I have been in two wrecks in my life. One was almost exactly 10yrs ago and the other was yesterday. Rewind to 10yrs ago. It was a Wednesday night and I was on my way to church. I remember that specifically because in high school I used to live very close to my buddy Tank (who I mentioned a few posts ago and mistakenly said he works for NASA. He actually works for the military, doing something with rockets or missiles. I was also wrong in my assumption that he built the moon, he does however build things that could blow it up. And if he did blow up the moon, I think he could probably weld it back together.)
We lived just outside of Guntersville on what is known as Buck Island. Here is a map:
Note that the map is not drawn to scale and while our houses were close, they were a bit farther than the 2 inches indicated on the map. It took about 5min by car and if we were to travel as the crow flies we would have had to fly over a subdivision, a golf course, a cow pasture, and a cemetery.
Every once and a while as we traveled to and fro, we would randomly meet each other at the intersection boxed in on the map for your recognizable convenience. When this happened we would have impromptu conversations until another car came to the intersection forcing us to move on. Well, this happened the night of my accident and we were both on our way to church. I’m sure I made some remark about how Baptists are superior to the Methodist and then took off in front of him. So, he was right behind me at the intersection leaving Buck Island turning onto HW431, marked by the explosion on the map. I pulled out to cross the highway and all of a sudden I heard a loud crash, my car came to stop, and in my peripheral vision I could see a car spinning circles. Apparently there was a silver Corvette cloaked in the darkness of the October sky. My bad.
I remember sitting in the driver’s seat right after it happened. I began checking all my limbs. They were all still there and I could still move them. I held one finger up in front of face to see how many it I would see. As I was feeling around I noticed that I didn’t have my seatbelt on, so I buckled it. You know…safety first. As I was completing my limb check, I saw Taylor at my driver’s side window. I tried to roll it down, but the car was off so I opened the door. He said, “Cuz, you all right?” I was.
I tried to go check on the lady I hit, but she wouldn’t stop crying. Not painful, I’ll never walk again cries, more like, “My car, my car, my caaaaaaarrrrr!!!!!” cries. Based on the fact that she was out of her car walking around, I assumed she was ok. The Corvette, on the other hand, didn’t have a back passenger side quarter panel anymore. Again, my bad. Stan, my ’91 Nissan Stanza, wasn’t doing so well either. The front end was pretty smashed up. I was proud of him though. He knocked a Corvette into about a 5 circle tailspin and all he did was stop moving forward. I found out a few days later that he was totaled. RIP Stan.
Now back to yesterday. The exact same thing happened except I was the Corvette. It had just begun raining. Bucket sized rain drops. I was on a somewhat highly populated road for our little town and there was a car traveling about 50 feet in front of me. I could see another car pulling out of a bank parking lot ahead. It almost hit the car in front me but stopped just in time. I felt relieved. Then the car pulled half way out into my lane. Luckily, I had slowed down in anticipation of the accident that didn’t just happen in front of me. I got into the left lane to avoid taking out their front end, but as soon as I did, they gassed it some more coming all the way over into my lane.
I laid on the breaks and horn, but because of the rain, there was no chance. I slid right into the driver’s door. I've heard that in these types of experiences your life flashes before your eyes. The only thing I could see was the other driver, and I could tell she never saw me coming. I was able to slow down enough that no one got hurt, but it did ding both the cars up.
The police had to have been right behind us because there was a set of flashing blue lights in less than 2min. He asked us to fill out some paperwork and while returning mine back to him, the other lady brought hers over. The section she was supposed to fill in describing what happened was left blank. The officer asked her to fill it in and she said, “You know I hit’m, why you need me to write it down for?” I felt relief again, at least there was no disputing whose fault it was.
I pick up the police report on Monday.
UPDATE: I realized after I posted this, that this situation is probably the exact definition of karma rather than the opposite. I still don't believe in it.
