Well, well, well my dear readers, the fact that you are reading this right now is an oddly lucky thing — for me at least. It would seem that some force in this universe is intent upon ending my life. I have yet to decide if this “force” is of a human form or of an altogether more transcendental nature, but it has tried to kill me three, possibly even four times in the last week. I kid you not folks, I have narrowly avoided death four times in the last week, and three of them have happened under nearly identical conditions.

In the very first instance, which encompasses three of the four events in question all within ten minutes of each other, it all began with a bit of repetition, dans le style de la France. You see, the day before this unfortunate string of events began for me, a similar series of events led to the death of a young woman on the highway that I take to work every morning. A white pickup truck, flatbed trailer in tow, spun off the road and into the median. The young woman had seen the incident and stopped to render her assistance to the driver. She was struck by another truck in the process and pronounced dead on the scene.

This all happened very early in the morning, and as I drove to work that day I saw the emergency response workers doing their thing. I wasn’t aware of the death that had occurred until later that night. When I heard about the incident on the evening news I had a strange sort of flashback to that white pickup and trailer that had spun into the median just prior to her death. My mind settled on the image of the twisted flatbed and the lucky driver of that truck, and of course the not so lucky Samaritan who had lent her assistance to him. Her name was Christina Sterling-Soffel.

The following evening, as I drove home from work along that same stretch of highway I watched a young man as he worked to erect a large white cross on the side of the road where she was struck. I moved to honk my horn then stopped because I wasn’t sure if it would be rude. A few miles down the road I noticed a white pickup with a flatbed trailer that was stopped on the far side of the highway. They hadn’t been in an accident, they merely pulled off the road for some reason. I made eye contact with the driver as I passed his point on the road.

My mind being what it is, for better or worse, I began to daydream about what I thought of as that damn truck. I imagined it as some sort of demonic piece of machinery, strait out of a Stephen King novel, and in my dream it was chasing me. Yes, I imagined it hunting me down with an inescapable speed that would have it catching me just before I made the next exit. Back in the real world I was approaching someone in the right lane — I always lock my cruise control so if I come up on someone it is because they are doing less than the speed limit. I moved to the left lane and began to pass him. I made a feeble attempt to return to my daydream, but was quickly interrupted by the first of these four attempts on my life.

For reasons unknown to me, I suddenly became aware of another vehicle behind me. No, it wasn’t the phantom Ford. It was some teenage girl in a red Firebird and she was cooking her way up onto my tail. She came to a spot roughly six inches from my back bumper and just locked herself in. I got the impression she wanted me to move out of her way so that she could continue at breakneck speed to nowhere in particular. I nearly panicked when I saw how close she got to my bumper and, being that we were neck and neck with a little old church lady in the slow lane, I could have wiped us all out very quickly. This I count as the first incident not because that it qualifies in and of itself but because of the events that followed after. This was merely priming the pump, if you will.

With no shortage of road rage, I made my exit in a less-than-cool state of mind and proceeded angrily down the two-lane exit ramp. I was in the left lane and ahead of me it seemed was the red Firebird. I began to focus on what profanities I was going to lay into her, being ex-Navy I have a knack for ass chewing. But before I could finish the thought a second attempt on my life was made, this one far more unnerving. There had been a giant, jacked-up cowboy truck driving directly parallel with me in the right lane of the exit ramp the entire time. The ramp was not exactly crowded so by this point if you were in one lane or the other, it was for a reason closely related to your destination.

This truck was the kind that only confused, young, white red-necks drive. You’ve seen them, eight feet tall with a folding stepladder to get in. Tires taller than your head. Sound system comparable to that of an urban thug because even though the owner is a Cowboy, he just likes rap more. I did say confused, did I not? Anyway, this truck just started moving into my lane, while I was there. He didn’t bother to look because we had been driving next to each other for several hundred yards, it would be hard to claim that he didn’t know I was there. Except that in order to see me he would have had to have his mother, who was sitting in the passenger seat in her Sunday’s finest clothes, down to scout for traffic.

