So the other night I was picking Ben up from the in-laws after attending the wake of a woman I’ve known for almost all my life. It had been a long day (as most days have become lately) and it was about 10pm. There weren’t too many cars on the street as we drove along - about two car lengths ahead of me in the other lane was a van, and there were 2 other cars in the distance behind me.

We’re driving down the street, with Ben’s jams playing in the background. The van in front of me crosses over some train tracks, and I hear it honk their horn. I don’t see any other cars in front of the van so I’m wondering why this guy is honking. Is he honking at me? What did I do? Was I wrong and were the cars far behind me honking? Is there a pothole I’m being warned about? As these thoughts are crossing my mind (which takes a couple seconds to read, but in reality just took a split second to cross my mind) I was passing the train tracks, and I heard the van’s horn again. But then I realized what it actually was - THE TRAIN’S HORN. As my car was crossing the tracks, I looked to my left and saw, not more than a fifty yards away from me (i have no perception of distance, but it was pretty damn close) the bright light of an oncoming train. It had been the train that was honking at the van in front of me, and it was the train that at that second, was blaring at me.

With my heart in my throat and my last breath suspended, I pressed the gas to go faster. Not that it mattered because I was already going pretty fast. Once again, all this happened in one tiny moment, but just like all of my other near-death experiences like this, I could remember every single thing that happened, and it feels like time was suspended - Matrix style.

As I drove away from the tracks, trying to recover and bring my heartrate back down, I watched in my rearview mirror, waiting for the train to just miss my car by a hair, but it never happened. About two car lengths after I passed the tracks, the crossing lights FINALLY turned on. There was NO way they were turned on as I was passing because a) the car in front of me passed through b) i would have seen the lights when i was trying to figure out why the car in front of me was honking and c) i’m pretty sure there’s a gate at that crossing…

About a block away from the scene, I saw the train - the train that was shining it’s bright light on my and blaring as I was passing the railroad crossing. It was slowly crossing the intersection, at about 5 miles an hour. I guess they already knew that there was a malfunction in the lights and had already slowed down before crossing the intersection.

Even with that, it was still a scary experience, being so close to a train as I was crossing the tracks. Funny thing is, I usually check tracks before crossing them (well, I slow down slightly). This time, though, I was just tired and distracted - i guess, though, that’s when the accidents usually happen, the one time when you’re NOT paying attention.

I’m still kinda freaked out!

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 10:50 am and is filed under Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.