Here it is. The entire month of August for the year 2000. Don't you just feel like a part of my life? Doesn't it make you all warm & fuzzy inside to know that I'm sharing a part of myself with you? I know it does. Read on, starting from the bottom.
August 18th, 2000: Believe it or not, sometimes not all car accidents are my fault.
Most.
But not all.
So, just a few weeks after my little tiff with the two month-old Camry, I was driving to work in the early afternoon. I pulled onto Rich Street, which has three lanes - a right turn only lane, a right turn or straight lane, and a straight only lane. I have to get into the left-most lane immediately after turning right onto Front Street, so I always get into the right turn or straight lane. I was going about my usual business of turning right when I noticed out of the corner of my eye that I was about to be hit by a car in the right turn only lane. I did my best to speed up and avoid the crash, but I was in the Blazer, and well, I think that says it all. Since we had been stopped at a red light right before, the car that hit me seemed to barely even touch me, but the sound of crunching glass was evidence that some damage had occurred. The memories of my accident weeks earlier came flooding back to me, and I got very nervous. I didn't really know what to do, so I pulled into the left-most lane as I had planned to, put on my hazard lights, and got out to see what the other car was doing. The driver just went ahead and pulled forward rather than turning, and she was talking to some foreign men who had been standing on the other side of the street, so I pulled into a nearby parking lot and walked over to her car. She was examining her front bumper, so I asked her what the problem was. She pointed to her busted left headlight and kind of looked at me like she was angry. I'm very aware of my surroundings since ruining the van, and I very much knew that the accident was in no way my fault, so I asked if she just wasn't paying attention when she hit me, mostly just to test if she was acknowledging that the crash was totally her fault.
The woman said, "Excuse me, but that was your fault. You cut out in front of me." Since she was probably 55 or 60 years old and I felt a little sympathy toward her, I gave her a little half-laugh and a smile and said, "I don't mean to be rude or anything, but that was, in fact, totally your fault. You were even partly in my lane when it occurred." She argued that she was just trying to go straight and I cut her off while turning in front of her. I had to laugh again. I asked the woman what lane she was in, and when she told me that she was in the lane to the left of mine, I explained to her that it's a right turn only lane, and she wasn't even allowed to be going straight there, so there was no way that I was the one who made the mistake. I told her that I drive that way to work every day and know the roads very well, and in a "don't talk back to me, young lady" voice, she informed me that she lives right around the corner and knows the roads just as well as I do. So, I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and asked once again what lane she had been in. She suddenly changed her story and told me that she couldn't remember what lane she had been in, but it didn't matter, because she had been going straight and I had turned in front of her and that's all that I had to know. I just shook my head in disbelief and tried not to get angry. She decided that that was the time to show me that she had taken down the names of the two foreign guys who had been across the street, almost as if she was threatening me with them. I outright laughed at her and told her that those names meant nothing to me. I decided to let the police deal with her and called 911. She continued to try to explain her case to me as I talked to the 911 operator, so when the police put me on hold, I said, "I don't think so" and hung up to talk to the woman some more. She asked if there was any damage to my car, and when I explained the minimal amount, she asked if the police were coming. I told her that they weren't, so she asked me not to bother with them, seeming to realise that she would be cited if they came out to investigate. I was in no hurry to talk to them again so soon, so I gladly obliged.
I tried desperately to call home and see what Dad had to say about the whole situation, but he wasn't answering the phone, and I was already late for work, so I just gave my information to the woman as she wrote hers down for me. I was still a little nervous about just leaving the scene without calling the police, and she noticed that, so she asked me to take her over to my car to show her the damage. There were two little scratches in my manly Blazer bumper, and I told her that I wasn't worried about them at all, so she told me that she would just take care of her car herself and not even bother with her insurance company. I told her to call me if she changed her mind; I was so incredibly comfortable in my role as innocent victim.
The woman seemed fine with this, tipped her tortoise-shell glasses at me, and told me that she didn't want us parting on bad terms. She pointed to my COSI shirt and asked about my job. I told her about my duties and how much I love them. She told me that she brought her grandkids to the museum not long ago and believed that she had seen me there, which was odd, because I was thinking through our whole ordeal that I had seen her before. We talked about MOSI (Chicago's version of COSI), the Field Museum, grandchildren, college, cars, and everything in between. I knew that we both were just obliging each other and that neither of us cared what was being said, but moments like those are what I feed on. And that's all I have to say about that.
August 11th, 2000: Driving is a privilege, not a right. I deserve no privileges, apparently. I've known from the very beginning that I'm not a good driver. From the first time that I ever sat behind the wheel, bouncing around a cornfield in my dad's truck, hitting every single hole that he had warned me to avoid, I knew that I would be the bad egg of the family, if you will. Perhaps Dad knew it as well, because boy, did he buy me some great insurance. And boy, did it come in handy. There was the time that I hit a parked car in the Kroger parking lot in all my excitement of getting tickets to my very first silverchair concert. There was the time that I backed into Bethany's parked car as we pulled out of my driveway. (She laughed; I screamed.) There was the time that I hit my friend Jeremy's mailbox as I backed out of his driveway. Then, there was the time that I rear-ended a two-month old Toyota Camry on my way home from COSI. Oh, you don't know about that one, do you, friends? Well, then. By all means, allow me to tell you about it.
