I'm careening at 70 MPH (very much in control except for the back of my car which is still skidding towards the back of the stopped car) towards the car wide gap between the back of his car on the left and the snow bank on the right. Just so everyone's clear, if you were to carefully, slowly drive your car, you would have a couple inches on either side to fit through this space, like when you're maneuvering past a double parked car or garbage truck on your left and the row of parked cars on your right on a tight city street and you barely brush your mirror on the car or truck on your left and the mirrors on the parked cars on the right. That's how tight this gap was. And with the fishtailing, I would have no chance unless it corrected in the next split second. Because I was going so fast, I was afraid that when it corrected it would overcorrect and fishtail to the right before it corrected fully straight and that would prevent me from making it through this tiny gap to safety. But at least I would not hit his car with full impact and only maybe smash off the snow bank into him, or just hit the snow bank and flip my car, flying by him completely and only kill or injure myself, which would certainly be a better outcome than taking him/them with me.
In all my years of driving, up to this moment, inches from the back of this stopped car, I had never, thank God, knock on wood, had too bad of an accident. Driving so drunk I couldn't stand up, doing doughnuts at 70 on the West Side Highway while drinking a fifth of Jack Daniels, missing turns on country roads causing us to fly airborne into ditches, racing friends up glass-icy banked windy Vermont roads, using both sides of the yellow line like a private race track without regard to oncoming motorists...
But this moment was almost unique in that the only chance of survival was as perfectly wide as my car. The reason it was "almost" unique is that 15 years ago I had to fit through the same exact gap in order to avert disaster.
It was a bright sunny day in Santa Monica. I was driving a rented red Mustang convertible. (Give me a break, it was 1991 and it was my first real Hollywood experience ever.)
I was dating Molly Ringwald and living with her in her house on Mulholland Drive overlooking the valley and Warner Brother's lot where I was writing If Lucy Fell for her. Yeah, she was gonna do it before Sarah Jessica Parker ended up in the role. (The full story is in the book. I can't spill it all here, kids! This is just a taste.)
We were in a fight, I don't remember about what and we were gonna meet at one of my favorite spots in LA and talk about it; the benches in the Santa Monica Park on the promenade on the cliff that overlooks the ocean. I think I like it there so much because it reminds me of New York, the benches and the homeless, but also looks at the ocean. I like anything that helps keep my ego in check, and when in LA it's really hard because all you see is rich and white and movies and fake and sycophantic and deceit and smoke up your ass and it's easy for me to completely lose sight of the truth. The homeless people in their tent communities on the promenade help remind me that all is not Disney in the world. It's nice to have to check the seat of the bench to make sure there aren't any lice, keeps me right sized.
Molly was waiting for me on one of the benches at the end of SanVicente. I was at the stop light at the intersection of 7th Street and San Vicente facing north, waiting to make the left onto SanVicente to head west to meet her.
The light turned green. I punched it and hung the left. My ass instantly flew out to the right, fishtailing out of control. It was bizarre to me since the road was completely dry. I instinctively cut the wheel back into the direction of the skid having been in many drunken fishtailing episodes on snow in high school in Vermont. But this time I was neither drunk nor on snow. The back of the car violently whipped back the other way, I couldn't have accelerated to more than 30 mph turning the corner but because of the thrust of the swerving and the weight of the back of the car I was literally now perpendicular to the direction I was heading on the road. I was completely sideways. I cut the wheel back hard the other direction and whipped back to the right, again, completely sideways to the road. I was inches of force away from not being able to keep the car from just spinning in doughnuts, the torque of each counter whip seemingly gaining momentum. I was also skidding to the right with every back and forth I did.
I was heading for the curb and sidewalk on the right. Luckily, since it's LA, there aren't many people walking on the sidewalks, especially on San Vicente near the beach. Most of the people are running on the running path in the center among the eucalyptus trees. And there aren't many parked cars so I thought I would, at worst, wipe out against a building harmlessly because at this point it was clear, no amount of my skill was going to get this car headed straight. I could either let go of trying to control the fishtailing and do doughnuts until I stopped, or head up onto the sidewalk to smash into a building.
Even though there weren't any cars around me on the road, I felt since the majority of the people where in the median running and I was already heading for the sidewalk where there weren't any people, I should take my chances there rather than risk out of control doughnuts in the road and possibly jump the other way into the runners.
But then I noticed that RIGHT WHERE I WAS HEADED WAS A LONE PARKED CAR... WITH SOMEONE SITTING INSIDE IT!
I was headed straight for it. A Volvo. And behind it, about A SINGLE CAR WIDTH AWAY, WAS A TELEPHONE POLE. I mean a car width if you were driving towards it, not as wide as the length of a car. The same kind of width as the gap in Vermont last week. The kind that if you were driving very slowly, very carefully and folded in your side mirror, you could negotiate without scraping either side of your car as you passed through. BUT I WAS FLYING SIDEWAYS TOWARDS IT, OUT OF CONTROL!
The exact same scenario as in Vermont. I would either hit the parked car with the guy sitting in it, or if my ass whipped back the other way in time, smash into the telephone pole! Either way it seemed I was going to be late to meet Molly...
I braced for the impact as it seemed impossible not to smash into either the parked car or the telephone pole I was fishtailing so extremely.
SUDDENLY! I WAS THROUGH THE GAP WITH A LOUD BANG!!!!! as both my front tires exploded from the impact with the curb but somehow, I had neither hit the telephone pole nor, more importantly, the car with the man sitting in it. I slammed on the breaks but NOTHING!!! I seemed to be GAINING SPEED! I STOOD ON THE BREAKS WITH BOTH MY FEET AND STILL NOTHING.
