Peruzer

I was 8 miles from home and was approaching an intersection. As I downshifted from third to second gear I locked up in neutral. I could only return to third gear and tried repeatedly to get into second. After much struggling and reaching a full stop at the light I was finally able to get it into first gear and proceeded to get through the intersection, but froze up again trying to get it into second gear. I managed to limp the car home, most of the way in battle mode, through stop and go traffic. A frightening experience. What would cause this? The car has extremely low mileage for its age. There was no grinding of gears, does this mean my car is terminally ill. I am a mechanical id