Boy, do I know how to hold the red flag up for Karma! Last November, I wrote about having only ever been in two car wrecks. Karma thought that wasn’t fair. Because now, I’ve been in three. I refuse to use this for my Trifecta entry. RE. Fuse. Oh hell, I’ll probably use it for Trifecta, but with more details and stuff. This one is just the nitty gritty of ‘how I spent my 14th day of my kids summer vacation. Everyone is fine, in both cars. My grandfather said that any accident you can walk away from is a good accident, and I have to say I agree with that assessment.

Briefly. The kids wanted to swim, Chewie has gotten pretty well crate trained, and the whole thing sounded brilliant. Dog in crate with water and a bone, kids out to the car, and off we went. There’s this weird intersection where we live. The big road is Eastern Blvd. It’s a four lane highway with turn lanes. But it’s got a little feeder road that runs down either side of it, parallel to the main road, so you don’t always have to sit through all the stoplights to go half a block. And that’s great, except that AT the stop lights, things get confusing. People on the feeder roads never really have the right of way, always have a stop sign, and yet still have to make it through the intersections. The people crossing the main roads and feeders (the perpendicular streets) always have the right of way, but it’s hard to see them coming.

So.  I left the house, and lined up at the stoplight to go straight. I made it across the feeder on one side of the road and Eastern Blvd. itself, but not the second feeder road.  I saw one car shoot across the intersection as I crossed. And I knew there was a car behind him, but that car appeared to have stopped. It hadn’t. The second car couldn’t see me, didn’t realize the light had changed, and banged right into my passenger side. Where Caroline was sitting.

 

She is fine. I am fine, though my arm and neck are sore. Sam is fine. The other driver is fine. But our cars? Not so much. He struck at my front passenger wheel and came to rest embedded in the passenger door. Everybody had a seat belt, the seat belts all did their most sacred jobs, and there isn’t a bruise to be seen unless this sore arm turns into something else. (I’ll get my chiropractor to take a look at it if it doesn’t chill out.)

He is the at-fault driver, but that doesn’t mean I blame him. This intersection is just from hell. It’s all kinds of dangerous, and I can’t tell you how many times I have nearly caused this accident exactly. You just can’t see the cars that have the right of way coming. At all. And so I know what happened to him, and I feel for him.

 

 

Here’s where it gets weird. This isn’t his car. He works for (wait for it)…. a body shop. Yes, I said a body shop. Because of this weird road configuration, the body shop has the misfortune to exist on both sides of the feeder road on either side of the boulevard. The car was in for repairs, the repairs had been completed, and they were moving it back over to another part of the lot, which required driving along the feeder road. So I have not only the contact information for the other driver AND the contact and insurance information for this hapless other car owner who was nowhere near his vehicle at the time of the crash, I ALSO have the information for the body shop, because it’s a good bet that this is who will wind up fixing my car. Doesn’t it sound like the punchline to a bad joke?

I get the real sense that everyone wants to be responsible here, from the other driver, to his boss, to the car owner, to both insurance agencies. I want to document the hell out of everything, and tomorrow I’ll be off to rent a car. But seriously, Karma? Car gods? It’s OK to move on to somebody else now. Because we also found out that our other car, the red one, has to have a new compressor for the air conditioner today.

And yes, this message IS rather rambling because it was composed under the influence of alcohol. Because after all that? Shit, I needed a drink.

 

About jesterqueen: Jessie Powell is the Jester Queen. She likes to tell you about her dog, her kids, her fiction, and her blog, but not necessarily in that order.