Are you there God? It's me, Charles

I feel like the luckiest person on the planet right now. I've never been in a real car accident before (knock on wood, God forbid, [that Hebrew thing Avital says all the time that I can't spell], etc.), but today was the closest I've ever come.

I was driving home from Athens to Fayetteville in the middle of rush hour(6:00), on one of the busiest highways in the country (I-85). I was going between 70 and 75 miles an hour, and I heard this rumbling coming from the back of my car, followed by a bunch of thumping. I came to find out later that it was my tire essentially unraveling, but I didn't have time to figure that out as it was happening, as I was promptly going into a spin.

Partly out of compulsive reaction and partly because I heard somewhere that you're supposed to, I turned the wheel in the direction of the spin. I pulled an 810 degree turn (that's 2 and a quarter rotations for those of you scoring at home), crossing a lane of traffic. I somehow managed to miss all the cars in that lane, and they all somehow managed to miss me. And in retrospect, it was probably a good thing that I was spinning because it slowed me down enough so when I hit the median wall I wasn't going dangerously fast, or facing the direction that would've set off my airbags.

At the end of it all, I was essentially backed into the median wall, facing the wrong way on 85, blocking the HOV lane. As if spinning in between cars at 70 miles an hour wasn't enough, I then had the pleasure of sitting there while they swerved around me.

There haven't been many times in my life where I've truly felt like there was a good possibility that I could die...actually come to think of it, this might be the first. The whole 'life flashing before your eyes' bit is pretty accurate. My first thought was 'Oh my God what are they going to tell my mom?' followed by similar thoughts about other people in my life. But after a few seconds, people started seeing me in time to go around me, and I felt safe enough to start calling people.

Of course, I called home first. The conversation started out like "Hey Mom, uh...don't freak out, I'm fine and everything, but uh...I kinda blew a tire, spun out and hit the median wall." She handled it a lot better than I expected. She just called my dad who was on his way home from work to come pick me up.

In the middle of our conversation, a policewoman that just happened to be driving behind me pulled off the road and put her lights on. She got out of her car and started walking towards me. I shimmied out of the passenger side door (as getting out of the driver's side would mean getting out on the highway) and walked over to her. She asked me what happened, I explained, and she called a tow truck.

Eventually I got my car towed off the highway, put the spare on, and my dad follows me home. But while I was talking to the cop, she said something that kinda got to me. After saying how amazing it was that no one else was involved and how lucky I am that I wasn't hurt, she said 'the Good Lord was watching over you today...' Similar sentiments came from just about everyone else that heard the story. That made me feel all warm and fuzzy, but in a different way than usual. I almost felt unworthy. I mean, who am I that God would take time out of his busy day to make sure I don't get hurt?

I consider myself a moderately religious person, but I've never really thought about the concept of God intervening in people's lives or the idea of Guardian Angels or whatever...but having something like that happen really makes me think twice about it. Either I'm just incredibly lucky almost to the point that it's comical, or there is someone or something out there that felt the need to make sure I was ok.

To top it all off, the dent in my bumper from hitting the wall popped itself out on the way home, so it's like the accident never happened, aside from my blown tire. If I didn't have pictures of it, no one would believe me.