Crash

I was in a car crash today.

So, immediately after swearing off of personal blogging, I go right on to tell you about my automobile accidents. I'm not famous for my resolve.

I had just left work and was headed down Rt-39 to the military surplus store in order to procure large mirrored aviator sunglasses for a musical I'm in. By the branch campus of OSU the car in front of me makes to turn, then doesn't. After the median ends, the car then aligns to make a u-turn.

My internal response to this is ",You gotta be kidding." No, he really wasn't. My safe four car lengths became an anxious three, followed by a precarious two, succeeded by an angering one, and finally...

Ker-slam.

Well, it was more like "screeech... ker-slam," as I had frantically slammed the brakes and pressed with all of the zeal of a man possessed. I was down to 15 miles per hour at the time of collision, when the passenger side front fender of my car slammed into his driver's side rear wheel well. His rear end swung out from the force and I kept rolllllling forward, coming to a stop at the shoulder of 39.

The following exchange is entirely predictable, aside from the wife of the man I hit being an insurance agent, which facilitated the process. There was the obligatory "Are you okay?" "Yeah, are you okay?" exchange, followed by the arrival of EMTs and police, and in my case, parents. We both gave our statements, he was found to be at fault for the smash-up, for making an illegal u-turn.

Aside from a sore back from tensing up as if I'd just grabbed a live wire and frayed nerves which could have easily come from a live wire as well, I was physically fine. My car is perfectly drivable, my brake stomping wasn't in vain. The front bumper is cracked and the right headlight is dimmed from the punch, what, on a human would be called a "shiner," on a car, is exactly the opposite. My puny saturn fucked up his Chrysler pretty well though. The body was fine, sure, but the wheel I collided with was tilted inward, the axle bent, requiring a tow.

It was my first crash in my whole driving career. I almost made it to 20 with a spotless record. Some people talk about living through crashes in slow motion, as if they were watching a bad movie of them driving badly. Others say it was over before they knew it, sped up like Benny Hill footage. For me, it was boring old real-time. I had time to think and react, although I did so poorly and to little real avail (aside from slowing down enough to turn a major accident into a minor one). All I could remark on during the event, aside from my own disbelief, was how together it felt, and how underwhelming. It was a squeal followed by a loud jarring, and the only remarkable thing was how the force of the collision didn't throw me in any direction other than upwards. A second in mid-air, followed by my ass meeting the seat again. I almost caught myself saying, "Hey, this isn't so bad."

It's easy to talk about how relieved I am that no damage was done, I've said it about forty times today. I don't care too much about my car or any scrapes that I get. I would not, however, deal too well with causing injury to someone else, or god forbid, killing them. That's the greatest relief. Despite all of this selflessness only revealed by a "near-life experience," I had one absurdly selfish thought after I saw that the other parties were okay, but before I inspected my own car. This is the thought I will leave you with:

"I just put $20 worth of gas in this goddamned car."