At first it was nothing more than a mild inconvenience, but soon I had two tires in the grass. I was moving at roughly fifty-five miles an hour and there was a metal reflector pole bearing down like a charging bull, threatening to scratch the little logo on my hood with nuclear force. I punched on my horn like Mickey Ward and the bastard moved back into his lane just in time for me to swerve out of the way of the reflector pole. But rather than admit defeat that son of a bitch hit the gas and moved out in front, then cut me off to get in my lane. By now my car’s horn was bleeding from the teeth from being pummeled by my iron fist. My string of profanities was swinging from the girl in the red Firebird to the asshole in the giant, mud-flinger truck. But just as I was getting into ass chewing mode, I was interrupted by the third attempted on my life.

After asshole #2 cut me off to claim my lane once and for all in the name if Hicks everywhere, we found ourselves passing another truck, this one of a smaller variety, in the right lane. The truck in front of me passed him with no problem, but once again as I came parallel with this second truck, he moved into my lane and pushed me back out into the grass. He caught his mistake much more quickly than the first truck-head had, but he had made it all the same. I was now worried that I would be arrested for murdering my horn. I drove the rest of the way home in an uneventful manner save for the fact that I was wallowing in my rage like a pig in the mud.

Eventually I calmed down, and when I got home I managed to distract myself with music and the idea of recording some. My wife Carolyn came home and I vented to her because she’s an excellent listener, and as usual she made me feel all better. She’s very good at that, which is proof that marrying her was an excellent idea. We followed our usual routine for the night, ending the evening early. We went to sleep and awoke the next morning ready to do the whole thing over. The weekend came and went and we found ourselves back at work again the following Monday. It was on that Monday, yesterday, that the fourth attempt on my life was made. This one was the most serious to date.

I was on my way home from work, not even thinking about the past week’s incidents, when I began to approach someone in the right lane. As I stated previously, this only happens if they are moving slower than the rest of the traffic on the road — i.e. the speed limit. As I moved into the left lane to pass, I noticed that it was actually a group of about three vehicles. But, I figured, if they were all there moving slow then all three I would pass. I paid no attention to them in any particular manner, so I didn’t know that the second vehicle in the group was a white pickup pulling a flatbed trailer full of hay bails until I was directly parallel with him on the highway.

It was at this point, once again, when the driver of the truck decided to move into my lane. Very shortly thereafter I found my tires in the grass again, only this time I was moving at nearly eighty miles per hour. I decided that this was a very bad situation to be in and, being that this was the third time I had found myself in this position in less than a week, I decided that I wasn’t going to stay in it for any longer than I had to. I sure as hell wasn’t going to let these truck-head bastards snuff me out without a fight. It was a wise decision because just as I stepped on the gas to move out ahead of the lethargic beast I realized that he wasn’t going to stop coming into my lane.

Indeed, just as I cleared his front bumper with my back bumper, he cut the wheel sharply and came barreling into my lane in full. Looking into my rear-view mirror, I watched as he failed even to stop there, moving into the grass where I had been before he whipped the wheel back toward the road in a horribly estimated attempt to regain control of his rig. The entire procession hiccuped, one side of the truck and trailer popping up off the ground for a second, then swerving very hard to the left and off into the median completely. The truck and trailer jackknifed, folding in half and surfing across the dirt gully like a massive steel penguin on ice. I believe he spun a complete three-sixty before settling into a more controlled careen.

I kid you not, I estimate that he passed within an inch of my back bumper. He was close, very very close. With four attempts on my life now, three of them being exactly identical in nature, I am leery about taking the highway to work today. Let us hope that this strange turn of events is coincidental, and short-lived. How would it look to survive four attempts, only to be taken by a fifth? I shall drive with a great vigilance this morning, and particularly this afternoon. If you find yourself driving a truck on a stretch of I-70 today, please mind your path and certainly do not kill me.

JMK