Scratches on the Car

Coincidence or Something More?

It was a warm summer afternoon in 2012.

I was driving home from work, headed southbound from the county of Los Angeles to another county in which I live. To pass the time I listened to stories on the iPad my daughter convinced me I should have. The car windows were shut and the air conditioning on.

I admit to being partial to fairy tales. When I was a boy, they transported me to another time and place and I almost always learned something of value. Plus they were fun to read, requiring little mental effort.

I scrolled to a fairy tale on the iPad. Entitled “Town Musicians of Bremen,” it was a popular German story included in an 1819 compilation by the Brothers Grimm.

The tale is of 4 aging domestic animals — a cat, dog, rooster and donkey — that, after a lifetime of hard work, are neglected and mistreated by their former masters. They decide to run away and become musicians in the town of Bremen. But the story is mistitled, for they never make it to their destination. Rather, en route they encounter and trick a band of robbers, capture their ill-gotten gains and move into their house.

Suddenly, without prodrome, I fell asleep. This is highly unusual, because I have a form of sleep disorder and never fall asleep without assistance or during the day. It happened so quickly, without warning, I had no opportunity to put down a window, turn up the air conditioning, or activate the radio.

One minute, earbuds in place, I was listening to someone narrate a fairy tale. The next I had fallen asleep at the wheel, and my car had become an unguided missile, hurtling down the road without a functioning driver.

I awoke to the sound of bushes scraping the passenger side of the car.

With a start, much shaken and in cold sweat, I immediately realized what had happened. I had drifted off the freeway. The bushes that scraped the car were adjacent the shoulder. Although I had traveled that route in the past, I had not noticed them before.

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