Day 382 - Brush With Death!

I'm a pretty good driver. I've gotten into a couple of minor accidents, but who hasn't had a little fender bender in Los Angeles? But today I had quite the close call on the freeway.

I was driving to work this morning on the 405 south. The traffic was lighter than usual because it was one of those Jewish holidays like Rush A Shower or Yum Kiss Her. I really have no idea what I did, but all of a sudden as I was about to make a lane change I lost control of the car. I started weaving in and out of the lanes.

I remember someone saying (it was either Bo or Luke Duke) that if you lose control of your car, you should turn into the spin. Well, I'll tell you what. If you're spinning towards the right and there's a semi-truck next to you, you're going to want to turn towards the left. I'd say for a good five or seven seconds I was trying to gain control of the car. I'm not too sure what made me look at my gear shift, but I did and noticed I was in neutral. So I shifted into drive, got control of the car, and lucky me, I still made my off ramp.

All I can piece together is that when I was about to make a lane change, I must've knocked my car into neutral and then lost control over my speed and brakes. The first thing I did when I was able to steer was I looked in my rear view mirror. Although I didn't hit any cars, I was afraid that I might've caused another car to get into an accident. Thankfully, there was no 20 car pile up a la The Matrix Reloaded. Even more amazing was that when it was all said and done, I was as calm as I could be. Maybe it didn't hit me (literally and figuratively), but my heart wasn't even racing. I was a Zen Master! I did pee my pants, but that's a minor footnote.

As I parked my car at work and walked to my office, I started to think of how much worse it could've been. I might've been injured or the whole family could've been in the car and been hurt. That's the weird thing about having kids. I'm learning that you do become less self-centered and your entire world starts to revolve around these little bastards. And I use the term 'little bastards' in an endearing and accurate way because they are both little and bastards; the DNA test results came back and as suspected, the father is a Baldwin brother (either Stephen or Daniel).

The second most disturbing thing about this incident is I perpetuated the stereotype of bad Asian drivers. There's nothing more annoying than hearing Asians are bad drivers. I swear we're not! So please stop spreading these false Asian stereotypes. In the meantime, I think I'm just going to relax by doing some math problems and tend to my rice patty.