â
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