“What we don’t understand we can make mean anything.” — Chuck Palahniuk

We were zooming south on I-77 — somewhere in southern Virginia or northern North Carolina, I think it was — going along at a steady 75 mph clip.

Grandma was behind the wheel. My uncle sat in the passenger seat up front. My brother and I were in the back. I sat behind my uncle.

It was dark. We’d already been on the road some nine or 10 hours and had a few more hours to go. I was tired. I was 7 or 8 years old.

I had my forehead against the passenger-side rear window, staring out at the rocky fields zipping past, when suddenly I saw a tire whip off across the field, sparks making a fiery ring as the tire bounced and rolled.

“Grandma,” I said, “I just saw a tire go flying across the field.”

“What?” Grandma said.

I repeated what I’d said.

“I think that was our tire,” my uncle said.

Grandma uttered a curse word I’d never heard her say before and then steered the blue Ford Taurus station wagon to the side of the road. We came to an easy stop before the front of the car sagged on the passenger side.

Sure enough, our passenger-side front tire had shorn off its bolts and bounded across the field. The Taurus sat there on the side of the interstate with three wheels.

“It’s amazing we didn’t crash,” my uncle said.

“Guardian angels carried us,” my grandma said, and I knew it was true.

I’ve had more than a few brushes with death, yet on Friday I celebrated 39 years on this planet.

I know I can thank God for that, but, maybe — just maybe — it has a bit to do with the fact I was born on Friday the 13th.

My parents were gonna call me Jason right up until I came out in the wee morning hours of the 13th. They didn’t want me named after the monster of the “Friday the 13th” films, so they settled on Justin. It comes from the Latin word for “justice.”

To a lot of people, Friday the 13th is an unlucky day. National Geographic says so many people skip work when the 13th falls on a Friday that businesses collectively lose hundreds of millions of dollars worth of productivity.

The origins of the Friday the 13th myth are unclear. National Geographic says it probably dates back to the early readers of the Bible, which says that Judas, who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th guest at the Last Supper. Jesus died on a Friday, so Friday the 13th became a day to fear.

But the way I’ve bounded around this globe from one fortunate happenstance to another makes me think having that day as a birthday brings good luck.

There was the time, as a boy, when a friend and I decided to play in a shower unit that had been discarded in a dumpster in the trailer park where I lived. We were in the shower unit when we heard the garbage truck coming and knew the drivers of the truck couldn’t see us. My friend hurriedly scampered out of the shower unit and ran away, but the towel rod we used as a foothold broke when I tried to climb out and I couldn’t escape.

The truck had those mechanical arms that scoop up the dumpsters and empty them over the cab of the truck into the back. That means the driver could’ve just scooped up the dumpster and dumped me in the back without ever knowing I was being crushed.

I leaped and leaped but couldn’t reach the top of the shower unit. My friend was long gone. Finally, as the truck was just 100 yards or so away, I leaped high enough to get my foot on one of those ledges where you set your shampoo and pushed my way out just before the truck arrived.

Or there was the time when I was 17 and my car — a beautiful 1983 Cutlass Supreme painted a smoky green — had mechanical trouble on the interstate, causing it to suddenly slow to about 35 mph.

I clicked on my hazards and started making my way to the shoulder. I watched in my rearview mirror as a tractor-trailer passed me, but the tiny Ford Escort behind the truck never slowed and smashed into me at about 80 mph. My car spun wildly. The impact knocked the CD player out of my dashboard and into my chest, causing a large, rectangular bruise. My car came to a stop just inches from smashing into a guardrail. Both of my exhaust pipes were bent around, facing forward, and my gas tank was leaking.

If that tractor-trailer had struck me instead of that Escort, I’d have been pulverized.

Yet here I am, writing to you after celebrating my seventh Friday the 13th birthday.

God’s grace and a bit of good luck.

I celebrated, as I usually do when my birthday falls on a Friday, with a marathon of horror films.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-354-3112 or jhinkley@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.