Always Look Both Ways

Yesterdays old lady assassination attempt got me thinking about cars....

I didn't drive for the two years we lived in England.

Well. I drove once. "To hospital" because Chad was fairly certain he was going to die via blooples.

I have really bad "car luck."

I am not exaggerating when I say that left hand turns (like in Zoolander) scared me, so I would actually go different routes to avoid making left hand turns for the first 6-8 years I drove a car. I know it's not normal. Not much about me is.

My first couple of years of college I commuted up to school. It was a 45 minute drive (53 minutes with only 2 left turns instead of 6), and I spent more than my fair share of time in the car. It was terrible when snow season came around as well because Kent was in the snow belt. Anyway, one month I got rear-ended 3 times. IN ONE MONTH. Insert your creepy jokes here. So, I started hating driving a little bit more then.

Then, I got in a pretty bad car accident skidding home from school one night. It totaled my car. Then, I got my next car. I had to LEARN to drive it. It was a stick shift. For like the first 5 months I drove it I would get out of the car and high five myself for not having a nervous breakdown for fear of stalling out or rolling back into someone. I loved that car. Unfortunately, it didn't love me. I couldn't see out the back window because of the spoiler. There was a month that I didn't drive it at all because the engine wouldn't turn over and no one could figure out why...then we realized I was trying to start it with the glove box key. A mouse sacrificed itself in the heater and made my car smell like rotting fried chicken for months. And then the other thing....

Right after I graduated from college I had to find a job. ANY job. I ended up getting hired to be a bank teller at a local bank chain. I had to go to 2 weeks of training and the drive was a little over an hour each way...I wasn't used to waking up early. It was hard on me. During the second week of training I was heading to class early one morning and had been running late. I was making my way thru the streets of Kent, and sipping coffee out of my Thermos. It was one of those early morning haze days and it was wet and kinda dull outside. I remember seeing the light above me turn yellow and figuring I shouldn't stop since the roads were wet.

Let me preface this story with: HE WAS FINE. EVERYTHING WAS FINE. DON'T JUDGE ME.

So, I proceeded thru the intersection while simultaneously hitting a kid on a bike. I remember seeing the bike jump and his hip hit the hood of my car. His helmet bouncing off the windshield as I slammed on the brakes. His skin made that streaky noise as he slid off the hood. I got out out my car as people all stared in disbelief. I start asking him if he's ok. I ask if he knows his name... his response is a snarky "YEAH!" Then he says to me, "THE SIGN SAID WALK LADY!" I look a little more closely and realized this kid was around 14. AND HE JUST CALLED ME LADY. I was like 23. Go F yourself kid.  I ask if his mom is home and if he knows her phone number...He was so irritated by my questions. I hear sirens in the background as I get on the phone and make the MOST AWKWARD phone call ever. "Hi, my name is Liz. I just hit your son on his bike. He is talking and seems ok." Silence. She then says, "Did he forget to look both ways again?" Wow. Just wow. You basically just said your kid gets an F in self preservation.  He gets on the phone with her and says he's fine, but the ambulance has already been called. So, we wait. I am replaying the whole thing in my head and the witnesses are saying the exact same thing as me...the kid just flew out of the middle of a cemetery and didn't even check to make sure cars weren't coming. I found out later he was late for soccer practice. He must have also been late on the day they discussed looking both ways before crossing a busy street. Meanwhile, the cops show up and try to bully me. They tried to tell me I wasn't paying attention because I was sipping coffee. They took my license away from me that day. Told me I could come pick it up at the station the following week once they found out if the kid was injured. The cop told me to come alone, after 6 PM on Tuesday. I remembered thinking how odd that sounded. Ummmmm, how's about no. Last time I heard you aren't supposed to just "keep people's licenses" either. I mentioned my mother was an attorney at this time, and that I would be bringing her along as well. That's when he told me I could still drive my car and that I wasn't in any trouble, they just didn't know how to proceed from here. Right.

I get back on the phone with the Mom and she says to me that my voice sounds familiar. I agreed with her. She then asked if I went to school at Kent. I said I did, and that I just graduated. She was totally one of my Professors.

My insurance paid for a new helmet and bike wheel for her failure of a son.

I got a ticket for "running a red light."

It was yellow.

Her kid rotates tires for a living now.