My daughter Alloria has joined a writing club, so on Thursdays I pick her up from school. This is not a major chore — the distance to the school is probably not much more than a mile. When I was a girl I would have walked that distance, but the the local school system really doesn’t like to have the kids walking home through the center of town and they make a special point of telling the parents that we have to pick up our children if for some reason they cannot be bussed home.
Today, just as I was pulling out to turn left off of main street and onto the road the school is on, there was a loud crash, and a jerk, and all of a sudden I was out in the middle of the intersection. I quickly and dazedly pulled off to one side, and got out of my minivan…
… and there was this car stuck to the back of my van. With the front crumpled in.
I’m fine, but there is a sizable dent in the back of the minivan, and the shock of the impact appears to have broken the driver’s seat. The backrest falls backwards, as if the catch you pull to lean the chair back is constantly being pulled.
I’m not sure about the other fellow. There was some waiting for cops and ambulance and fire trucks to show up during which he did not move from his driver’s seat, and didn’t look too healthy, although not visibly hurt. He told the ambulance guy he was okay, but that’s all I ever heard him say. He did get out of his car later, though, when I was fetching my paperwork out of my glove compartment, so he can’t have been too badly hurt. I hope.
The people who had come over to see if I was okay (and leant me a cell-phone so I could let my kids know what had happened) apparently explained to the police that I was supposed to be picking my daughter up from school, so after they got his car separated from mine, and I’d handed over my license and registration, the cops sent me off to collect her. (The school was just down the road a bit.) When I got back, everything had been cleaned up except for his car with the crumpled in front, and only the police man I’d given my paperwork to was still there. He asked for my insurance info (I’d overlooked the insurance card when I was pulling paperwork from the glove-compartment earlier), and then told me it wasn’t my fault and sent me home.
…And the fact that it just took me that many words to say “hey, guess what, I was in a car accident today” I guess explains why I’m not on twitter.