Silence from a Crash

For once I have a good reason for having not updating the blog.  Due to the legal ramification still being sorted out, I may leave certain things out of this story until the situation comes to a close.

The other day I was on my way home from a doctor’s appointment and I stop at a stop sign, like you do.  Then out of nowhere, CRASH, I’m in the intersection.  Great someone hit me I think, then Crash, Crash, I’m thought the intersection, he’s hit me again and again.  I was rear ended at least 4 but less than 12 time, I wasn’t really counting.

He hits me again as I’m pulling off to the side of the road.  I get out of the car, witnesses start coming over to see if I’m OK.  Someone calls the cops.  I talk with the witness, telling her I don’t understand what just happened.  She says, I saw the whole thing, he just kept hitting you.

Finally the driver of the other vehicle gets out of his van.  He says he’s sorry.  I tell him I’m sorry he hit me too, but the cops are on the way to sort this all out.  He points to the wheel and says no good.  It’s clear he doesn’t speak much English.  He gets back into the van and starts backing up.  I hit the hook of the van, and shout where are you going, then I run around the back of van to take a shot of his license plate, because while I may be foolish, I’m no fool.  He stops and gets out, repeats that he sorry and points at the wheel once more, “no good” he says.

The cops arrive in force; apparently my hitting the hood and yelling made the person who called the cops say that there was an altercation after the crash.  I assure the cops that he only hit me with his van, several times. The lead officer takes my statement, the witness’s, then to the driver of the van’s.  At this point he asks the other driver if he had been drinking.  The man holds up his thumb and forefinger and says; “little bit” A quick breathalyzer later, he’s in hand cuffs.  And I’m standing there the adrenaline subsiding and my hand being to shake a bit.

The officer I had been speaking with comes over with a bit of paper work for me.  It has all the contact info for everyone.  He tells me three interesting facts:

1.     The Driver is drunk, which explains a bit of why he had trouble getting out of the car and didn’t seem to really understand what was going on

2.     The Driver has no driver license, which along with being drunk goes a ways to explaining why he hit me so many times

3.     The driver is an Illegal Alien, which explains the whole no driver’s license thing and the no insurance thing

At this point, with the adrenaline no longer pumping though my veins and all of the shock of what has happened finally sinking in, combined with everything else going on in my life, I just lose it.  I’m sobbing uncontrollably.  The cop has me sit down on the curb, tells me to take as long as I need, “we don’t need you getting in another accident.”

Eventually I calm down enough to drive home.  The drive, at about 10mph takes me 2mins at most.  If only my doctor had been a little less efficient, if only their printer took a little longer, if only I had stop to check my voice mail in the parking lot instead of deciding to wait till I got home.  All of this could be avoided.  I keep thinking that, but then I think about how nice of a day it was.  It was the first that that was not really hot in a while.  There were a lot of people out that day.  If this jerk didn’t hit me, who would he have hit.  He was drunk enough to not notice a stopped car, he certainly would not have noticed a person crossing the street.  He could have killed someone.  He also could have hit another car that was coming thought the intersection, someone with kids in the car.  The more I think about that the more I realize that this was far from the worse outcome.

As for me now, I’m pretty banged up and it is making life a little more difficult.  I start physical therapy tonight and I hope that with some hard work I should be back to normal.  Until that I’m a little limited in the things I can make and put up here.  I have some back logged stuff I working on and I’ll try to post those and some other projects I’m thinking about starting once I’m back to normal on a weekly basis.

Till next week, get the hell into my kitchen, ‘cause I need someone to cook for me.

P.S.  Please, Please, Please Don’t Drink and Drive, if you have had something to drink, call cab, call a friend, hell call me.  But don’t get behind the wheel.  Think about every bad decision you thought was good one while you were drunk or even tipsy, now can you really be trusted to make the call if you are alright to drive.