2020/01/01 • My highway comfort zone is 70. The Mass Pike is two lanes from the New York line to the I-84 interchange at Exit 9, so I’m usually in the right lane most of the time and that’s fine. I pass slow trucks and people who are more anxious than I am. New Year’s Day morning I was headed east, from Springfield to Woburn. Smooth sailing. It was early on a holiday, bright and sunny. Then right after Exit 8 I saw what I thought for a split second was a train in the right lane. Which, if true, would have been horrifying. Of course it was not a train. It was a convoy! As a child of the 70s I revere the convoy as an American tradition, complete with wigs. Or so I thought. When CW McCall says, at the end of “Convoy,” “we gone, bye-bye,” I always heard “wig on, bye-bye."

Which made the convoy far less glamorous than previously imagined.

On New Year’s Day it was a convoy of utility trucks. I thought about the people who were driving them: not only were they driving those awkward trucks, they were driving with absolute precision. Wigs on, perhaps. The trucks were in the right lane, of course, so I had to pass them. And pass them. And pass them. Smooth sailing. Nice sunny morning, a holiday, and an amazing Prince playlist. No worries.

I’m no good with distance but the convoy had to be a mile long, at least. Exit 8 to Exit 9 is 15 miles, I was driving 70, and it took most of “Computer Blue” and the 12” remix of “Raspberry Beret” to pass all the trucks. Time x Prince = distance? Everything was as it should be. I had Prince and a sturdy 2010 Rav4. The utility workers had whatever they were listening to, presumably CW McCall and maybe something more wig-adjacent, like Cher.

Then the red Camry came zooming up behind me. The convoy was over a mile, probably longer. There was no room between the trucks for the Rav. “We’re Americans and the convoy is a revered tradition!” I yelled at my rearview. The red Camry came up closer. I tapped the brakes and he - I could see the driver clearly - dropped back. And came up on my bumper. And again.

On Monday, March 14, 2016, a little further up the Pike, I was driving westbound in blinding rain. I was in the middle lane at a steady 65, gripping the wheel. Big bright halogens came up behind me and disappeared as the car behind me got way too close. “No fucking games, asshole,” I shouted over the Beatles. “Leave me alone!” I couldn’t tap the brakes because he was too close. And I found out later the driver was definitely a he. The halogens dropped back and I exhaled. I hate driving in the rain. No one slows down. A few minutes later I saw the halogens coming straight at me. I swerved, hit the brakes, and my 2007 Corolla flipped and landed upside-down in the ditch in front of the Auburn Mall.

Later, in the ambulance, I told Trooper that I’d been hit head-on. Turns out the college kid in the 2013 BMW 328i had been driving at least 80 in the left lane and spun out three times. He hit the guardrail, hit me, and hit the guardrail again. He landed across the median perpendicular to the road. Next time you drive past the Auburn Mall on the westbound side, check out the guardrail. You can see the newer bit. And the blue HOSPITAL sign was replaced that spring because I took out the old one. I wasn’t aware of this until I was looking at the accident site on Google Maps the next day and there it was, a blue sign with a big white H. I felt bad about that, but it was pitch dark. And I was upside down.

Calling the other driver a “kid” sort of relieves him of adult responsibility, though. Allow me to rephrase: a 20-year-old man, an Ohio State undergraduate on spring break, admitted at the scene to driving over 80. Any faster, any slower, a little more rain, a little less rain, or a more vengeful god, and he would have gone into the eastbound lane and killed someone. That’s my takeaway from that night: it could have been so much, so much, so much worse.

All that flashes through my mind at some point every time I’m on the Pike. Usually I’m on the Peter Pan, though. (There’s no train from Springfield to Boston [yet], so I take the bus, which in Western Mass is the Peter Pan Bus Company. All the buses are named after characters or events in the book.) But I rarely notice the mile marker anymore, or the hospital sign. It’s usually a quick flash, maybe if I see an Auburn Fire & Rescue truck. Then I remember my ambulance ride cost $1800. A passing, casual thought.

Unless a jackass is in such a goddamn fucking hurry on New Year’s Day morning that he has to tailgate me while I’m passing a freaking convoy of utility trucks. All concerned parties - me in the Rav, Speed Racer in the Camry, and the Convoy - reached the I-84 interchange at Exit 9 at basically the same time. The utility trucks gracefully shifted over to the far right lane and I settle into the middle lane. Red Camry was thwarted by a Mercedes SUV with New York plates screaming across three lanes from the on-ramp. Eventually he passed me. What a sweet, sweet victory that must have been. Wig on. Bye-bye.

playlist by Benevolent 80s Overlord, Ron Raymond, Jr.