Sleepwalk With Me_ And Other Painfully True Stories - Mike Birbiglia [30]
The only person I knew with an extra car was my mom. She was retiring her green ’88 Volvo 740 station wagon. And when I say retiring, I mean the dealership offered her eight hundred dollars for it, and I begged her to just give it to me instead. This thing came loaded with the swing-down dog cage and perhaps some aging fruit in the way back, and years of wear and tear. My mom never took care of cars too well. In addition to her gas-and-brakes driving technique, she never got the oil changed. Ever. And she often drove the car on empty, which is like living in a house held up by hockey sticks. They might keep the house up for a while, but I wouldn’t have any guests over for dinner. My mom tended to put things off. I may have picked up some of that trait along the way.
I performed in St. Louis, then Cleveland, then Pittsburgh, doing unpaid guest spots at comedy clubs where they might actually hire me in the future. On the trip from Cleveland to Pittsburgh, I noticed that the orange exclamation point popped up on the dashboard. I thought, I’m sure that’ll work itself out.
I had already taken the car to the mechanic that week. After the gig in Pittsburgh, I drove home. It was about 1:00 a.m. and I couldn’t imagine myself paying thirty-nine dollars for a hotel room after making no money all week and racking up more Capital One debt in gas and tolls. So I decided to make the drive, despite the glowing orange exclamation point on my dash. I’ve heard some people put electric tape over their orange exclamation point so they don’t have to deal with it. Not me. I blocked it out in my brain. I scanned the radio for a caffeinated Eagles tune or perhaps some early Van Halen. And thirty minutes into my drive home, my mom’s Volvo wagon starts going slower and then, eventually, stops.
I’m on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It’s 2:00 a.m. My cell phone is on low battery. I have used up the battery calling people to tell them how great my life is. I’m able to get off one call to Triple A (or as my mother calls it, “A, A, A.”) before it dies. I’m sitting in my car in what is the smallest breakdown lane I’ve ever seen. It is probably about six feet wide, and trucks are whizzing past. And I’m praying that my car doesn’t get hit. A tow truck arrives around 2:30 a.m.
A large, tough gentleman who looks like he might have killed some people in his prime starts attaching my mom’s car to his tow truck. I didn’t learn his name, but let’s call him “Large.”
Just as Large is about to attach the hook to my front axle, we hear the sound of an enormous truck engine. Large and I look up and see an eighteen-wheeler about fifty yards away heading straight toward us. It’s clear that the driver has fallen asleep, which is what I want to do, but now really isn’t the time. I need to focus on staying alive.
So I take two steps off the road and plant my body against an embankment of dirt and dry grass like a white trash snow angel. And the tow truck driver bends his upper torso over the top of my car, his legs left dangling in the turnpike, trying to clutch the underbelly of the driver-side door with his toes. The sleepy truck veers over within inches of him, the truck driver blares his horn and veers back into the turnpike, now apparently well rested. Large and I have just escaped death. It is a bonding moment.
Large starts freaking out. He’s like, “What the hell was that, man! I almost fucking died! I almost fucking died, man!” I shrug, just kind of repeating back what he said, but more quietly. “Yeah, what was that? We almost fucking died.