Hey all.
I can't help but notice that there's a few blog posts I intended to make, but never did. Included among these are a few posts I started but then ended up getting FAR too long for a single-sitting read, so I posted them as To Be Continued type posts.
Am I finally putting some of those up now? No.
I will post something that I'm sort of surprised I haven't mentioned yet. Some of you may remember my near-accident mentioned in my post on the 31st. Wait, who am I shitting, no one remembers me mentioning it. Anyway, it happened, and it was blogged about. And then, a whole bunch of other near misses. Then, finally, I was hit. And, later that afternoon, I slammed on the brakes and swerved to avoid a BMW cutting across parking spots as it cut me off in the aisles. Good times.
I dunno what it was, but over those three days or so, there were some eight near-misses. And one hit. It's that hit I'd like to share with you all today.
See, November 1st is some sort of Visit the Dead People day. People drop by the cemeteries and kick it with the Six Foot Below crew. Well, it was after a visit to one that my mom, sister and I hopped into the car and made our way out of the place. Then, the fun began.
See, I was on my way out, and a funeral procession was on its way in. Some 20 cars, which wouldn't normally be a problem since there're two lanes on the road. They were in the oncoming lanes, and turning to my left at the T-type intersection I was at. I wasn't able to drive straight through as there were three cars parked in the intersection where people went to visit graves. Well, I pulled alongside the third car, and waited for the oncoming traffic to clear.
This is where things got fun.
The third car parked along the side started pulling out. My mom said that the lady in the other car wanted something, but I couldn't the driver behind my sister who was in the front passenger seat and my door pillar behind her. I started rolling down the window to see what was up, but my sister told me she was just gesturing for me to go.
...go where? There were a ton of cars coming through. Fuck her, I thought, and rolled the window back up again.
She pulls out a little more, getting annoyingly close to my car. I pulled up further so that instead of being beside my sister and probably making her feel uncomfortable, she was somewhere back where my trunk was. Out of sight, out of mind. ...out of mind INDEED.
When most of the traffic made their turn to my left, the final vehicle stopped and didn't follow the rest through. It was a white pickup truck, and I couldn't tell if it was a grounds maintenance vehicle or just some other car who stopped to let us go by. Whatever they were doing, I continued to pass the three parked cars, well at this point it was two parked cars and one crazy lady, pulled back into the right side to avoid the pickup truck, flashed a gesture of thanks to the pickup driver, and continued down the road to leave the cemetery. Crazy lady followed us out.
She started honking.
Maybe she was trying to wake the dead. I dunno. Surely she saw all the cars I was waiting for, she couldn't have been pissed off at me for blocking her in that long for no apparent reason...
Whatever.
My mom suggested we see what she wanted, but it was clear she was some short tempered loon. I was turning left onto the city street as I left the cemetery. She was signaling a right hand turn. "Good", I thought, "she won't be on my ass any more."
She honked some more.
I made my turn and looked in my rear view mirror at the crazy broad, who started making her right hand turn, honked more, stopped making her turn, then continued honking as she started pulling a u-turn. As I drove away I watched her complete her u-turn, and heard her continue to honk.
I made some random remark that I don't remember anymore to which my mom replied something about maybe pulling over to see what she wants; maybe there's something hanging off my car or something else she felt it necessary to bring to my attention.
I briefly considered it, but then thought about what Christina said about her gesturing for us to move and how she seemed like a total bitch and such. Whatever.
She was accelerating hard though, and even though I was driving at a decent pace and she left the cemetery after us, turned right, then decided to make a u-turn instead, she was totally closing the gap in a hurry.
She honked again.
Fuck this, I thought, and hit the brakes. A second or two later, she hit me.
"Great. I've got some new paint for my bumper", I said. That wasn't my intention, though it may read that way, it's just the first thing that ripped through my head at that instant. There was a small area on my bumper that was scuffed up from some girl who hit my car while it was parked in a highschool parking lot a few years ago. Those scrapes always bothered me, and now it looked like I was going to have to get the bumper fixed.
I got out of the car and saw that her plate bracket was attached to my bumper, and she stepped out of the car.
First thing she did was stammer some comment, I didn't catch it though. She was talking all broken and out of breath like she'd just run a marathon, and she started pulling the collar of her shirt down.
I'm like, what the fuck? She going to show me her boobs?
She pointed at a long vertical scar on her chest that looked somewhat recent but not "fresh". She mentioned something about her recent heart surgery.
Like I care.
