I was one with the universe. Everything around me was aglow in the summer sunlight, twinkling with a profound luster. I was floating serenely in my VW bug through the time space continuum. My consciousness was wide open. And then, in an instant, everything went black.
I was 22 and deep into Transcendental Meditation. I’d just spent three days meditating at a Cistercian Monastery near Dubuque, Iowa. Out there in the middle of the cornfields, behind the stone walls, I’d discovered a world of quiet, calm and peace. In other words, there wasn’t much to do but meditate. And the free food wasn’t bad either.
I decided to check out Eagle Point Park before heading back to Iowa City. I was cruising down a residential arterial street in my ’63 Beetle in an unfamiliar part of town, entranced by the play of the sunlight on the dappling leaves of the giant elms overhead.
The last thing, I remember was gliding into an intersection (was that a flash of red on my right?). I remember confronting the profile of a 1969 Ford station wagon dead ahead.
Everything had been so perfect; I couldn’t integrate this highly un-synchronous intrusion into the continuum of my bliss. I momentarily contemplated the possibility that my expansive self would just float through the apparition and re-assemble on the other side of the hulking Ford. Like the shutter of a camera, everything went black.
Some indeterminate amount of time later, the iris of the camera opened again, but only to a pin-point. What had been a seemingly infinite expansion of consciousness outward in every direction was now replaced by the most narrowly focused fragment of awareness I’d ever experienced.
I found myself sprawled on the pavement in the middle of the intersection. A voice screamed inside my head: “Get out of there!” In a rush of adrenaline, I somehow managed to crawl or slither to the nearest curb. I rolled onto my back in the soft grass.
The shutter iris opened slightly wider. Now my back screamed at me; it felt like Hank Aaron had mistaken my spine for a baseball. Another f-stop and I began a rudimentary self-diagnosis. I could see all my limbs. Surprisingly, there wasn’t any blood. But as I worked my way downwards, I realized I couldn’t move or feel my feet.
The idea of spending my life in a wheelchair pressed on my mind like a suffocating weight. I looked up and saw concerned faces staring down. I turned my throbbing head to look at the intersection. I saw the Ford with its crumpled front fender. My VW was nowhere in sight. Had it magically floated though the obstacle and left me behind to confront the Ford?
I remember telling the ambulance crew my concerns about my spine’s health. Once they scooped me up in the clam-shell board and loaded me inside the meat wagon, blackness reclaimed me.
I remember little of the hospital except the on-call radiologist’s annoyance at having his Sunday golf game interrupted. The next thing I (vaguely) knew, I was discharged. I was totally shocked and confused. I needed to stay! Where was my doctor father who always met me at the hospital after childhood accidents and made sure I got proper care?
Feeling had returned to my legs, but my brain was totally scrambled. I was not ready to get kicked out of the hospital.
A cop took me back to the station. I sat dazed in the lobby. I had no idea why I was in Dubuque or how I got there. Holding my aching head, I felt a big lump under my long hair.
I was living out a nightmare. Everything I looked at triggered an intense memory of a prior dream, provoking and endless flood of deja-vu. Or was I actually dreaming while being awake? I couldn’t tell. Acid was nothing compared to this bummer.
Eventually I remembered about the monastery and someone came for me. The monks put me straight to bed. After a couple hours of deep sleep and a plate of home-made cookies and milk, I at least partially returned to the world as I had remembered it.
I had missed the stop sign. It had been obscured by a parked truck and I was a bit spaced-out from my meditation marathon. When my bug slammed the Ford at a 60 degree angle, I ejected and struck my head on the way out. My back bounced off the wagon, leaving a tell-tale dent (on the car). The Ford was totaled. My VW came to rest in a gas station a block away; surprisingly it only needed new front-end sheet metal.
I eventually got over my undiagnosed concussion, and I backed off on the long meditations. Unaltered consciousness had never looked better.
Paul, it sounds like you were very fortunate. Ejected from the car? But then again, younger bodies tend to bounce. I know mine has on several occasions.
Good thing you were driving…a Beetle? Good use of yet-to-be-invented crumple zones and never touted active safety feature of “driver ejection”.
Glad you survived intact. Touch wood, I’ve never been involved in a serious accident.
Can’t help but ask…what were the legal ramifications? If this happened today, litigation attorneys would be swooping down on everyone involved.
