Every time my wife asks me to come to her school and talk with the hearing students about deafness, I always get the following question: “Can deaf people drive?” I usually just reply “Yes” without telling them the following story:

In the late fall of 1994, my brother Warren sold me his ’77 Ford Thunderbird for three grand. It was a steal at any price—ten long feet of pure white, tail finned babe magnet. It guzzled more gas in a week than the entire Eastern Seaboard of the United States presently consumes in a month. But what could I do? Turn the key to that engine and deafness was no longer a factor, believe me. For miles around, nobody could hear anybody.

There was a drawback, however: no snow tires. I lived in Wisconsin for most of my life. You’d figure I would know better, but no. I didn’t buy any. According to my math, since I could barely afford to buy gas, the only way to stretch out my fuel was to go slow… and therefore not burn it up! Which canceled out the need for snow tires, right?

Hey, I never said that I passed math.

Anyway, one day I was heading up Capitol Drive on my way to work, and bam, it started snowing. Hard. Not your typical Wisconsin-type hard, either… as in a giant glacier of icy blue-white suddenly descends from the sky and crushes entire cities. I mean really hard. Within five blocks I was starting to panic, because every time I stepped on the brakes, the car would fishtail madly. I still had another six miles to go—there was no way I was going to make it to work without having an accident.

I was just about to switch lanes so I could turn around and go home when it happened: the three or four cars twenty feet in front of me all slammed on their brakes at the same time. I would have no idea why for the next five seconds, but we’ll get to that later. For the time being, I had more immediate problems to worry about.

There was enough distance between us for me to actually have time to think, and not just copy them and slam on my brakes, as well. If I did, I’d go into a spin and crash right into everybody. Pump was the key. Pump the brakes. Lightly… lightly. I was in the left lane. Nobody was in the right, leaving a good stretch of maybe thirty clear yards before the intersection came up. It would buy me some time. The only thing I’d have to keep an eye on was a city bus that had just pulled over by a bus stop near the bottom of the hill. But hopefully I’d be able to avoid that.

I tapped on the brakes and started to fishtail a bit… though thankfully to the right. I steered into the swerve and released the brake. Presto, the car sluggishly started turning into the right lane. Another few pumps and I’d straighten it out again. Keep in mind: while all of this was happening at ten, maybe fifteen miles per hour, in that kind of slushy snow, the Thunderbird had less maneuverability than an aircraft carrier on roller-skates. From sheer bulk alone, I’d still do plenty of damage if I hit anything.

I tapped on the brakes again, trying to slow down as much as I could without losing control. And it was working! Tap, straighten out a bit… slow down. Tap, a little bit more to the right… slower. Tap…

Suddenly an idiot cabbie zoomed by on my right at a thousand miles per hour, clipped the bus in front of us, and began spinning in perfect circles towards the intersection. I hit my brakes out of reflex.

Something that bears repeating: we were on a hill. Nothing huge… nothing major. But without brakes, the force of gravity on a downward slope is the kind of plentiful gas that nobody has to pay a cent for. It was already all I could do to compensate for it. Every time I released the brake, it relentlessly pulled me forward, speeding me up. As I looked ahead, I saw what had caused the other drivers to bunch up in the first place: twenty yards in front of me, two cars had crashed into each other at the intersection. And now the cabbie had just spun into them as well.

Make a ‘five’ with your left hand, and tuck in your last two fingers. That’s the exact positioning of where these cars had come to a stop. Your thumb? The cab. About seven feet to the left (your pointer finger) was one of the two cars from the original accident. And to the left of him, maybe three feet away (your middle finger) was the guy he hit.

Approximately fifteen yards in front of the cab (on the right shoulder of the road) was the bus. And right in front of it was the bus stop… with people standing both in and around it (they were standing in and around the bus, too). For chilling visual effects, quickly pause here to sketch a rough map of this. You’ll see what I mean. Spinning out would be a disaster in every direction.

And spinning out I now was, because, if you’ll remember, I had slammed on my brakes out of reflex when the cabbie careened by. I had maybe four seconds, five yards, and sixty degrees left to go before I’d be sliding sideways towards the bus. There was no way in hell I would miss it. Unless….

With a clarity of focus that suddenly magnified the dimensions of every single falling snowflake outside my windshield, I put the car in neutral (I certainly didn’t need any more speed), slammed on the brakes once again, and yanked the wheel right as far as it would go.

Just not sideways, I remember praying, bracing for impact as the rear end of the bus loomed up. Not sideways. It’s not like I saw the exact geometric configurations of my plan in my head, but I knew what I needed: about a hundred and fifty more degrees of spin. And I got it.

As soon as I knew I had a chance of making it past the bus (albeit now traveling straight backwards), I put the car in reverse and gave it just a tap—just a tap—of gas. I still had to get past that bus stop without spinning into the people occupying it. The brief burst of momentum gave me exactly that: maybe four or five extra crucial yards before my spin started trying to complete itself. But that was fine. The metal taxi would ahead handle the impact better than the human bodies (translation: the fleshy containers of giant potential blood smears) now immediately behind me.

Then all I had to worry about was the cabbie, the car from the original accident that was closest to him (your pointer finger), and the seven foot gap between them. I had maybe ten more yards to complete my spin so I’d be facing forward for the only chance I’d get to dive through that gap.

I put the car in neutral again and, straining my neck in the process (my rearview mirror was not exactly a precise enough instrument for this particular bit of navigation), slammed on the brakes and yanked the wheel to the extreme right again. Presto, it did the job. I spun ninety more degrees in seconds, sliding sideways towards the gap at more or less the same speed that I had been going at the top of the hill. Another tap on the brakes, and I fishtailed just enough to straighten out again. But by now the idiot cab driver had gotten halfway out of his car.

“Oh sh…!” I screamed, more to myself than to him. I don’t know how, but I could feel it—I had milliseconds to make it through the gap without clipping either car. On blind faith alone, I put the Thunderbird in drive and tapped on the gas, just enough to sail right past the cabbie, clearing both cars with maybe a foot to spare on either side.

I did another half spin before I finally regained control, but there were no more cars beyond the scene of the accident, so I handled this with a bit more presence of mind. And eventually I was able to pull over. After a while a cop pulled up behind me to see if I was okay.

I couldn’t let go of the steering wheel for quite some time.

The moral of this story? I’m not sure. But now that I’ve started thinking about it, I’m also starting to think that maybe the next time some kid asks me if deaf people can drive… I’m going to answer him with a bit more than just “Yes.”