"Are you okay?" she asked as she alighted from her vehicle.
"Yes, I think so," I replied, leaving room for contradiction by a physician's examination, should I need to solicit a professional medical opinion for the future lawsuit in which I would extract as much money from this woman as possible (which, from her freshly manicured French nails and sharp business suit could be a hefty sum, but judging by her clunking, dilapidated Honda was very likely not).
"I'm so sorry," she offered.
Of course you're sorry, lady. You're at fault. Totally at fault, and this could cost you big time. You're lucky I'm not a litigious person. When someone apologizes, my instinct is to say, "It's okay," but I fought that impulse tooth and nail. It's not okay, I told myself. Don't say 'it's okay,' because hitting other people with one's car is not an okay thing to do. Plus, in the unfortunate event that we have to go to court, she might misconstrue my 'it's okay' as a verbally binding dismissal of her liability. "What happened?" was the only thing I could think of to say in its stead.
"I was coming up behind you, and I meant to hit the break, but my foot slipped and I hit the accelerator instead. I'm so, so sorry." Sorry isn't going to repair my bumper. Though she seemed to have intended this as an excuse, I think it only made me more angry because by hitting her accelerator, she increased the velocity at which her car rammed into mine. Having done nothing would have been preferable to slamming on the accelerator.
[Above: photo of my newly damaged back bumper. Due to optical illusions caused by the reflective surface of the bumper, and loss of depth perception in depicting a 3-dimensional object in a 2-dimensional photo, the dent looks less malignant than it really is.]
After we had exchanged information, the woman, whose name is Joanne, but who goes by "Joey", asked that I "go through" her (her words) instead of her insurance company. "Actually, it doesn't look that bad—I don't think you need to fix it." Of course you'd say that, lady. It's totally in your interest for me not to fix it. "I mean, if you really care about your car, then you could get it fixed, but I think it's just cosmetic." Like I'm going to get automobile advice from a woman who doesn't know her break from her accelerator. On top of all this, our little incident made me late for work.
I am pretty darn furious about this. In full discloser, my rage is probably obstructing my judgement to a fair degree, but I'd say that only about half of my anger is personal; the rest is principled. The principle here, as outlined above, is fairly simple: do not hit people with your car. What if I had been a pedestrian, and her food had experienced the same sort of "slippage?" (Incidentally, this is an allegation of whose veracity I'm not altogether convinced. My pet theory at the moment is that she is one of those ego-centric drivers who care more about their own convenience than the lives and safety of those around them; on her cell phone, her inattentiveness caused her to hit me from behind.) If we had been at an intersection, and I were a pedestrian crossing the road, her foot's misstep on the gas would likely have (literally) cost me an arm and a leg, and possibly my life.
"I'm going to extract every penny from her I can!" I vowed in a pleasantly cathartic moment. "She is going to pay for what she did. This is not merely an act of self-interested vengeance; it's for the public good."
"How is you suing her an act of public good?" asked Alvin, with naiveté infused with a dash of skepticism.
"Because it is in the public good not to be the victims of vehicular manslaughter," I replied, trying to restrain the sarcasm and annoyance in voice. (Isn't that obvious?) "And by suing her, hopefully I will cement in that particular lesson, thus teaching her not to drive so carelessly, thereby serving the interests of the public."
I am still unsure how this impeccably cogent line of reasoning failed to win Alvin over. In his continued resistance, he asked, "So you think by suing her you're going to teach her not to hit people? Don't you think she already knew that it's bad to hit people with her car?"
"Evidently not," I said with no small measure of satisfaction at my quick reply. "And if she did, then obviously she doesn't care about right and wrong, because she completely ignored her axiological impulses. If she has to pay me $10,000, she still might not care about right and wrong, but at least she might think twice before starting her ignition."
"I think you just want revenge, and you're using 'public good' as an excuse."
And so it continued back and forth for what was probably over an hour, and in the interest of brevity, I will conclude our dialogue by saying as much.
* * * * * * * * * *
My accident today reminds me of an incident from the summer that (at the time) seemed just as incendiary.
