Close Encounters

I’m pretty much assuming I have 9 lives, like a cat.

I think I used one of them up on the way home from Maine many summers ago…

Mandy is about seven years old, and I have just started letting her sit in the front seat of the car. I’m still a little nervous about the airbag being too powerful for her little frame. But we are sightseeing through the north woods of Maine. From the little cabins out on Moosehead Lake, out to Lubec where we pitched a tent on the rocky shoreline, down to Bar Harbor where we fell asleep to the sound of the waves and coyotes calling from the mountaintops. We are planning to end the trip in Boston visiting my friend Tracy.

Well Tracy is expecting us on Friday night, and we have stopped off in Freeport on Friday to watch the sun set. We still have quite a ways to go. So after snapping some pictures and getting some lobster rolls, we are on our way.

My eyes start rolling up into my head, so I enlist Mandy’s help in keeping me awake. We have taken many road trips together, and she understands my need to keep talking so I can keep driving. We make up a few dozen new verses to the Diarrhea Song. We quote lines from Disney movies and make the other person guess which movie it was. Bonus points for knowing the character who said it.

She makes me explain to her, for the umpteenth time, why she is not allowed to watch rated R movies. Mandy’s friend at school is allowed to watch them. She really wants to see The Sixth Sense, because he keeps telling her about it. I explain that it is too scary for her. “But why?” So I tell her what the movie is about, and describe the entire story from start to finish, which keeps me awake for the next half hour.

Finally, Mandy is falling asleep. I can’t stay awake either, so I pull off the highway and into the well-lit parking lot of a church. I figure no one will disturb me here, and I close my eyes.

After grabbing a little cat-nap, I am back on the road.

As I’m driving, I am passed several times by packs of cars that speed by me doing about 90mph or so. Although I am driving with my brights on for most of the trip, I switch to the low-beams as these groups of cars fly by me. They are out of sight pretty quickly, since I’m only going about 65.

Then, up ahead, I see a sign that says BOSTON 90 MILES.

I speed up to about 70. Maybe even 75. I’m thinking I can get to Boston by about 1:30am.

From the point of view of the large bull moose, a pack of lights had gone zipping by, and then there was quiet and darkness. He steps up onto the roadway and begins to cross the Maine Turnpike, just north of the tolls near Wells.

Luckily I am feeling very refreshed from the nap, because the next thing I see illuminated by my low-beams is knees.

And by the time my low beams are striking moose knees at 75mph, I am nearly on top of this massive animal.

And my daughter is in the front seat for the first time.

I jerk the wheel hard to the left. Really hard. I don’t even think about it, I just react. Somehow, I don’t hit the moose. I have no idea how I could have missed him, unless he jumped straight up into the air. Or maybe it was my cat-like reflexes.

But such a maneuver at this speed sends my little Cavalier careening sideways toward the center guardrail. I try to turn into the skid, but I quickly find myself fish-tailing the other way. The only thing I can think is Don’t hit anything. The airbag could kill her.

I break all of my nails as I rip the steering wheel back and forth. Camping equipment and Nilla wafers and seashells are being tossed all over the car. We fishtail nine times before coming to a stop on the side of the highway.

Mandy is awake now, of course. “What happened Mommy?” She sounds calm.

I am hyperventilating. I can hardly get the word out.

“Ma… ma… ma… ma… MOOSE!”

“It’s okay Mom. We’re okay now.”

We drive very slowly to Boston. I don’t think we exceed 50. Cars are flying by, wailing their horns at me, but this is all I can handle.

She is talking to me some more. She knows I need her. We are both wide awake.

“Tracy is going to be really freaked out when I tell her what happened,” I say.

“You know what would freak her out more?”

“What?”

“If we are already dead. Like in The Sixth Sense. And we don’t even know it, so we just go to her house like everything is normal. But when she comes to the door, we are ghosts standing there, all bloody and stuff. Maybe we have big pieces of glass sticking out of us and stuff.”

She’s right. That would definitely freak her out. It’s freaking me out.

But luckily, Mandy seems to have 9 lives, just like me.