My near death experience

**This is a story that I would tell at the Moth next month if I had the balls.**

Last year, my father came up with the idea to fly me home for the weekend in the middle of September to surprise my mother for her birthday. I'm from Boston, so when I do fly home all the way from Chicago, it's a little bit of an event. So my dad creates this plan where I would work my waitress-ing shift at this restaurant, and then I would speed off to O'hare and hop on a plane to Boston where he'd pick me up and drive me home. All of this planning in the hopes that I would show up and my mom would freak out and cry and have the best birthday ever.

So, the restaurant I worked at was called "Jamaica, Jamaica". Let me just start by saying, being a white waitress at a Jamaican food restaurant in Chicago is nt as easy as you think it would be. People get mad at you- like, legitimately upset that you're white. It's as if they think they are in Jamaica, and you're lying to them.
Sir, Ma'am, look out the window. Is that a Jimmy John's? Yes, it is. Because you are in Illinois, and you are on your lunch break.

So I got harassed by white people for a few hours, close up the shop, grab my ox tail to go, and hop in my car to put the surprise plan in action. I got on the Kennedy Express and I noticed that my break light is going off. So I do what any girl does when she has a question about cars- I call my dad. He picks up the phone and I ask him it it's a problem that the brake light is going off and he says no, no, you're fine. So I hang up and I continue to barrel down the highway, thinking about what my mom would make for me to eat when I got home. I mean, it might have been her birthday, but come on- let's not get lazy here, right? So my foot is firmly on the gas as I'm deciding whether she'll make me mac and cheese and pizza and I realize that I'm going a little fast. So I start to step on the brake and the pedal instantly hits the floor. No resistance, no nothing, no slowing down or braking of any kind. I just think- "Oh. Shit."

And I do what any girl would do while she's barreling down the highway during rush-hour while her brakes are completely gone- I call my dad. I call my dad and I'm like, "DAD. SOMETHING IS WRONG."

I didn't mention this before, but my father is not a mechanical person. he is a football coach from Connecticut who wears swim trunks as if they were real pants and keeps what he calls a "loaded toothbrush" in his car at all times. So I'm realizing my initial mistake in calling him the first time, at this very moment while certain death is upon me. And I'm like, "Dad. No brakes." And my father, being the bullshitted that only a man who wears swim trunks as real pants could be, goes- "Oh, THAT break light. Yeah, you have a problem." Thanks Dad. Thanks.

So I'm over halfway to the airport and there aren't many exits that have a place to get my car fixed. And all I'm thinking of is my beautiful mother, with a tear of joy glistening down her cheek as she sees me walk into our home on this- the day of her birth. And my Dad goes, "E-brake it." So I do. I use the emergency brake on my entire way to the airport and I get home in time to see my mother weep with sheer happiness on her birthday.