She said I was lucky she didn't have any witnesses. I had to try hard not to laugh.
I know how she got that heart condition... fucking high-strung Type A Personality psycho-bitch.
She asked me what the hell I was doing stopping in the middle of the road. I smirked, and told her I was stopping in response to her signaling at me to do so. Why else would she have been repeatedly honking at me for?
She wanted to know why I cut her off. I'm like, what? She was parked behind two other cars, I was going around them all. I stopped there because I was waiting for a break in traffic... didn't she see all the other cars?
Oh no, she insisted, she was waiting for those cars to stop so she could go. She dropped that argument soon after I pointed out that she was off to the side, near the curb, and pulled up rather close to the back of the other car. If she'd had a turn signal on, or indeed had pulled out at all, it would have been clear that she wasn't just another parked car...
Collecting information from her was a blast. She kept complaining about her chest, that she wasn't feeling well and such, that she needed her nitro, blah blah blah. I stood there patient enough, prompting her for things as I needed them.
I let her use my cell phone. Suggested she call her husband, or an ambulance, whatever she saw fit, and asked her to look for her insurance slip. She called her husband, and her half of the conversation went something like "I was in an accident. I was at the cemetery and this guy cut me off, and then I hit him and I'm not feeling well, I might need an ambulance..."
I cut her off, and then she hit me? Yeah, there were a few details missing there... a few details that took several minutes to play out from the "cut me off" to the "I hit him". Whatever.
I went over to my bumper and ripped off her license plate bracket, but the screw heads had popped through the plastic of my bumper and were now stuck inside it. For those of you familiar with the world of body-mods, my car now has two screw thread labret-type piercings. Frankly, it looks fucking badass.
Anyway, I stood around a while and while we waited for her husband to arrive, we exchanged a few words. I had her info at this point and really should have just driven off, but I thought I'd be a nice guy for a change. I told her I'd stick around until her husband arrived, and then I'd leave her in his care. During that time, she told me some confusing and seemingly irrelevant things, and I asked some questions.
She told me that I looked like her husband Richard's god son. I think she said his name was Dominic. I told her that I didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. She told me that she thought it was a good thing. I guess I'm flattered. She told me about some random people that were buried at that cemetery, she told me about her heart condition, some random meds and such...
During this period of loosening up, I asked her an innocent enough question. "Where were you on your way to?"
She told me she was on her way home. That's what I wanted to hear. While waiting for her husband to arrive, I took my cell out and did a reverse address search on the home phone number she gave me. It was hard to tell on the phone, and I didn't have much time to adjust the map to zoom in closer, but it certainly looked like her home was north of the cemetery. WE were south of it. When I checked the map I have in my car, sure enough, she lives north of there. She really was on her way home when she decided to turn around and run me down. Made sure to mention that in the police report and to the insurance company...
Anyway, eventually her husband arrived so I turned around and left just as he got out of the car. He looked mild mannered enough, but I wasn't going to stick around and end up in some confrontation... this looked perfect for me as it was; she spazzed out over nothing, was going home, turned around and chased after me, then struck me. The striking of the vehicle is what she was trying to pin on me, asking me why I stopped in the middle of the road, but seeing as how she chased me down... while honking to get my attention... long after the initial "incident" if it can even be called that... and not-so-much with the keeping two seconds back as she couldn't avoid me, although really, when she hit me I didn't even hear her brakes lock up, and I'm fairly sure that shitbox old Grand Am pre-dated ABS... If she's enraged, and on nitro, she probably didn't respond very well to the situation.
Mmm... Legally, 100% her fault. Sweet.
Anyway kids, that's all I've got for you that's story-worthy... except maybe the story with the cop who took the report. To make it short, the entire time he was taking the report he was very calm, spoke deliberately, clearly and with authority. He came outside to look at my car and asked me if those were my snowtires. I told him they were, that I'd had a blowout recently and figured I'd just put on my winter tires instead of buying a new set of rubber now. He told me in that calm and deliberate manner that he usually waits until after the first snowfall before putting his snowtires on his vehicle.
He walked to the back of my car. "What is this you've got going on here with these screws?" I told him they used to be holding up the plate of the lady who hit me.
"HOOOLY SHIT!"
Welp, there went that business-like no-nonsense demeanor, shattered in an instant, the cop suddenly became human and friendly. Like those screws somehow made his fucking day.
Must be a crappy job, taking accident reports...
Anyway kids, it's well after 2am. I should get to bed. Good night.
...Art
