Maybe this is why I have always had a fascination with unexplained happenings and stuff on the fringes of contemporary science.
I think I have lived a pretty mundane life, for the most part, and things have generally happened like any normal human being would expect them too. Days follow nights, clocks run clockwise, things tend to happen in an orderly fashion based on cause and effect. BUT I have had something VERY odd happen to me when I was younger that I just cannot explain. I don't think I have spoken about this to more then one or two people. Probably because it just bothers me to even think about it and try to understand it.
I guess I was about 17 years old, not had my driver's license very long, and had my mom's car out for a drive. Not that it means much, but I lived in Baltimore at the time, so the names of the roads help me to anchor this in my memory.
I was driving south on Harford Road, around dusk because I remember I had just turned on my headlights although it wasn't really dark out. I got into the left hand lane to make a left hand turn at Cold Spring Lane, and while I was making the turn, someone blew their horn to my left. It was a REAL stupid thing to do, but I turned to look to see who had blown the horn, assuming it was someone I knew. Well, when I turned back to look at where I was driving, ALL I saw in the front of me was the backend of a parked car right dead in front of me. I took the turn fast, like dumb teenagers will do. WAY too fast to stop, and all I could see in the headlights of my mom's car was the backend of that parked car. There was not a damned thing I could do, so I just closed my eyes, gripped the steering wheel straight-armed, waiting for the impact, thinking, "Mom is going to KILL me!!". I have NO idea what happened next, but when I opened my eyes thinking "darn it is taking me a long time to hit that parked car" , I was driving normally on Cold Spring Lane. I had to pull over to the side of the road because I could not believe I was not through my windshield. For long moments I thought I must be dead, because there was just NO WAY in hell I could have missed that parked car.
I'll be honest, I get goose bumps just thinking about it even now. I absolutely cannot explain what happened that day. Even if my reflexes had taken over and I had whipped the steering wheel around to miss that car, I was going fast enough that I would have slid into it sideways. How I could have gone from closing my eyes anticipating the crash, to just driving like nothing at all had happened with no memory at all of what happened inbetween just absolutely scares the hell out of me. Something very unusual happened to me and I have no way to grab a handle on it to even begin to understand it.
Yeah, I know some of you are going to think that I had to have avoided the accident somehow and my mind just blanked it out. But even right now, I can see the backend of that car and how there was not enough room between the front end of my mom's car and that parked car to even have been the slightest chance I could have missed it.
Damn, I WISH I knew what had happened then. I think of this often and for 40 some years it is a hole in my understanding of reality that makes everything else just seem "false". Something happened that couldn't have possibly happened. So how do I really know what is possible and what is not possible?
Heck, no wonder I haven't talked about this. It sounds loony even to me. I'm not even sure I have ever told my wife about this.......
I think I have lived a pretty mundane life, for the most part, and things have generally happened like any normal human being would expect them too. Days follow nights, clocks run clockwise, things tend to happen in an orderly fashion based on cause and effect. BUT I have had something VERY odd happen to me when I was younger that I just cannot explain. I don't think I have spoken about this to more then one or two people. Probably because it just bothers me to even think about it and try to understand it.
I guess I was about 17 years old, not had my driver's license very long, and had my mom's car out for a drive. Not that it means much, but I lived in Baltimore at the time, so the names of the roads help me to anchor this in my memory.
I was driving south on Harford Road, around dusk because I remember I had just turned on my headlights although it wasn't really dark out. I got into the left hand lane to make a left hand turn at Cold Spring Lane, and while I was making the turn, someone blew their horn to my left. It was a REAL stupid thing to do, but I turned to look to see who had blown the horn, assuming it was someone I knew. Well, when I turned back to look at where I was driving, ALL I saw in the front of me was the backend of a parked car right dead in front of me. I took the turn fast, like dumb teenagers will do. WAY too fast to stop, and all I could see in the headlights of my mom's car was the backend of that parked car. There was not a damned thing I could do, so I just closed my eyes, gripped the steering wheel straight-armed, waiting for the impact, thinking, "Mom is going to KILL me!!". I have NO idea what happened next, but when I opened my eyes thinking "darn it is taking me a long time to hit that parked car" , I was driving normally on Cold Spring Lane. I had to pull over to the side of the road because I could not believe I was not through my windshield. For long moments I thought I must be dead, because there was just NO WAY in hell I could have missed that parked car.
I'll be honest, I get goose bumps just thinking about it even now. I absolutely cannot explain what happened that day. Even if my reflexes had taken over and I had whipped the steering wheel around to miss that car, I was going fast enough that I would have slid into it sideways. How I could have gone from closing my eyes anticipating the crash, to just driving like nothing at all had happened with no memory at all of what happened inbetween just absolutely scares the hell out of me. Something very unusual happened to me and I have no way to grab a handle on it to even begin to understand it.
Yeah, I know some of you are going to think that I had to have avoided the accident somehow and my mind just blanked it out. But even right now, I can see the backend of that car and how there was not enough room between the front end of my mom's car and that parked car to even have been the slightest chance I could have missed it.
Damn, I WISH I knew what had happened then. I think of this often and for 40 some years it is a hole in my understanding of reality that makes everything else just seem "false". Something happened that couldn't have possibly happened. So how do I really know what is possible and what is not possible?
Heck, no wonder I haven't talked about this. It sounds loony even to me. I'm not even sure I have ever told my wife about this.......
