The Catastrophic Failure

I was driving to San Jose to drop off my dog Abby at my mom’s friend’s house for the night and let’s just say that I never really made it there. It quite honestly felt like some sort of dream. Nothing like this could ever happen to me, let alone anybody else, right?

I was driving southbound on the freeway when something started to feel strange. My car started to feel bumpy, and I assumed that it was because of the road terrain. But then, all of a sudden, my car swerved to the left. I freaked out. I don’t know what you are supposed to do in those kind of situations, and all I know is that I was trying my hardest not to hit the sides, as I was going over an overpass at the time and if I went over that edge.. I don’t think that I would be sitting here right now typing this to you.

I quickly realized that I couldn’t steer and that every time I tried to go straight, I would swerve to the side. I’m pretty sure that I was in a state of shock until I finally hit the brakes and found myself horizontal in the middle of the highway. I saw the lanes of cars behind me all come to a stop and as I tried to drive again, I still had no control of the steering wheel. Thankfully, there was a triangle of road between the onramp and the freeway that my car managed to drive into. I hit the brakes, pulled the parking break up, and sat there in shock as I tried to figure out if what had just happened had actually happened.

It was a straight-up miracle that I didn’t hit anybody or anything. Basically, what happened is that I lost a tire; one of my back tires literally came off. They don’t know how it happened and the AAA guy told me that he had never seen anything like it happen before, calling it a “catastrophic failure.”

As you can imagine, my mind has continuously kept flashing back to it. It was a wake-up call in the worst kind of way, and I’m a different person right now than I was that day. If I’m still standing here today, that must mean something, right?

In the past, whenever people would say “live your life to the fullest because tomorrow isn’t promised,” I would roll my eyes and shrug it off. We live in a society where technology is advanced, healthcare is available, and the normal progression of life chugs along at a constant pace. What we don’t consciously realize is that we are provided with 24 hours of insane wonder every single day, and you never know when that will be taken away from you. And the longest minute of my life taught me that.