The accelerator was jammed.
I flew across the sidewalk and started cutting a swath though shrubberies and fences as I gained speed until finally was FLYING TOWARDS A BRICK WALL!
BAM!!!!!
And I stopped. The car was totaled but I was fine. This was pre-air bags or the thing didn't because no balloon ballooned but I had braced myself and even with the accelerator stuck I could have only been going about 40 at most because the lawns knocked my speed back. I jumped out of the car.
"MOTHER FUCKER!!!! MOTHER FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKER!!!!"
I was hyped. People ran over to me. The guy from the parked car, "Are you alright?"
"Yeah I'm fine... MOTHER FUCK!!!!!" I was shaking. I couldn't believe I hadn't smashed into him. That I had made it through that slim gap.
"The fucking accelerator stuck! MOTHER FUCKER!!!"
Suddenly, this crew cut 50 year old jogger was all in my face.
"Let me smell your fingers."
"Get the fuck away from me fuck!"
"Have you been drinking?"
"No. Have you you fuck. Get the fuck away from me!!"
"I'm an off duty police man. Calm down."
"YOU CALM THE FUCK DOWN, FUCK!!! I JUST TOTALLED A FUCKING CAR INTO A BRICK FUCKING WALL AND ALMOST DIED!!!!"
He grabbed my fingers and tried to smell them. I yanked them away and took a fighting posture. "BACK THE FUCK OFF, JACK!!!!"
"I'm a policeman! Relax."
"WHERE THE FUCK IS YOUR BADGE, POLICEMAN?!!! YOU LOOK LIKE A FUCKING JOGGER TO ME!!! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!!!! I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE?!!!"
"I'm running. I don't carry a badge."
"GOOD. THEN YOU'RE A FUCKING JOGGER!!! NOW GET OUT OF MY FUCKING FACE!!!"
"Why are you so excited?"
"DO YOU SEE WHAT FUCKING HAPPENED YOU DUMB FUCK!!!! If you're a cop you should be trying to calm me down not incite me by accusing me of anything. THIS IS AN ACCIDENT, NOT A CRIMINAL EVENT!!!"
"It just doesn't make sense that in the middle of the day you could have this kind of accident unless you were drunk or smoking crank."
"Well I wasn't okay?! I've been clean and sober for ten years so FUCK OFF!!!! THE ACCELLERATOR STUCK!!! I TOLD YOU THAT!!"
"Okay. I believe you. Try and relax." And he chilled out. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, fine. Thanks for asking" I said sarcastically. "I'm supposed to meet a friend on the promenade."
"You need to stay here until the police get here."
"I know." I looked up at the throng and spotted a dude who had to be in the entertainment business. A writer, actor... something.
"Would you mind doing me a big favor?"
"Sure what. You want some water or something?"
"No. I'm meeting this girl on the bench on the promenade at the end of this street. It's just a couple blocks. Could you please run down there and tell her I crashed and ask her to come here."
"Oh, wow. I wish I could, but I..." He had nothing to do; he was just being a dick. I needed him to do it so I told him who she was.
"It's Molly Ringwald."
"Get the fuck out of here."
"Will you please just tell her I'm here?"
"Molly Ringwald is at the end of San Vicente on a bench waiting for you." He said incredulously.
"No. I'm lying. Could you please? Thanks a lot."
He was off like a shot. Good Samaritan that he was. I think he grabbed a head shot first. Or pulled one out of his ass.
She showed up a few minutes later along with the cops and the tow truck and the drama was over. She drove me to get another rent-a-car and we solved whatever our fight had been about.
So last week, on Route 100 in Vermont, I was about to try and recreate some version of this miracle of fitting a car through a gap that it had no business fitting through instead of killing someone. I wasn't fishtailing nearly as badly as I had been in LA but I was going much much faster. I VEERED TO THE RIGHT AND BRACED FOR IMPACT!!!
WOOSH!!!!
I was through. I touched neither the snow bank nor the stopped car waiting to turn into the gas station.
"I just almost died," I told my agent on the phone. The first words that had been spoken since I pressed in the scroller on the Blackberry to start the call a split second before the near catastrophe.
"Hello? Hello?" He couldn't hear me. The signal shut off and disconnected him. I threw the phone down on the seat vowing never ever to talk on it again while driving and tried to manage my heart rate which was skipping all over the place like a tap dancer. It normalized but its syncopated rap was supplanted by a rush of adrenaline or a rushing away of adrenaline or whatever happens in your body when you're prepared for death and then nothing happens and a warm flood washed through me and my heart beat really really deeply and hard and fast.
I took a deep breath.
"Thank you God. Thank you.... Wow."
I drove along the dark, starlit, clear cold road with no one around me.
"Wow," I said out loud again to confirm I was alive and had a voice and this wasn't a dream that I hadn't smashed.
It wasn't and I hadn't. I could drive home and make a cheeseburger and watch a basketball game in front of the fire on the couch.
Who's luckier than us.
Who the mother fuck is luckier than us. If you're reading this now, off the top of my head, off the top of your head you can list ten things that no one else in the world has! That 90 percent of the humans that have this precious gift of life don't have and will NEVER HAVE! Then if you want to get real grateful and forget about whatever "problem" you may think you have, start on the ones that you take for granted that 90 percent of everyone else does have too but that aren't any less miraculous.
Eyes to see.
Ears to hear.
Hands work.
Both legs?
Someone loves you?
A mom?
A dog?
A meal in your stomach?
A roof over your head? Just for fucking starters...
But for the Grace of God go we. But for the Grace of God. Who did you help today?
Posted by Eric Schaeffer at 7:00 AM