As you absolutely know if you live in Los Angeles and may know if you don’t, this weekend they are closing a ten mile stretch of the 405 freeway and people are freaking out! We have such a reverence for our highways here. We always call them by their full formal title: The 405 or The 101. There are many things we just can't handle in Southern California. We are a people who panic at rain. Droplets of water have the power to create utter and total havoc in regards to our driving.
You can imagine what a car-tastophe or carmageddon (as they are calling it) this closing is expected to be. People have arranged to vacation out of town, hotel rooms are booked for workers who work on the Westside but live on the Eastside and most people are just planning on
staying home.

I have to laugh a little as I haven’t taken the freeway for ten years. This closing will not really affect me at all. I developed a phobia of driving on the freeway just before I met my boyfriend Adam. It was the Fourth of July weekend and I was heading up North to spend a few days with friends. As I was driving on the 101, huge trucks kept whizzing by me. My little Honda Civic shook like it
was being whipped about in Dorothy’s tornado. It was frightening but what was worse was my instinct to want to stop the car right there on the highway. I became so scared that I had to turn around and come home. After that I forced myself to freeway drive a few more times but
would always exit at the first opportunity. I felt so out of control. Finally after one last time of slowing down on the highway to a snail's pace and realizing I was the object of road outrage, I gave up trying to cure myself. I haven’t driven the freeway since. They say a phobia like this is just your mind lying to you and my mind is a fabulous fabricator.

My mother, who won't drive at all, doesn’t even like to be a passenger in a car driven on a highway. Perhaps her fear transferred to me but since I hate being like my mother, I hope not.
Admittedly when I am gripping the “ Oh crap” handle in the car as Adam is driving, I probably seem exactly like my mother. I try to hold on casually and fake the death grip I am using but I don’t think I’m fooling anybody. Sometimes I even have to close my eyes.

Once when Adam and I were driving back from Northern California at Christmas time, he started to weave a bit on the snow edged highway. The weaving did not happen dramatically and it took me a few seconds to realize that he had passed out. I grabbed the wheel and screamed at him to
watch out. My shouting woke him up and he corrected his steering. Having him drive was our only choice. If he hadn’t come to, I have no idea what would have happened. I guess I would have just watched as hedrove us off the road to our certain deaths. Since he had experienced a migraine the night before and hadn't eaten, we believe this is why he blacked out. Before we begin any journey, we always make sure Adam is feeling fine and has a hearty breakfast.

I did seek treatment to cure my phobia. My Therapist's philosophy was that you should survive the fear and get over it. One exercise he used on my Fear Group was to make us hyperventilate. The theory was that by inducing the feelings of a panic attack and surviving it, it
would convince us that we could endure the feelings of anxiety and fear as well. I thought it was stupid to make myself feel uncomfortable if I didn’t have too. What if hyperventilating caused me to faint? I am not one to feel the fear and do it anyway. My belief is feel the fear and do everything in your power to never feel that fear again. I avoid freeways like a death march and only take surface streets. If a highway is my only option, then either I don’t go or I have to get someone to drive me. It was fortunate that when I got my boyfriend I got a driver as well.

A freeway incident that will forever be imbeded in my memory was the time my roommate Lee was drivng my car. As we were coming home from a delicious lunch, an old man drove into our
right side. He swore that another “ phantom” driver had hit him but no one saw this other driver. Of course we might not have noticed the other driver as our lives were in jeopardy. When the old and ultimately unpleasant old man hit us, it caused our vehicle to spin around three
times. Once the spinning stopped we found ourselves going down the freeway in the wrong direction, just missing the other drivers. Our car finally stopped when it hit a big rig, grazing its big right wheel. As we veered toward the truck I remember feeling very smug about my
impending death, congratulating myself “ See I knew I would die on a freeway in an accident.” The funny thing is at that same moment Lee thought “ This is kind of fun but I’m glad this isn’t my car.” You would suppose that when we didn’t die or get injured in any way that
this would have been enough of a sign for me to realize that the chances that I would perish on the freeway were slim. It didn’t. I had used my one lifeline and I knew I shouldn't tempt freeway fate again.

So this weekend people will see what it is like to sit behind my steering wheel. How to leave extra early in order to lessen the amount oftraffic one has to encounter and which alternative routes are the best.Then there is the whole “ is it worth it to leave the house and drive
somewhere” debate that I go through almost daily.

It may happen that with everyone becoming hysterical about how many cars will be on our streets and how long it will take to get anywhere, no onewill be out and about. People will be too frightened of the dreaded traffic monster to go anywhere. Ha, ha who is the crazy person now?