I had just met Michael, my friend from the Dome Theatre. I had just proposed to Steven from Adventure by way of his sister. My day had been perfect. I was cruising down Interstate 33 on my way home, driving the minivan because it uses virtually no gas, reflecting on my perfect day, when my right contact started bothering me a bit. I tried to blink the pain away, but I couldn't take it anymore. I noticed that the cars in front of me were coming to a halt behind a red light, so I thought that it would be the perfect time to just reach up and pop my contact out. As I sang along to The Urge's Too Much Stereo, I put my foot on the brake, pulled down my mirror, leaned forward, and took out my contact. Everything was fine. That is, until I glanced at the road and noticed that I was only a few feet behind the car in front of me. I knew that I didn't have time to switch lanes, so I just threw on my brakes and hoped for the best. "The best" was my worst nightmare. I slammed into the back of the car, heard the crunch of metal, and felt my face being ripped off. Okay, maybe not ripped off. Burned off.
Even though I was only travelling at about 10 or 15 miles per hour when the crash occurred, my airbag had exploded, causing a rug burn-like sensation all over the lower half of my face. The first thing I thought was, "Oh, my Lord! I'm deaf!" The pop of the airbag had caused a horrible ringing in my ears. But the ringing only lasted a few seconds, and the chorus of Too Much Stereo came back in. I gave a sigh of relief. But then I thought, "Oh, my Lord! I'm blind!" True, the powder from the airbag was swirling all around the car, and all I could see was a thick cloud of white, but as I blinked through the fog, I saw the car in front of me. I gave a sigh of relief. Then, I suddenly became aware of the fact that I had been hit by the airbag, so I immediately thought, "Oh, my Lord! I broke my nose!" I love my nose, you see. So, I looked up in the mirror, probed the area around my nose a little, and gave a sigh of relief. But as I let my eyes travel downward, I noticed that my lips were about three times their usual size. I thought, "Oh, my Lord! I have no teeth!" Well, I did have teeth, but they were bleeding and aching. I covered my mouth with my hands and just started sobbing.
I was hoping that the woman in the Camry would just drive away as if nothing had happened, but when the powder cloud cleared, she was still sitting in her car. I grabbed my purse and cell phone, waited for a break in traffic, and hobbled over to the woman. I say "hobbled", because I had somehow managed to slam my knee against the van's steering column, and it was feeling about like my mouth did. The woman asked me what had happened, and I explained as I dialed 911. As we waited, I took a good look at the van. The poor, innocent van. The van that I just can't seem to stop injuring. The hood was crumpled up, the entire front end smashed in. I had apparently punctured my radiator, because fluid was running off the side of the road into the ditch. I couldn't stop crying after this, and the woman's verbal bashing of me didn't help things out a whole lot. She wasn't really upset at the fact that I hit her car but that I was making her late for something. The fact that she was worried about her son getting his pants dirty more than anything else basically told me all that I needed to know about her. She asked me how I was, and I tried to pass my injuries off as nothing, because after all, the accident was totally my fault, and I had no right to whine and complain. She, on the other hand, said that her neck was really sore, which I imagined that she was totally making up.
When the police came, they fawned all over me to make sure that I was okay, and I could tell that the situation made the woman incredibly angry. She told them repeatedly that her neck was sore, and they more or less ignored her, which made the goings-on a tiny bit better for me. I had tried calling most of my family but couldn't get ahold of them. One of the officers asked me who I had called already, and after I went through the list that included my dad but not my mom, he asked, "Well, don't you have a mom?" I was still sobbing at this point, and well, you can imagine what mention of Mom did to me. The officer apologised profusely and told me that he would wait with me as long as it took for someone to come and get me. I knew that he was putty in my hands after this.
Okay, so maybe not putty. I got an $80 ticket for not having assured clear distance ahead. He did let me off without a court date, though, and he told me not to worry about anything, that he had a couple of bad accidents during his first few years of driving. Dad reacted to the ordeal exactly as I wanted him to when he came to pick me up. He understood that it was a stupid mistake; he told me to be more careful or he's going to start making me pay my own insurance; he did the standard "The van can be fixed. What's important is that you're going to be okay." speech that he always gives. At least he means it. Plus, I know that he would never actually make me pay for insurance.
When I got home, I stared at myself in the mirror and cried for a good bit of time. The burns disgusted me so much, but luckily, they disappeared after a few days. My chin still feels like its burning at times. I have nasty nightmares about the accident. I can hear the crunch of the metal and the squeal of my brakes and the sound of the airbag. I'm also prone to screaming when I'm in the car with someone else and they move up on someone too fast. But once again, it was my fault, so I'll do no complaining.
