Something completely different, part 3

Continuing a story (completely fiction I remind some of you) from three posts back . . .

Apparently he was not the only one in a rush to get home. The expressway was a stream of red tail lights as far as he could see. Everyone in the world must be on the way back home. “Just keep moving,” Michael thought to himself. Tail-lights were fine. A long stream of brake lights was a totally different matter. “Fifty miles per hour. That’s not too bad if we just keep moving.” But as he topped a hill he saw the dreaded sight, brake lights, and tail lights, glowing red and white. When he was little he would have squinted his eyes almost shut and imagined a huge Christmas tree decorated with brilliant lights and ornaments, But now a sick feeling came over him as he thought of Jan and the kids going to the church without him. In desperation he jerked the steering wheel to the right, immediately hearing the thumping of the tires crossing the reflectors in the highway marking the lanes of an exit. It did not matter that it was an exit he had never taken, he just had to get off this road that was going nowhere fast.
Michael could feel Jan grab his forearm and scream,”you’re going to kill us,” just like she had done a hundred times before. But she was not here now.
“What if I die?” Michael thought. “If I die in this accident, they’ll tell her how it happened, that I jerked the wheel to take this exit. If I weren’t already dead, she would want to kill me. Then she would figure out that I was trying to get home for the Christmas pageant and for the kids and for conspiring. She would find her gift . . .”
Michael was amazed to find that time slowed down to allow him to have this one man conversation in his brain. “Then she would be horribly, horribly sad and she would cry.”
Jan with tears in her eyes had been the catalyst for some of Michael’s greatest moments, times when he became more than he ever thought he could. Now he would have to become a Nascar driver. He could not see much detail, everything was a blur as the car went into a spin. The orange and white stripes of the sign on the guardrail buttress whizzed by, then headlights and taillights. Then he saw them all again. All the while he was gripping the wheel, as if that made any difference. He braced himself for impact, but it never came. It was over as quickly as it began, and the car came to a rest.. Michael looked up, having no idea what to expect. What he saw amazed him. It was the yellow YIELD sign at the bottom of the ramp. He checked to see who had seen his ordeal, like we all do after an embarrassing moment. There were no cars behind him.
“Now I can get somewhere”, thought Michael, smiling as he remembered something his dad used to say. “I’m not sure where we’re going, but at least we’re making good time.” . The numbers and names on the road signs were not familiar, but the cars were moving. Turning right, which would have been south, Michael figured he could find the way home by looking to the west a little way down the road.