My friends and I fixed on some place to eat at the Orange mall (I think it was Panera Bread, but it may have been somewhere else). As you know, the parking situation at the mall on a Sunday afternoon is something atrocious. Fortunately, after much searching, I found a space—or more accurately, three-quarters of a space. A very large, obnoxious, white pick-up truck had double parked, leaving me a fraction of a slot. My car being fairly small, and I being a quasi-skillful parker, I figured I could fit into the remainder of the parking space. And I did! It was quite a tight fit, but I made it without any inter-vehicular contact.
Coming out of Panera (or wherever we had eaten), I saw whom I presumed to be the owner of said obnoxious, white pick-up standing outside his car, and talking on his cell phone. Great, I thought, he hit my car trying to back out, and now he's reporting it to his insurance.
"Is this your car?" he demanded as I approached the Prius. I answered in the affirmative. "Why the hell did you park right next to my car?"
"There were no other spaces; look how crowded the parking lot is," I reasoned.
"Why do you think I parked in two spaces?"
Actually, I just assumed that you didn't know how to park. Though this answer was candid, I doubted that its veracity would win over my adversary, a very large, formidable, fuming Caucasian male. So instead, I opted to answer a different question. "There weren't any other space, and I didn't touch your car."
"I parked all the way out here, and took two spaces [noticed how he judiciously avoided the term "double parked" (twice!) to indemnify himself against accusation of wrongdoing] because I have a nice, expensive truck, and I don't want any a--holes like you scratching up my car."
I was driving Alvin and Chuckie back to church, and at this point the latter chimed in, "he's gotta nice car, too."
"What's it to you?" the angry white male grunted.
"Nothing, I'm just saying his car is nice, too."
"You're just lucky I didn't break in all your windows. You know, you'd better watch it the next time you park like this again [sic]."
Unlike my conversation with Alvin, my discussion with the jerk-parking, ecologically unfriendly truck-owning man lasted two minutes, three minutes tops. I came away, however, feeling just as outraged at the cosmic injustice of it all. He was the one who had illegally, knowingly double parked. He was the not only the inconsiderate one in this scenario, but also the criminal offender. He was the one driving a gas-guzzling, Islamist-fundamentalist-bankrolling truck. I was the one who had deftly manage to park in an impossibly small space without any harm to either his car or mine. I was the one who had broken no known laws (at least as far as this incident is concerned). I was the one saving the planet for future generations of pacifist, law-abiding parkers by cutting greenhouse gases in my environmentally friendly Prius. And yet I was the one being yelled at; I was the one being blamed; I was the one being called an a--whole, the one whose windows he was threatening to smash in. How is this fair at all?!?
For the next several hours after our confrontation, I was incensed at the gross perversion of it all. (I am still confused about what kind of warped reality his consciousness inhabits, a frame of mind in which it is okay to double-park, but not okay to park legally next to a double-parked car. Seriously, what kind of hermeneutic is this guy using?) After several months of reflection time, however, I can see that in the grand scheme of things, my complaint is actually laughably minor when weighed against some of the true tragedies in our world. As my friend Eddie sometimes says to me in moments like this, "if this is this biggest worry in your life, then you've got it pretty good."
I am pretty darn furious about this. In full discloser, my rage is probably obstructing my judgement to a fair degree, but I'd say that only about half of my anger is personal; the rest is principled. The principle here, as outlined above, is fairly simple: do not hit people with your car. What if I had been a pedestrian, and her food had experienced the same sort of "slippage?" (Incidentally, this is an allegation of whose veracity I'm not altogether convinced. My pet theory at the moment is that she is one of those ego-centric drivers who care more about their own convenience than the lives and safety of those around them; on her cell phone, her inattentiveness caused her to hit me from behind.) If we had been at an intersection, and I were a pedestrian crossing the road, her foot's misstep on the gas would likely have (literally) cost me an arm and a leg, and possibly my life.
"I'm going to extract every penny from her I can!" I vowed in a pleasantly cathartic moment. "She is going to pay for what she did. This is not merely an act of self-interested vengeance; it's for the public good."
"How is you suing her an act of public good?" asked Alvin, with naiveté infused with a dash of skepticism.
"Because it is in the public good not to be the victims of vehicular manslaughter," I replied, trying to restrain the sarcasm and annoyance in voice. (Isn't that obvious?) "And by suing her, hopefully I will cement in that particular lesson, thus teaching her not to drive so carelessly, thereby serving the interests of the public."
