It’s an odd anxiety.

It was probably exacerbated by the story about that actor guy it happened to a few years back.

For whatever reason, I often drive somewhere, park, and then get out of my truck and begin to walk away- and then I have to turn around and look and make sure the vehicle is not following me.

I am not absolutely sure where the idea originally came from, or why, but it pops up fairly frequently.

I walk away from my truck, and it tries to run me over.

I suppose it is in part because I question my brain at times, and the reliability of my memory.

The truck has a standard transmission, so whenever I quit driving it, I am responsible for setting its parking brake. And I do. I have followed the same unconscious routine thousands of times. I park the truck. I turn off the ignition. I set the parking brake.

I have missed the routine a few times though- and maybe that’s the reason for my fear. I’ve come out to the truck after being in the office or in a store and climbed in and reached out to release the parking brake, only to discover I did not set it.

Yes, we are on level ground most of the time.

But I’ve done it.

I have had one experience where my failure to brake did create a crazy moment.

It happened one weekend evening back in the early 90’s. I was at seminary at the time, and adjacent to the two dorm buildings that sat end to end on one side of campus was a large open gravel parking lot. It’s where we dorm residents parked.

I had run to the store to pick up a few items, and I returned back on campus near 6 PM. I pulled into a space and grabbed my bag of groceries and opened the door and climbed out of the vehicle and closed the door and began walking towards my dorm. And then I hear the quiet sound of grinding gravel behind me, as if a car was coasting into the lot behind me. I turned around to see what was up, and then I realized what was happening.

The coasting car was my truck, rolling backwards out of its space.

Picking up speed.

And I was too far away from it to do anything quickly.

I watched in terror.

Fortunately, I had pulled into the parking space in a turn, and the truck’s front wheels were locked aiming to the right.

And, fortunately, the lot was, at this time on a Sunday evening, empty.

And, fortunately, the lot was pretty much a big empty field.

I watched my truck pick up speed as it retreated backwards and veered into a wide arc to the right. The lot dipped into a slight decline behind it, which means it would also provide opposition when the vehicle completed half a circle.

And after picking up sizable speed on the wide arc, I stood and watched as it then rolled backward into the incline, headed up the shallow rise, and was stopped by gravity, probably 100 feet from where I had parked it.

My heart racing, I ran over and climbed into it and drove it back to the spot I had originally put it in.

And made sure I set the emergency brake three times.

In reality, for me, that is probably where the anxiety started. How I ended up in an empty lot where my vehicle could not strike another car, well- perhaps that is providence. If I had left my steering set straight, my creeping car could have rolled off the lot and down a steep hillside into a ravine and some trees.

I was lucky.

Anyways, that is my story about how I came to fear being ran over by my truck.

And that’s why, whenever I park and get out of my truck, I often look back, just to make sure it’s not coming after me.

I often look back to make sure I am not braking bad.