Brush with high-speed blowout leaves me thinking about death

By David McElroy · September 7, 2018

The technician looked at me as though he had seen a ghost.

“You almost got yourself killed,” he said quietly.

I was almost back to my suburb Friday evening when I had a blowout on I-20 east of Birmingham. I was going faster than the law prefers when I heard a sudden noise that I find hard to describe. That noise immediately turned into a loud rumble. The car was hard to control. I can’t remember exactly what I did, but once I regained full control, I was on the exit to my neighborhood.

My regular car repair place was already closed, so I pulled into the Walmart auto center. An hour later, I was facing the technician who had pulled the tire off the car. He wanted to show me the hole in my tire — and he wanted to know how I had avoided losing control and killing myself.

After he showed me the gaping hole on the inward-facing side of the tire, I had the same question he did. Why didn’t I completely lose control and wreck? It would have been so easy to do that, especially at high speeds on a crowded rush-hour interstate highway.

I had the same question I always have after incidents which leave me realizing that I could have been killed. What was the difference between me and the hundreds of other people who died in very similar accidents today? I don’t know the answer to that.

The tire technician told me that I either hit something on the highway and didn’t realize it or else there was a flaw in the tire. I’ll never know. (A friend who took a look at it suspects a spontaneous issue with the tire, because he said there are no obvious markings that would indicate abnormal scuffs or residue.)

We go through life ignoring the fact that our lives are at the mercy of a thousand things that could go wrong at any moment. If we allowed ourselves to think about all those things each day, we would be afraid to ever leave our homes.

A tire can burst. Another drive could carelessly crash head-on into us. Electrical problems in wiring could start a fire. We could slip and fall into the path of equipment. We could fall down stairs. We could slip in a bathtub. The list of ways in which we could die is almost endless.

For me, it was a piece of rubber that failed tonight. I should have lost control. I should have crashed into another car. I should have had a good chance of dying, especially at 90 miles an hour.

But I’m alive and well. I’m sitting in the comfort of my comfortable air-conditioned home just a couple of hours after this incident. But I can’t stop thinking — yet again — about mortality. I can’t help but think that such brushes with mortality make me feel a stronger sense of urgency about the things which matter to me in life.

It would be a tragedy if I died tonight, not because the loss would hurt anybody, but because I would have wasted my life. That’s a very arbitrary evaluation, but it’s one I instinctively feel strongly. If I died tonight, I wouldn’t leave behind anyone who loves me. I wouldn’t leave behind anything which I’d done which would matter in the future. I wouldn’t leave behind much of anything that would be of value to anyone.

And that’s why I want to love someone who loves me back — someone who will feel changed by having been loved by me.

That’s why I want to have children who I raise in love and empathy, prepared for the role of helping to change the world bit by bit.

That’s why I want to make art that I can leave behind — something which will not only be loved but which will also preach the Good News as I understand it.

None of this is new. You’ve heard it before. I’ve felt it before. But the realization that I could just as easily be laying cold and dead in a morgue right now makes it very clear to me that I have to change my approach if I’m going to find a way to achieve what I want in life.

Whether I like it or not, death is always waiting. Tonight was just a little tease. My life isn’t over. Not yet.

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I haven’t posted anything new in my YouTube series about narcissism in the last couple of weeks, so some people have been asking about it. There’s nothing wrong and I’ll be back soon. The issue is simply a technical problem because of a piece of equipment that died. Here’s a brief video I posted on YouTube to explain.

On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

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