I almost died tonight

That's no shock title, I seriously almost died tonight. My dad and I were driving home on I-294 from Buffalo Grove (where we were checking out a '98 Camry XLE for sale) when I noticed a huge white square object sitting in our lane 20 yards in front of us. Washing machine? Piece of posterboard standing on edge? Hard to say.

I blurted "watch out!" to my dad, and he reacted -- we swerved sharply out of the way. SCREEEWWEEEERRSHHHHHREEECH! Next thing I know we're sliding across lanes of traffic, skidding in wild arcs back and forth on the highway as cars pass us going 80 MPH on either side. At that point my brain understood two things:

1. The sea of headlights and taillights, if observed at night from an erratically spinning vantage point, is pretty psychedelic.
2. My car has a lot of momentum right now. So do the cars that are probably going to hit me. And that truck that's staring me right in the face as it approaches us helpless spinning saps... it's got PLENTY of momentum.

At that moment I was fully prepared for the possibility of getting severely messed up by this truck. I was waiting for the impact.

We ended up near the outer shoulder and gathered our wits enough to move off the road. The two cops sitting 40 yds ahead on traffic duty didn't react in the slightest, either to the big white thing in the middle of the highway, or the fact that a car just spun the hell out and was now sitting on the shoulder. We didn't really care, though; we just sat in our car and breathed deep and listened to our frantically pumping hearts slow down a bit.

My dad claims that the car oversteered... I think he just got startled and jerked the wheel way too hard. In any case, we still haven't found a good used car for me to drive around. If you got something, email me.