September 29, 2000
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A Car Tale
I am a pretty careful driver anyway, but I've been exceedingly cautious the Fridays of this September. Of course, there has been the added expense of the armed guard riding with his rifle pointed at cars behind me.....
This all started one Friday afternoon in September of 1998. I was coming home from work, and traffic was crawling. That was a good thing in this case, because the woman behind me wasn't paying attention when it stopped altogether. Uh huh, she rear-ended me. But she was going so slowly that I barely felt the hit, and there was no damage (to me or either car).
But last year I got rear-ended again, also on a Friday afternoon in September. By perhaps the stupidest human being I have ever had the misfortune of meeting.
I was taking a completed project to a client's office across town from my apartment. I got to the intersection where I needed to turn right. North Carolina allows "right turns on red lights" at most intersections, but you are supposed to make sure you have the right-of way before doing so. Well, I didn't have it, so I stopped to allow the car that DID to go through the intersection.
And Ms. Stupid in the red car didn't see that there was anything in front of her. She hit the right rear side of my car with enough force that it bent the car frame. When she got out of her car, her first remark was, "Where did you come from?" I pointed out to her that I had been in front of her for at least a mile. She apologized, of course, and said she hadn't noticed me in front of her because she was trying to finish her ice cream. Before you ask, she was in her thirties.We got our respective cars into a nearby parking lot. She called the police while I called my client's office. When the police officer arrived, he noticed that the license tag on her car had expired. Four years earlier.
Ms. Stupid asked him why he had to include that on the citation she was getting for causing the accident, since she had just received another citation for the same violation several days earlier.
He told her she had had several days (plus the original four years, but who's counting?) to get a valid tag, and he was required to add it, was why.
She was supposed to have her insurance company get in touch with me regarding estimates for repair, but instead she called herself. I got the estimates, and she arranged to get together with me to give me a check.
We arranged to meet at a Post Office so she could get me to endorse the check and she could photocopy it. I didn't really want to tell her I owned a copier, since I didn't particularly want her to come visit, so I agreed to meet her.
A sidebar for your amusement: when she showed up, it was obvious she had just had a bleach job done on her hair---or perhaps had done it herself. There were these little puffy bits of hair sticking out from the sides of her head. At least I think it was hair---what it really looked like was cotton balls dyed to match her hair.
No, the story doesn't end with her handing over the check and me endorsing it. I failed to notice that she had miswritten the check. Two days later I was getting ready to go to the bank, and looked at the face of the check to get the exact amount to put on the deposit slip, and saw the error.
I called her, and she agreed to send me another check. I kept the old one until I had the replacement. Oh--I offered to return the incorrect check upon receipt of the correct one, but she told me that wouldn't be necessary and asked me to tear it up. Which I was honest enough to do.
The correct check came, and I did get my car repaired, without further ado. But I decided this year needed to be the one that broke the string of Friday afternoon too-close encounters of the automotive kind. So I have stayed off the road as many Friday afternoons this month as I could. And done what was necessary to keep people from following too closely.
Just the same, I'm glad this is the last Friday of the month, and that I don't need to go anywhere before tomorrow!
Anything --- stupid drivers or anything else --- making you crazy? Feel free to vent here! Of course, you're welcome to add a comment to any of the topics, or start a new one.