Last winter I got in a car accident and I think I wanted to be in it. Maybe there’s a chance that I victimized myself, fell prey to self pity and loathing. And maybe all this self pity loathing creates what the Buddhists call bad Karma. And In certain situations maybe I’ve created that bad way to get my own way out. I hate being followed completely by chance. When I take a turn while driving and someone else takes that same turn, repeat it several times and you have an accidental stalker, the worst kind because it has all the feelings of being followed but without any justification for fear. It’s like all the anger you feel after someone surprises you except with no surprise and no laughter from the opposite party it’s just this nameless asshole that keeps going. This dummy driver or force I create in my head experiences no nuances, no discrepancies, it considers nothing. I’m an odd person in that in my house I hate it when out of pure coincidence I’m being followed down the stairs by my siblings, being waited on while I’m at the fridge, seeing no one in my sister’s room before I walk in mine shout something embarrassing and walk out to see my sister there. Was she there the whole time? Couldn’t they just wait. No tact. The last example technically isn’t following but the same principle applies. How and why do annoying coincidences happen and why can’t I avoid them? When I make lunch for myself why do others all the sudden start making lunch for themselves? Did I remind them to have lunch? Don’t they have their own schedule to keep? On the flip side you might guess that I hate following others by accident and that I give people a buffer time in between my and their lunches. Why does it annoy me? Because it seems like it happens too often. It’s this principle of coincidence: you remember coincidences but you don’t remember the times when this coincidence didn’t happen. If I find myself in a position when I want control over these coincidences but I can’t I’m in a position of hubris a position when control is impossible . But what if you do and don’t want this coincidence to happen?
In the winter of last year I was working at a nice frozen custard store that hadn’t paid me since August. So I decided that I needed a new job that had more dignity for someone my age and that would pay me. So I got a job at AB couriers. In my first week of the job I got in an accident. So I worked for a few more weeks using my dad’s car and decided to ask my previous employer for the money he owed me and I bought a 94 Ford Taurus.
To someone who can’t remember how cars drove back in the 90s how do you gauge how a car drives or feels? You don’t know until you actually sit down in one and drive for an extended period of time. The turning column of this 94 Ford Taurus it felt like I was driving a very large van. When I slammed the car door shut it was like the door pretended to sound louder than it was. It sounded like it was the door of some giant van. I could feel the car and imagine how it was fastened together back in 1994. They didn’t know the new age short cuts of the 2000’s so they thought they had to build an actual car. You know a car, car like the one a four year old would draw. So they wound up building something that felt much larger: a car archetype for cars today to get smaller from. You would think feeling like driving something that felt huge would feel more comforting no it felt like I was driving a false sense of security. The bigger they are the harder they fall. The car’s smell reminded me of three things: like it had been breathed in a lot, a small snot bubble coming out of a sick person with a winter cold, and that I was sitting on someone’s lap. Yes that eerie feeling that you’re sitting on someone’s crotch like there’s a shark in the nice warm water to keep you treading for life. This car was a mystery to me after noises started creeping in while driving, smells got worse and feelings of fear, self-victimization and pity flourished in my chest. I bought this car on craigslist and it’s previous owner or however he was affiliated with had apparently put fake inspection stickers on the front after a nice late delivery night after being pulled over by a police officer. The man was nice yet very disgruntled when helping me buy the plates and register the vehicle at the DMV. He had called one of the secretaries “incompetent”, and that it’s “no wonder they only get paid $10 an hour.” His own car was a trashcan and smelled like smoke and claimed to be a car salesman and that he was opening a shop in West Virginia.
So I was driving a 94 Ford Taurus that had increasingly scared me for a courier job that I thought might kill me. Maybe that’s the self victimization talking but I when I did decide every night to deliver these boxes I liked to follow through with my decision. These were medical supplies I was delivering and my employers needed someone, anyone to deliver them on time. The winter is AB Couriers busiest season and they were struggling to keep themselves organized let alone it’s delivery people.
If this job was unorganized and stressful then I exacerbated that un-organization even further through my incompetence. There was one night when I delivered a package to a hospital in Richmond in starting out in Chantilly when a third of the way back I got a call that it was the wrong address so I drove an hour back got what I thought were simple directions to a house but spent over 2 hours driving past the same street. I came back at about 2:30 and I was scheduled to come back at about 10. I forget where but I had to deliver a package at close to midnight to residents who were asleep. I sometimes couldn’t tell if I was just bad at getting to these places on time or if these routes were impossible. AB Couriers had a way about them that was unusual though in accepting even my incompetence as almost part of the job. Like they were used to hiring people as bad as I was. My supervisor Allen had an inflection in his voice when you called in to report a time. He didn’t wait to hear what you had to say he said his name like you already had bad news. He said it like he was about to be punished for something he didn’t do. One time the accident didn’t even happen on the road. Did I mention I’m accident prone? I couldn’t even get myself off the lot one time in getting the wrong boxes three times each time I had driven out to the main road and realized that I had gotten the wrong ones. When I finally picked up the right ones and had my schedule adjusted for the time lost I was walking out of the warehouse when I tripped down the stairs in front of my supervisor Allen ripping my pants at the knee. I had been through so much in this job it was like I was involuntarily trying to provoke sympathy from him. Allen supervisor asked if I was okay when I tried to get back in my car the inside of the car door was totally disconnected so I had to slam the door shut in order to close the inside part back in. So not only was I late for my delivery I showed up late with ripped pants. Strange. During the job I had also adopted a pee cup that sometimes might’ve spilled over a little bit on my pants or I might aim a little off getting a lot on my pants.