I am still unsure how this impeccably cogent line of reasoning failed to win Alvin over. In his continued resistance, he asked, "So you think by suing her you're going to teach her not to hit people? Don't you think she already knew that it's bad to hit people with her car?"
"Evidently not," I said with no small measure of satisfaction at my quick reply. "And if she did, then obviously she doesn't care about right and wrong, because she completely ignored her axiological impulses. If she has to pay me $10,000, she still might not care about right and wrong, but at least she might think twice before starting her ignition."
"I think you just want revenge, and you're using 'public good' as an excuse."
And so it continued back and forth for what was probably over an hour, and in the interest of brevity, I will conclude our dialogue by saying as much.
* * * * * * * * * *
My accident today reminds me of an incident from the summer that (at the time) seemed just as incendiary.
My friends and I fixed on some place to eat at the Orange mall (I think it was Panera Bread, but it may have been somewhere else). As you know, the parking situation at the mall on a Sunday afternoon is something atrocious. Fortunately, after much searching, I found a space—or more accurately, three-quarters of a space. A very large, obnoxious, white pick-up truck had double parked, leaving me a fraction of a slot. My car being fairly small, and I being a quasi-skillful parker, I figured I could fit into the remainder of the parking space. And I did! It was quite a tight fit, but I made it without any inter-vehicular contact.
Coming out of Panera (or wherever we had eaten), I saw whom I presumed to be the owner of said obnoxious, white pick-up standing outside his car, and talking on his cell phone. Great, I thought, he hit my car trying to back out, and now he's reporting it to his insurance.
"Is this your car?" he demanded as I approached the Prius. I answered in the affirmative. "Why the hell did you park right next to my car?"
"There were no other spaces; look how crowded the parking lot is," I reasoned.
"Why do you think I parked in two spaces?"
Actually, I just assumed that you didn't know how to park. Though this answer was candid, I doubted that its veracity would win over my adversary, a very large, formidable, fuming Caucasian male. So instead, I opted to answer a different question. "There weren't any other space, and I didn't touch your car."
"I parked all the way out here, and took two spaces [noticed how he judiciously avoided the term "double parked" (twice!) to indemnify himself against accusation of wrongdoing] because I have a nice, expensive truck, and I don't want any a--holes like you scratching up my car."
I was driving Alvin and Chuckie back to church, and at this point the latter chimed in, "he's gotta nice car, too."
"What's it to you?" the angry white male grunted.
"Nothing, I'm just saying his car is nice, too."
"You're just lucky I didn't break in all your windows. You know, you'd better watch it the next time you park like this again [sic]."
Unlike my conversation with Alvin, my discussion with the jerk-parking, ecologically unfriendly truck-owning man lasted two minutes, three minutes tops. I came away, however, feeling just as outraged at the cosmic injustice of it all. He was the one who had illegally, knowingly double parked. He was the not only the inconsiderate one in this scenario, but also the criminal offender. He was the one driving a gas-guzzling, Islamist-fundamentalist-bankrolling truck. I was the one who had deftly manage to park in an impossibly small space without any harm to either his car or mine. I was the one who had broken no known laws (at least as far as this incident is concerned). I was the one saving the planet for future generations of pacifist, law-abiding parkers by cutting greenhouse gases in my environmentally friendly Prius. And yet I was the one being yelled at; I was the one being blamed; I was the one being called an a--whole, the one whose windows he was threatening to smash in. How is this fair at all?!?
For the next several hours after our confrontation, I was incensed at the gross perversion of it all. (I am still confused about what kind of warped reality his consciousness inhabits, a frame of mind in which it is okay to double-park, but not okay to park legally next to a double-parked car. Seriously, what kind of hermeneutic is this guy using?) After several months of reflection time, however, I can see that in the grand scheme of things, my complaint is actually laughably minor when weighed against some of the true tragedies in our world. As my friend Eddie sometimes says to me in moments like this, "if this is this biggest worry in your life, then you've got it pretty good."
1 comment:
For the last three days someone has been sending threatening comments to my blog. People think they're tougher online just because I can't touch them. *Sigh*...
I think people that have such an attitude like the man with the truck have a problem maintaining blood flow to the brain...
...they need medical attention, STAT.
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