True-Life Adventure

hit one of the cars parked in front of it, or if I missed those, I’d go up over the curb and the impact of that would probably flip me over. Or maybe it wouldn’t; maybe I would hit the poker parlor.
    The next few seconds really taught me the meaning of sweaty palms; if I thought I’d had them at my high school prom, I was mistaken. The steering wheel was so slippery I could hardly get a grip on it. And getting a grip on it was about the most important thing I was ever going to have to do.
    I definitely didn’t want to take my chances with the poker parlor. It was a hell of a lot bigger than I was. It probably ate small, light-colored cars for breakfast. So there was nothing to do but change course.
    If I could just get the car going left, there was a sort of alleyway that led to the Bank of America parking lot next door to the poker parlor. It was nearly as wide as a street and perhaps it was one. Maybe it kept on going past the parking lot. Maybe I could just get on it and kind of coast until my car stopped. That is, unless another car was coming out of it toward San Pablo. From where I was, I couldn’t see past the bank’s parking lot and I had no idea what further horrors lay on the other side. However, if I got in there and there was something coming at me, maybe I could just rethink things again and head into the parking lot. It was true that there were a lot of cars parked there, and if I missed those, there was the Bank of America itself, but it would probably be no harder on a Toyota than the poker parlor.
    Frantically, I tried to turn the wheel, all slippery and contrary. I kept trying and it kept slipping, but I didn’t let that bother me. I kept after that son of a bitch.
    And eventually man won out over machine. I got the car going vaguely in the right direction, but it was really a hell of an ambition I had. I had to turn the car left, which I’d just managed to do, and then right again, very fast, going about thirty-five or forty. I’m sure there are drivers that could do it. I’ll bet if I got the chance, even I could probably do it next time, now that I’ve had some practice.
    But the truth is, that time it just didn’t quite work out right. I jumped up on the curb on the poker parlor side of the alleyway and mercifully didn’t flip over. I just went up high and then did it again as my back wheels followed the front ones, leaping over a little triangle of sidewalk and landing in the target alleyway. So far, so good.
    But then I lost control of the car. I couldn’t get the sucker to go right and straighten out, no matter how hard I tried. I was headed right for the parking lot and a little old lady was just backing a forest-green Rabbit out of her space. The Rabbit was the only thing between me and the Bank of America, and in retrospect, thank God for it. But I wasn’t thanking anybody for it at the time. I was wishing like hell I wasn’t about to plow right into it.
    About then it occurred to me simply to turn off the ignition. I don’t know why I thought of it then and not before, but I’d like to think it was good instincts. I think that if I’d turned it off before that, something a lot worse would have happened. But I’d lost a great deal of momentum going over the curb and a sudden stop wouldn’t be quite so devastating. Like I said, I didn’t think that; I just knew it by instinct.
    So I turned it off, but that didn’t mean I stopped. No sirree. It just meant I didn’t hit the Rabbit very hard. Its rear got a bit smashed and so did my front, but neither car turned into an accordion, which was enough to make me want to get down on my knees and shout “Hallelujah!”. But the Rabbit-owner didn’t see it that way.
    I’d guess she was closer to seventy than sixty-five and no more than five feet four, but she came out swinging. I got out of my car as quickly as I could, shaking like I was, and started over to her, all solicitude, but she met me halfway. A right to the solar plexus. A left to the kidney. A foot to the shin. And language! She made Blick look like a Sunday school teacher.
    I flailed around, thinking if I could catch her wrists, I could stop the terrible hammering pain that I was experiencing, but my palms were still too sweaty to get any purchase, or something. Also, I felt sick and I was seeing double, sort of. Anyway, not seeing very well. Those were some of the factors that contributed to what happened next, I guess. Or it may simply be that I’m big but