When I look back on all that happened in AB Couriers it seems like a blur but my mind goes to one night in particular that not even Allen would accept as his fault.
Giant apartment buildings seem much less like dark labyrinths when the power is on. Every decision had a lag time in that snow-filled parking lot. Every decision that night during thunder-snow* seemed like it could blow up in my face for hours and I would go through a cycle of denial: first anger at having to deliver that night, second a temporary acceptance of my situation, then third a sort of premature laughter someone would laugh if they were only half way done falling down the stairs. The laughter was ultimately frustrating. This laughter was the epitome of my experience at AB Couriers it was always premature I was always late. I was always doing something stupid. I was on a schedule yet the delivery was due by 8:30 and it was now almost 12:30AM. It was a weird mixture in that everything I did seemed pointless almost hypnotic and yet it had everything to do with getting home and getting this person their medical supplies. Somewhere inside one of these buildings someone is possibly there awake and awaiting their new patient paperwork. If was to be stranded here than I would need to ask someone’s help at 12:40am, no, not me the delivery guy should be spared from that. I had one more delivery after this. I made a turn to try and see one of the building numbers in front of the pick up drop off zone and turns out I was following a freshly made plow trail and patiently waited for the plow to lead out into the main road around the lot. I had I flashed my phone, it was now 1:00am when I finally parked in front of the right one. I hit my emergency lights and double checked my list. I then walked into this dark ornate dungeon armed with a box and my phone to try and find my way up to this patient’s room in. A few people where still trudging into their own building this late at night and led me down the wrong corridor. I made it up to the patient’s room with as much paperwork he could have possibly filled out for our company, a new patient packet. It was like we were both sleep walking and he was as tepid and compliant as I was in asking him to sign here and then here. It was 1:20am and he kindly thanked me when I left the room. It was that moment when I felt a little different. All of this frustration did have a purpose.I turned on the radio as I was leaving for my next delivery and heard a late night talk show as people were calling in. They were asking about people who helped during this storm and what their experience was. Someone called in a voice almost happy but not about helping but about the uselessness of helping: “There is one thing for sure that If you try and help someone tonight you’ll get screwed” he laughs. “You try and be friendly and feel good about helping but no you will ultimately get screwed.” He tells about trying to shove a car out of a snow pile for three hours and stepping into a pothole of ice-water up past his knees. He abandoned the car along with the owner for the night “When I stepped in my car I took off my pants. I turned on the floor heat and warmed up my legs as I drove home” he told the host sounding quite satisfied. I remember telling myself I would’ve helped someone if I wasn’t doing this job. It was like this job kept me from even then doing what I really wanted to do. So when I drove home after Thunder-snow I could feel something groaning under my car. It was a little after 3am when I finally arrived. I had started at about four the day before. My manager had one more delivery when I called him at about 3:10 in returning boxes that didn’t get shipped. The next day at around 6pm abandoned cars still were still on the side of the road and a bruised purple sky made 66 look like a graveyard. I was tired and thankful school was at least cancelled for that day but my job wasn’t cancelled.
My car scared me after Thunder-snow. I told AB Couriers that I was quitting by the end of that week. I was ironically on my way to get the Taurus inspected and to see the people who gave it a fake inspection sticker if it was even going to be drivable for that long when I got into my second accident. It happened the exact moment I was looking for the auto-shop too. An entire six months worth of work at the custard place disappeared. The car was totaled and it was my fault. It was odd at this point, I couldn’t help feel like I was being protected from something even worse happening by getting in this accident. Maybe that’s what it took from me to see how stupid I was acting. Maybe that’s the nature of an accident is that they are a long time in the making and you don’t remember all the times you didn’t get in one. This was perhaps not an accident but a life saving (car destroying) coincidence.
*Thunder-snow got its name from the unusual thunder that had struck that night in that it’s almost impossible for thunder to happen in the snow because the ground is too cold. There’s less than one tenth of a percent chance that thunder could have occurred that night . Not only this but it happened at exactly the wrong time causing the DC metro area commutes that were probably ten times their length.
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