What was the seat belt situation in your Bug?
NickR: The failure to diagnose my major concussion was definitely malpractice. It was a small town, I was a long haired kid, and I doubt I had any health insurance. The guy driving the Ford wasn’t hurt. I had car insurance (surprisingly), and I eventually heard they paid the value of the Ford. You’re right, it would be different today. Iowa then was pretty sleepy.
ejacobs: seat belts? I suppose there might have been some, crumpled and dirty on the floor, but in those days of my youthful immortality, I, and most folks I knew, didn’t wear them. I’ve been trying to remember if I started wearing them after this accident or not. Perhaps.
I’m surprised at the spacing out. Meditation is supposed to make one more alert to what’s going on in the world (there was a very recent study to that effect, by U Wisconsin researchers, I think in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. And there have ben others.
The disorientation reminds me of a bicycle accident I had in ’91, where I was unconscious for maybe a minute, and then didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. But the disorientation was over in ten minutes. But I do remember it was like looking at the world through the wrong side of the telescope, and as I came to, laying on my back in the middle of the street, I asked a couple of people standingover me if I was dreaming. (The bicycle helmet saved my brain ,and perhaps my life.)
I was pretty much unhurt, except for what I’d guess was a relatively mild concussion. I spent the night at my brother’s, and the next morning, my then 4 year old niece looked at the black and blue around my cheek bone, and in a very bemused tone said, “Uncle David, you need to wash your face!”
David: Too much of a good thing can have a different effect. I could tell you war stories of victims of TM courses – like one guy who stopped talking for twenty years, etc.
Paul, you must have been pretty (a) skinny and (b) lucky to have been “ejected” without serious injury from a ‘63 beetle.
I cannot think of a single glass orifice in a ’63 Beetle which would allow my middle-aged body to fly through serenely in a dope-induced meditational waffle without MAJOR body-shape modification!
I went through something similar this time last year. I ran a red light in my Escort (spaced out, I think – I vaguely remember a big maroon hulk speeding towards my window) and was t-boned on the driver’s side by a Chrysler 300. Maybe I was passed out, maybe my mind’s just protecting me, but either way, I don’t recall the collision itself, just coming to sometime later, my car not facing the direction I was going. I assume I was out for a few minutes, because it wasn’t long before there was a crowd of people trying to cut me out of the car (for what it’s worth, the jaws of life are surprisingly quiet). I’m put on the backboard and everything, just in case my spine is as wrecked as my car. Still, it’s all so surreal that I’m not very worried. After being put through the basic rounds at the hospital and finding out that I’m reasonably healthy, I’m discharged with nothing more than a severely sore body.
As far as litigation goes, there was none. My insurance rates are going to be killer for a couple years, but that’s about it.
CasterOil: The door popped open on impact, the VW bounced off the Ford and to the right, and inertia left my body more or less where it was, but now outside of the car.
The officer said I was very lucky that I wasn’t crushed between the two. It appears that the open door might have acted as somewhat of a barrier between the two cars.
Paul, that is actually mechanically plausible. Indeed, the proof is you here today talking about it!
If the Ford wagon stopped in sufficient time, your Beetle would indeed bounce off (transference of kinetic energy), open its driver’s door (as the frame bent post impact) and eject you, because you were not belted.
I was initially confused by the “red flash to the right”, thinking it to be a red Ford wagon, but obviously that is the stop sign – in RHD world, we have stop signs to the left, of course.
If that’s a photo of your Beetle post-impact, I would think that you (personally) suffered considerable lateral impact acceleration, which probably wasn’t helped at all by your being ejected, which is a further subsequent trauma.
Consider yourself lucky, and not necessarily skinny!
CasterOil: No, that’s not my VW in the image. The damage to mine was strictly in the front. I assumed it was totalled; when I went to get my personal things out of it, I realized it was driveable. I ripped off both front fenders and bumper, tied down the hood, and drove 60 miles back home. The frame and suspension were totally fine. I found an abandoned donor car for a new hood and fenders. Drove it for another year like that.
I had hit the Ford right on its front wheel and suspension, which bent things beyond repair on it.
I can relate. In 1997 I was driving a Geo Prizm hatchback through an snow storm. I remember the car starting to fishtail on the bridge, then I was asking the nice ER nurse where I was. I am SOOOO lucky to be alive.