Yesterday was my birthday.
Oh, not exactly. December 11th was actually the 75th anniversary of my birth. It’s why the French saying Bon anniversaire, or “happy anniversary of your birth,” is actually more appropriate.
Actually, other countries seem to say things a lot better. Take the English, for example. While I can say, “My name is Michael,” and be reasonably accurate, the fact is there are lots of other Michaels and they aren’t even all men.
The Brits say “I’m called Michael,” which is much nicer, unless your actual name is Gwendolyne.
Anyway, yesterday was the anniversary of my birth.
Today was very close to being the anniversary of my death, 34 years ago on the freeways of Los Angeles. My life from about 1985 until 1990 was often a series of unintended consequences. In fact, one day in October 1988 — a job offer that came one day late — wound up being the cause of my career taking me to my ultimate destination of Southern California instead of San Francisco, which was where I really wanted to be.
I had been in Los Angeles for seven months, staying with friends, and had finally found an apartment down in Orange County that I liked. My little Pontiac Fiero — the nicest car I had ever bought for myself — was just a two-seater, and I had my first computer and my small color television on the passenger seat.
My friend Mick had a station wagon — remember station wagons? — and he had more of my stuff with him, trailing along behind me as we headed south toward Anaheim.
There was a point going through East Los Angeles where two of the busiest freeways in the country — north-south I-5 and east-west I-10 — merged, and some of the traffic from I-10 merged onto I-5 to go south.
I was on the freeway and had the right of way, but the driver of an 18-wheeler merging from the left apparently didn’t see my small car and started moving into the space I was occupying.
Traffic was heavy and much of it was trucks. As soon as the first truck hit my car and pushed it to the right, my car started spinning. The most fascinating thing I remember was that everything seemed to slow down. Strangely, I don’t remember being frightened at all.
I remember one thought going through my head:
“I wonder how many trucks are going to hit me.”
As it turned out, only one other truck did. It was an 18-wheeler and luckily its trailer was empty. With traffic heading south, my low-slung car was pointed west and headed underneath the trailer. The left rear tires hit the right side of my car at the passenger seat and started climbing over the car. If it had gone completely over, I would have been crushed and killed.
But since the trailer was empty, by the time the tires had crushed the right side of my car, I had been spit out and started spinning again. I did 1 1/2 complete rotations, didn’t get hit again and slammed into the guard rail on the right shoulder.
Mick, who I had known since 1965 when his name was Pancho, saw the entire sequence take place in front of him. He pulled off the road about 100 yards down and started running back toward my crushed car. “Don’t move him,” he yelled.
Imagine his surprise when I opened my door and stepped out of the car.
It was almost as much as my surprise when I looked at my car and realized I had been in the only part of it that hadn’t been crushed.
I believed in God before that. If I hadn’t, I certainly would have after this.
The highway patrol officer who looked at my car said it was a miracle I had survived, let alone walked away from it. I had a slightly dislocated pelvis and a bruise that covered more than half of the outside of my left leg.
That night, for the first and only time in my life, I dreamed I was dead.
Quite a day.