1998 Honda Civic Distributor Fail on Civic 1998

Hi,

I have a Honda Civic 1998 with 190,000 miles on it. One morning I drove the car. At the stop light it started to run rough. Then coming back it jerked while driving and I heard a metallic sound at the same time. I got home and the idle was below 500 rpm. I pulled a wire from the distributor to check the spark and the engine died. Did not start since. I have then replaced the igniter and coil still no start. Towed to mechanic and found that the distributor jumped or something like that, is on the cylinder 1 distributor was on exhaust instead of firing. He then reverse the wires or something not sure what and he got it to run correctly. He called me, explained and replaced the whole dsitributor. Running good now. I guess these Civics are getting older and the Honda distributor design on these particular model will fail at some point maybe because all are contained inside the distributor. Hope someone finds this helpful. I paid about $450 to the mechanic, $300 parts the rest labor, troubleshooting, etc.