Grey Cup Sunday, nineteen eighty something. Gary and I were driving out of Edmonton that evening, after the Eskimos won the game.

We weren’t traveling that night by choice. My husband was a truck driver, and I was going with him down to the coast. It was our version of a vacation, but the timing sucked. Our friends and the rest of the sports-mad city were celebrating wildly. We hated to miss it, but the decision had been made, and we were on our way.

A few kilometres west of Spruce Grove, I had just settled into the somnolent state induced by long trips in a big truck. The snow was blowing horizontally in serpentine streams, startlingly white in the truck headlamps against the black highway. I was jolted alert by Gary’s urgent mutter, “What the fuck?”

The next few seconds stretched over a thousand years. The tractor-trailer traveling toward us in the other lane had rolled perpendicularly on its side and slewed wildly in our direction, stretching across the road from shoulder to shoulder. Gary pumped the brakes hard, but the highway was icy and momentum is momentum. It took forever to bring the massive, fully-loaded semi to a full stop. Meanwhile the approaching wall of truck loomed ever closer. Bright golden friction sparks flew from the bottom of the trailer as it bounced and scraped across the blacktop.

I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t anything. I was just watching and waiting. Time dilated massively. When we finally stopped, the trailer continued to glide inexorably toward us, smoothly and evenly now, like the future moving toward the past. With infinite patience, I waited to die.

At last, it stopped a dozen paces ahead of us. Gary mobilized into action, leaping from his seat and running to help the other driver, while I remained in my seat, frozen in shock, staring at a wall that filled my world.

I found out later that a drunken Edmonton fan who, like Gary, had to work that night, was driving his road grader down the wrong side of the road. The eastbound truck was forced to swerve into the ditch to avoid him, then jacknifed and fell on its side.

I don’t think my heartrate even accelerated during the whole process. It was like dreaming, or watching a fascinating but not frightening film. It had my full attention, no question about that. But fear? No.