Miracle on I-75

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” 
  ― Albert Einstein
I graduated from undergrad on a Saturday. By 4pm the next day, I was all packed up and ready to go. I had packed my fridge, microwave, all my clothes, and whatever else I had in my room into my car and started the drive. As luck would have it, it was raining hard. As I got onto the interstate, I noticed a long line of cars. An accident, I thought. The roads narrowed down to two lanes and the rain fell harder. It got to the point that the car in front of me was spraying me with water. As I was passing over a bridge, ten exits away from school, my car hydroplaned.
I lost control. The car swerved to the right and hit the guardrail. The chances of my car flipping over the bridge were probable. I also knew that if it were to go over the bridge, I would not survive. All I could think was, please don’t go over the bridge, please don’t go over. Luckily, that did not happen. My car somehow swerved back to the left, flipped over twice, and landed upside down with its wheels in the air. Throughout the whole experience, I had this strangely strong assurance of my survival: He won’t let me die. Needless to say, I was in shock, still trying to process what had happened. Breathe, I kept telling myself. Two of the side windows were blown out. The windshield was cracked and broken. My neck was killing me. I did not notice my arm at the time. As soon as I was sure the car had stopped moving, I unbuckled my seatbelt and started to crawl out the window. 
As I crawled out the window, I stopped and looked down, finally noticing the pain in my arm. My arm was covered in blood, my blood. On the gravel besides the car was a mixture of blood and water, as if a painter had used a brush to slash over the gravel. I started crying then, while in my head I thought, why am I crying? Then: Crap! There goes my shirt. This was one of my good shirts!
By this point, people had gotten out of their cars and come over to help. They tried to tell me not to move, but any person in their right mind would want to get out of the wreck. So instead of sitting still, I crawled the rest of the way out of the car. When I got out, I was shoeless, phoneless, and without my wallet. It was all in that car, along with the rest of my life. I was visibly shaking, arm covered in blood. As I turned around and looked at the wreck that once was my car, I thought and I kid you not, Dad’s going to kill me. Then: I should have listened to my parents and left yesterday. And finally: I hope my laptop is ok. I guess you learn your main priorities when something like that happens. 
         Someone stopped and called 911. Another person ran back to their car and grabbed a towel. I cleaned off the blood and let them wrap it around the wounds. I did not want to look too closely. Finally, when I was sure I could speak without faltering, I asked, “Is there any blood coming from my neck?” The pain in my neck was terrible. I was worried that something had pierced one of the main arteries located on that side. One of the men who had stopped told me, “No, it just looks like a really bad seatbelt burn.” I could not have been happier, hearing those words. Another good Samaritan came over and said, “The paramedics are on their way. Is there anyone you need to call?” 
“Yes, actually I do. My mom but my phone is still in the car. It must have slipped out in the crash,” I replied. He handed me his phone and I called my mom. She was at work when I called her.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Mom. I got into a car crash. I’m ok though but the car is wrecked. Can you call dad and tell him? My phone is still in the car and I’m calling on someone else’s phone.”
           For a minute there I actually thought she was mad, until I realized I must have caught her in the middle of work. She took it a lot better than I thought she would. Then again, when you’re a nurse, not too many things faze you. I got off the phone and stood there, trying not to cry again. Needless to say, it was a fail. I stood there in silence with tears streaming down my face, still shaking. When the cops and the firemen arrived on the scene, I finally had the tears under control. I told the cop the story. The very first thing he said was, “You are VERY lucky to be alive and walk away with just those cuts.” 
“I just graduated yesterday. Some graduation present, huh?”
         In the face of disaster/bad news/epic bad luck, my sense of humor tends to pop up. They all smiled a little at that. Since my license was still in the car, I had to list out all the necessary information. When they got to my age (at the time I was 21 still), they asked, “Wait, you graduated college at 21?”
“Yes . . .” I was a bit confused. I guess graduating college at 21 is not normal in the south. 
          Conversation calmed me down; joking around stopped me from crying or thinking about what had happened. As we were waiting for the paramedics, I noticed that one of the firemen sitting next to me on the guardrail was really cute. As soon as I had that thought, I mentally slapped myself. Of course, I would notice something like that in the middle of all this. Honestly though, any thought was better than thinking about the crash. 
When the paramedics arrived, they went through all the basic stuff before having me walk to the ambulance. Inside they strapped me down to the board just to be on the safe side. Better safe than sorry. I made small talk with the paramedics, while we waited for them to get my wallet and phone from the car. Apparently, I was their third crash of the day. 
“Don’t worry, on days like this the number of crashes gets worse. So you graduated yesterday?”
“Yup, some graduation present right?”
“So wait, you graduated at 21. How’s that possible?”
“My birthday is in August?”
“Congrats either way. So what exactly happened?” 
As I told them about the crash, they looked shocked. One of them asked, “So what model was your car? I can’t tell from the damage.”
“A Toyota Yaris.”
“Jeez! No wonder the cop said you were lucky to be alive. You had stuff in there?”
“My whole life actually. I was driving back home with all my stuff.”
“Those things turn into projectiles in a car crash. You’re lucky that you’re not paralyzed right now. When we got the call, we were expecting more than one car crash.”
“What do you mean?”
“You must have been far away enough that the cars behind you had time to put on the breaks. Otherwise, you might not be talking right now.”
          I knew I was lucky when my car didn’t flip over the bridge, but now I had two more reasons to say, “I’m lucky to be alive.” Probability had been against me and yet, I was ok for the most part. The phrase, “Walked away without a scratch” came into mind, because that was more or less what happened to me. There is a name for all this. Some people call it highly improbably events. I call them miracles.