Slow Down, You Are About to Get in an Accident

Skyler was in that full-baby phase, barely a year old, and I was about to leave the house to run an errand. I went to say goodbye to him, and he let out one of his big cries, which wasn't unusual. What was unusual was the voice that arrived at the exact same moment. A small, crystal-clear, kid-like voice that appeared out of nowhere inside my head and said: “Mommy, you are going to get in an accident.”

I stood there for a second. Was this intuition? Was this just fear?

Then I shrugged it off, rationalizing that the voice was likely because my momma-fear-brain had been on overdrive for months since his birth.

I got on the motorbike and made my way through our village.

I decided to stop for gas. My logic being: if I was about to get in an accident, stopping for gas would at least disrupt the timeline and reroute the whole catastrophe. You know, the standard premonition-mitigation strategy. Very scientific, of course. ;)

With my gas tank full, I pulled onto the main road. Traffic was heavy but flowing. And that's when I noticed him.

A man on the motorbike just ahead of me. I couldn't stop studying him. He was wearing a black jacket, brown slacks, sunglasses, a backpack, and had a cute, dented green helmet. I even kept eyeing his rusty silver motorbike. I don't know why I was cataloging him so thoroughly. I had no reason to. But my attention was strangely hooked.

Then traffic stalled slightly, he moved out of my sightline, and a beat later (one of those beats so short it barely qualifies as time passing) there he was again. Green helmet. Black sunglasses. Rusty motorbike. Coming toward me now, in the oncoming lane.

I blinked in shock.

I mean, there was no way. The timing made it physically impossible for that man to have made a U-turn and gotten into flowing oncoming traffic that fast. And yet, every detail was identical, down to the damn helmet dent.

My whole body went electric with head-to-toe goosebumps. Then I heard it again: "Slow down, you are about to get in an accident.”

I knew I was having a Neo-in-The-Matrix moment (if you’ve seen the movie). That moment he saw the same black cat walk up the stairs, not once, but twice, and he knew there was a glitch in the matrix, and he was in danger.

So, sensing danger, I slowed down to what I can only describe as snail-paced speed, and hugged the far left of the road. My hands on the handlebars. My eyes scanning. My whole nervous system humming.

A few minutes later, I could see the intersection where I'd be turning left. I talked myself through it out loud (because, of course, I was taking this situation very seriously and I wanted my body to comply): “Slow way down, Juna. Do this turn with full awareness.” There was a car just ahead of me, so I moved to its left to set up the turn.

And then I saw the mistake I'd just made.

The car had no blinker on. But it was turning left. Not at the intersection, but into a driveway, right now, right into me. I had not even a quarter of a second and two options: brake and get rear-ended by the motorbike behind me, or accelerate and hope the driver saw me in time.

I gunned it. Sorry, Mom.

The driver saw me at the last possible moment, swerved hard, missed me by a hair (literally), and I came out the other side sweating through my shirt, hands vibrating on the handlebars, adrenaline doing somersaults through my body.

I pulled over.

When the shaking settled, what arose wasn’t just relief. I was utterly confused.

Because this moment was the near-miss Skyler’s voice told me about. This was the moment the doubled man in the green helmet had been pointing at. I had been warned. So I had gotten gas. And I had slowed down. But I had barely survived anyway.

Which left me with the question that I am still, honestly, chewing on…

Did I see this coming? Or did I create it? Or maybe both?

Was the near-miss with the car the event my premonition was tracking, or was it a new event that my premonition-mitigation strategy unwittingly produced? Or maybe it was always destined to happen, in some form or another?

I teach this stuff. I work with intuition professionally. And yet I am baffled.

Again, I am reminded of the moment in the Matrix when the Oracle tells Neo not to worry about the vase. Confused, he turns around to look at her, and as he does, he accidentally shatters the vase. She replies, “What’s really going to bake your noodle later on is: would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything?”