Just last week I was traveling home from work, in my car, on the freeway. I came to a place where the freeway narrowed to two lanes. Trucks were in the slow lane. So I moved over, into the fast lane, to pass the slowest traffic. Ahead there had been an accident. I didn’t know that. Soon traffic slowed to stop and go. The woman behind me noticed too late, and she rear-ended me.
I was stuck in the fast lane of the freeway, unable to move, in a disabled and damaged car (the rear of my car, I later learned, had been smashed into my back tires rendering them immovable), for a least a half hour. I sat in the damaged car, alone, unable to move myself, or the car, while other cars sped by me on the left (the accident occurred where there was a left turn lane) and the right. I became increasingly frightened.
As I sat in my car I felt deeply helpless. Cars sped past. I felt like I could be hit again. I didn’t know if my emergency blinkers worked, or could be seen behind me. I smelled chemical smells. I worried that the car might catch fire. I couldn’t go anywhere, my wheelchair, even if it was accessible (which it wasn’t) was out of the question. Getting out of the car, trying to get in my wheel chair, and wheeling across the freeway, would have been the most dangerous thing I could do. I just sat and waited, in danger, afraid, helpless, and felt my own vulnerability.
I was caught in the fast lane, the irony didn’t escape me, waiting, wondering if this was the end, watching others speed past. When the CHP arrived (she did call them) I was almost incoherent. He, the CHP officer, got me, and my car, off the freeway (by pushing my car). I was an emotional wreck, an incoherent, disabled, brain-damaged man; he wanted as little to do with me as possible. After making sure I was physically alright, he went to hang out with the woman and her child. He assured me he had called a tow truck, and then went away. She, at least apologized, gave me her pertinent information, and inquired about my well-being.
Later, after I was home, during the night, I awakened, afraid, and the tears came. I’m not the kind of man who tries to stop them. I’m crazier than that. Instead I felt my own terror, the helplessness that is my life, the quickness with which it could all change, and the pervasive sense of aloneness that accompanies it all. I was bereft, in the darkness, alone, uncertain, ambivalently and miraculously alive.
Now perhaps this is part of my particular delusion. But, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I had some strange feeling that what happened to me was happening to us all. Maybe I’m narcissistic, deluded, crazy, and too enamored of my special-ness. But the reason I feel compelled to write about this horrible experience, is because I have the feeling that you too are stuck, unmoving, endangered, in the fast lane. I don’t know how this could be true, I just have this terrible feeling it is.
The fast lane is a deadly place. We all have to go there from time to time. I wonder. Is this a necessity, do we inhabit it wisely, just for convenience, because it is there, at the speed of the economy, our own obsessions, the hubris of our own kind, and of course, is this really progress? So many of these questions I feel helpless behind, un-American to ask, a luddite, an elderly curmudgeon, and maybe I am. But, feeling helpless, trapped and disabled, a statistic in the making, leaves me shaking, and wondering about the de-humanization we have given over to, at the hands of massification, our excuse for development.
I lay awake in the night feeling like I am part of the wilderness that had just discovered a trap. I thought I knew what to be afraid of, what to avoid. But now, I had been captured by something else; something placed right here in my way. I am screaming, not so much in pain or fear, but with indignity and warning. Life has made room for the fast lane, but are we really ready for it? Am I? I don’t know, I sleep walk into it just as easily as anyone, but for a terrifying time, I could feel the real consequence of this choice, and it arouses the question in me, is this the human I want to be?
l/d
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I need your help. I’m starting a blog. This is an attempt to reach out, to put the Slow Lane out there more. I’m turning into a writer, now I could use an audience. I’m going too keep sending these missives, these messages in a bottle, to you via email as long as I can, but I’m going to start a blog too. This will allow others to be touched, me to archive these pieces, and hopefully more interactions. Will you check it out, refer others to it (if you think it is valuable) and generally wish me well and support this endeavor. See my words at www.lucky-theslowlane
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