The Litter Box

So if you haven’t heard by now, I was in a car accident last Friday on my way to work. I had taken a little detour so I could hit the Starbucks drive-thru (my usual Friday route) and had noticed how unusual the traffic was. It would probably make me late for work. Go figure.

About a block before the scene of the crime, I slowed to let a car turn into a parking lot. I heard tires squeal and looked into my rear-view mirror to see a large truck rocking to a stop just a few feet behind me. The driver was talking on his cell phone. I breathed a sigh of relief, thankful he hadn’t hit me, and gave the driver my most evil of all evil eyes, which I’m sure he couldn’t see. Go figure.

A block later, I was not so lucky. I crossed through an intersection and slowed to let a car turn into the gas station on the corner. I was at a complete stand still when I heard the squeals…

And then the crash.

Or maybe it was more of a crunch.

Okay, a crash and a crunch.

After the natural delayed reaction of “Oh crap, he hit me! The loser hit me!”, I managed to assess the damage. I’ll spare you the gory details (Choo would appreciate the privacy), but it was bad. Very VERY bad. Go figure.

And my neck was already throbbing. So this is what whiplash feels like… I thought. Not recommended.

An hour later, I was sitting in the back of an ambulance with an EMT buckling me into a big white neck brace. It was definitely not something I had planned on wearing–and, needless to say, it completely clashed with my outfit. Go figure.

I sat there thinking about it all and somehow managed to see the irony in the situation. Murphy must have been working over time. Think about it:

-Six weeks to the day that I took ownership of my shiny new car (aka Choo), it sat on the curb crunched on both ends.

-The car that hit me was huge. A big Dodge Ram. A manly man’s car. And yet it was painted sparkly purple. And the driver quite obviously uses more hair gel than I do. He was no manly man. Heck, I’m not sure he was a man at all.

-The third party (the woman driving the car in front of me that Mr. Purple Truck pushed me into) was swearing left and right in one sentence and praying out loud to Jesus in the next.

-That same woman was still complaining about all the terrible damage to her car. Yep, that busted tail light was pretty bad. Better pray some more.

-I had taken this route so I could get my Friday Chai Latte fix. That same Chai Latte was now splashed all over my dashboard and dripping on my floor mats. Some fix.

-I knew I would be visiting the ER at least once over the next couple of days, I knew I would need to show proof of health insurance, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to (I’m a new employee and while I do have insurance, the card confirming this fact had not yet arrived in the mail).

I should have been mad. Really mad. My new Choo had been pummeled. I was injured. I had no idea how to go about the whole insurance game because I have never been in an accident before. The man who hit me was on the phone with his significant other (which gender, I do not know), ignoring everything and everyone involved as if he were an innocent bystander, not the guilty party. And the woman was still swearing (Side note: I’ve never heard someone swear while praying before. It’s quite interesting). Any or all of this would have made most people very very angry.

I have no idea why I wasn’t. Delayed reaction, maybe.

Anywho, the ER experience wasn’t all that bad–although it took me much longer on account of my missing insurance card. The following day was equally as long. I was instructed to come back to get the neck brace removed and had to go through the whole insurance debacle again because there was a diffrent nurse on duty. But I made it. In pain and very tired, but I made it.

When I got home, my mail had arrived. And guess what was there.

My insurance card. Go figure.