Ain't no other man!

Yesterday I had plans to meet my friend the Counter Of White Blood Cells after work to see the dancing movie. (WHICH WAS AWESOME. OMG SO AWESOME.) I was driving into the city and waiting at a stoplight, trying to decide if Christina Aguilera's new song is my new favorite song (okay, maybe just because sometimes I am in the shower and I am pretending I have Christina Aguilera's voice and the razor is my microphone and the line of shampoo bottles on the side is my adoring trumpet section.) There was a big truck at the light, then a little white car, then me. The big truck wasn't a regular normal person truck, more like a U-Haul sized truck. I wasn't paying attention, I was being Christina. "You've got SOUL, you've got CLASS!"

Then! The light turned green. The big truck didn't move forward. I kept my foot on the brake. And the little white car went: vroom! And totally DROVE INTO the truck. Crunch! I clapped my hand over my mouth and sat there long enough to see a little man emerge from the little white car and resign himself to his idiotic fate at the driver's side window of the truck. And I thought to myself: they can't possibly need a witness for THAT, so I swung around and passed them and starting feeling pretty damn good about all the stupid things I've done while operating a vehicle. Because really: that is the stupidest driving I have ever seen.

Stupider than the time I rear ended a lady in horrendous stop and go traffic. It was completely my fault, because I had a new cell phone (a Zack Morris phone) and for some reason I had to make a call right that second and I bumped the car in front of me, not realizing she was stopped. I instantly burst into tears because I am a good girl I get straight As I don't cause car accidents wah my parents will kill me will I go to jail??? I pulled over to the shoulder and stood there trembling while the lady I hit inspected her car. "I don't see any marks," she said. "Do you?" And I shook my head, hoping she would just pull out her pearl handled pistol and end my misery. "Good. I am late to visit my husband in the hospital. We'll just pretend this never happened." At which point I might have kissed her and promised to pray twenty-five rosaries on behalf of her husband and wash her car on the weekends and I still pray for that woman when I think of her, because she definitely did not have to be so nice to lamebrained flaky college student me.

The second time I hit someone was much much worse. I was at the top of a very steep hill waiting to turn right. I saw a family on the sidewalk and since I was pretty much on top of the sidewalk with no chance of turning right in my lifetime, I thought I'd back up a little. I looked in my mirror and didn't see anything, so I backed up and CRUNCH! I hit a brand new Volvo station wagon. I jumped out of the car and saw that I'd only scratched her a bit, but I felt terrible. I hadn't seen her, but I hadn't made an effort to really LOOK either, and I should have, being on the hill and all. The woman in the station wagon was livid. Even though I was extremely apologetic and took responsibility and immediately displayed all the necessary information, she felt compelled to scream at me for driving an SUV. "You didn't see me? YOU DIDN'T SEE ME? This is a brand new car! You idiots driving your giant SUVs think you just OWN THE ROAD! That you can do ANYTHING YOU WANT TO DO! You sit up there all HIGH AND MIGHTY and you don't think about ANYONE ELSE!"

I refrained from responding along the lines of, "If I had an extra thirty grand lying around for a brand new Volvo station wagon, with, I'm sure, excellent gas mileage, you'd be damn sure I'd be driving one instead of this junk heap, which, by the way, WAS A GIFT and is MY ONLY MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION." I was so mad at her. My questionable driving skills were out there for shredding, but for some reason she was blaming my CAR? (I love that junk heap, people.) I made the logical assumption that she was probably one of those people who think third world countries should starve instead of allowing them to genetically engineer their food and then I found a deserted parking lot and bawled on the phone to Phillip. It took me about six months before I was no longer afraid to drive my '92 Ford Explorer around that part of town again.

I have certainly been a stupid driver. I hit cars, but I also hit things. I hit a little metal pole and broke my dad's taillight when I was home from college. I scraped that same car along the fence post when I was backing into the driveway. I thought I had dented the thrice-stolen minivan on a pillar in an underground garage, but my sister Katie, my summer roommate at the time, fessed up to it when I finally decided to ask her about it.

"Oh that," she said, not looking at me. "I wasn't sure if you'd notice."

"There's a giant DENT in the side of the car. How could I not notice?"

"I don't know."

"So you weren't planning to TELL ME?"

"Um-"

"You thought I'd just ignore the fact that there's a giant freaking DENT IN THE CAR?"

"I didn't want to tell you because you'd act like THIS! BOO HOO! WAH! POOR POOR KATIE ALWAYS GETTING PICKED ON."

What. Ever.

Oh, and one time someone else was stupid and hit me. I was sitting outside of Phillip's office in a loading zone, waiting to pick him up. There was a big van in front of me, attempting to get back into traffic. I was reading The Stranger (not the freaky novel) and poking pins in my Phillip Is Always Late Voo Doo Doll when the van backed up into ME, a PARKED CAR. This was so ridiculous I started laughing. I'm pretty sure the driver didn't see me sitting in the car and was planning to conveniently ignore his little mistake, so I made sure to get out and make a show of looking for damage. But people, this was an ancient Ford Explorer and an ancienter crapola van. The driver looked at me sheepishly and I waved him off, but not before I laughed a little bit more, and in front of all the pedestrians.

But even HE was not as stupid as the driver of the little white car, who drove HEADLONG into a STOPPED VEHICLE at a STOP LIGHT at which he was ALSO STOPPED.

And then I got to eat gelato (Phase 1 starts toDAY! Ha!) and see a dancing movie (SIGH, SO GOOD), as if the miniature car accident wasn't enough entertainment for the day.

Comments

[Angela]

God, you have some great car smacking stories! My favorite story is the time I had spent days begging my dad to let me drive the family home from church and then took off the tray that stuck out from the drive-in menu at Sonic while driving my dad's fancy pants car. Very, very smooth ;)