that silver thing lives in a tree
Driving to work from Brooklyn, a little sleepy but chipper enough, I was glad there was little traffic. My last few trips from Brooklyn to Edison in the early Monday morn put me to work late due either to construction or highway accidents or both.
A green Neon, a young brown-haired girl as driver, was two lanes to my right. When it drove ahead of me, I saw its poor damaged back end. Total accordion concentrate. I wondered how long it had been like that and why the girl hadn’t gotten it fixed.
Eyes back to the road I noticed all the cars with dings, scratches, dents and paint-smears. I was glad I didn’t have any of those. Seems to be a given in this part of the country. But my bumpers were clean and I aimed to keep them that way anyway.
As I neared the split for the Goethals Bridge and the Outerbridge Crossing, traffic got thick. Usually it’s thick way back, but not here. Still, it was moving. The sun shone bright from behind me.
The silver Mercedes in front of me came to a quick stop. I stopped and then we all crawled.
The silver Mercedes in front of me appeared to be moving very slowly.
The silver Mercedes actually had come to a stop. Bright sun on silver simulates motion, I guess.
I hit the breaks as fast and hard as I could. Grace’s middle arched up as she tried to stop. Ouch head to concrete. We hit.
The silver Mercedes and I pulled over, we exchanged information. The kids were young, late high school age Jewish kids living on Staten Island. They’d never been in an accident before. We fumbled our way through.
I looked at Grace--Fuck!--got mad and freaked out.
The back bumper of the Mercedes was smeared with Grace’s blue saliva. I squatted in front of Grace. Her mouth was bent, the top of the license plate torn upward, and the front part of her hood v’d in. Violence. I don’t like to see her hurt.
A sort of "lucid freaking out," like lucid dreaming. That is, I only began to freak out, I think, because I thought I should. Also, the situation sucked. Then it occurred to me that everything is highly in flux, and this instance was insignificant in the big frame and bound to happen, statistically, when one drives and particularly in this part of the country. I was not hurt. The kids were not hurt. It was just a morning disrupted by something unexpected, after which I would have the opportunity to deviate from the cardboard path. Freaking out was unnecessary; I decided to be calm.
The police didn’t take long to appear. Two young guys in uniform, probably my age or a little younger, stepped out of the car and walked over. I was prepared for an impersonal encounter during which I would be made to feel lowly. At least that’s what most every other encounter I’ve had with a cop has been like, even when nothing wrong has gone on.
The blond who wore dark sunglasses looked me right in the face. "Are you ok?" And when I mumbled uh-huh somewhat dismissively, he asked again. "Are you sure?" And then the other one asked the same—of all three of us involved. Warm.
We walked to the cars. The blond cop said to me, "It’ll be ok." Was I being set up? No cop had ever shown real live human warmth. Saying that required intuition, insight and compassion. He looked at my car.
"Do you think that’s going to be expensive to fix?" I asked him.
He looked at me sympathetically. "This happened to me, too, and my car looked about like this. It wasn’t as much as I expected."
The cops looked over the cars, took our information, and returned to their car, lights flashing above it, to write the report. When the blond came back to my car, he apologized for taking so long, handed me my license, insurance, and registration cards. Told me I would need to visit the precinct the next morning to get the accident report for my insurance company. He handed me a little piece of paper having been ripped out of a small notebook, where he had written the phone number and address of the precinct.
Then he asked me again if I was ok.
As I was driving away I realized he hadn’t given me a ticket. I thought rear-enders got a ticket about 99% of the time.
A green Neon, a young brown-haired girl as driver, was two lanes to my right. When it drove ahead of me, I saw its poor damaged back end. Total accordion concentrate. I wondered how long it had been like that and why the girl hadn’t gotten it fixed.
Eyes back to the road I noticed all the cars with dings, scratches, dents and paint-smears. I was glad I didn’t have any of those. Seems to be a given in this part of the country. But my bumpers were clean and I aimed to keep them that way anyway.
As I neared the split for the Goethals Bridge and the Outerbridge Crossing, traffic got thick. Usually it’s thick way back, but not here. Still, it was moving. The sun shone bright from behind me.
The silver Mercedes in front of me came to a quick stop. I stopped and then we all crawled.
The silver Mercedes in front of me appeared to be moving very slowly.
The silver Mercedes actually had come to a stop. Bright sun on silver simulates motion, I guess.
I hit the breaks as fast and hard as I could. Grace’s middle arched up as she tried to stop. Ouch head to concrete. We hit.
The silver Mercedes and I pulled over, we exchanged information. The kids were young, late high school age Jewish kids living on Staten Island. They’d never been in an accident before. We fumbled our way through.
I looked at Grace--Fuck!--got mad and freaked out.
The back bumper of the Mercedes was smeared with Grace’s blue saliva. I squatted in front of Grace. Her mouth was bent, the top of the license plate torn upward, and the front part of her hood v’d in. Violence. I don’t like to see her hurt.
A sort of "lucid freaking out," like lucid dreaming. That is, I only began to freak out, I think, because I thought I should. Also, the situation sucked. Then it occurred to me that everything is highly in flux, and this instance was insignificant in the big frame and bound to happen, statistically, when one drives and particularly in this part of the country. I was not hurt. The kids were not hurt. It was just a morning disrupted by something unexpected, after which I would have the opportunity to deviate from the cardboard path. Freaking out was unnecessary; I decided to be calm.
The police didn’t take long to appear. Two young guys in uniform, probably my age or a little younger, stepped out of the car and walked over. I was prepared for an impersonal encounter during which I would be made to feel lowly. At least that’s what most every other encounter I’ve had with a cop has been like, even when nothing wrong has gone on.
The blond who wore dark sunglasses looked me right in the face. "Are you ok?" And when I mumbled uh-huh somewhat dismissively, he asked again. "Are you sure?" And then the other one asked the same—of all three of us involved. Warm.
We walked to the cars. The blond cop said to me, "It’ll be ok." Was I being set up? No cop had ever shown real live human warmth. Saying that required intuition, insight and compassion. He looked at my car.
"Do you think that’s going to be expensive to fix?" I asked him.
He looked at me sympathetically. "This happened to me, too, and my car looked about like this. It wasn’t as much as I expected."
The cops looked over the cars, took our information, and returned to their car, lights flashing above it, to write the report. When the blond came back to my car, he apologized for taking so long, handed me my license, insurance, and registration cards. Told me I would need to visit the precinct the next morning to get the accident report for my insurance company. He handed me a little piece of paper having been ripped out of a small notebook, where he had written the phone number and address of the precinct.
Then he asked me again if I was ok.
As I was driving away I realized he hadn’t given me a ticket. I thought rear-enders got a ticket about 99% of the time.
Yesterday morning I rear-ended a car for the first time.
Expectation erased, the thing is alive.
* * * *
Are bottled-water drinkers being duped? I have wondered why people drink bottled water at home. Makes more sense out and about, but that too could go.
Obstructive potatoes, loose kebabs. What will your car insurance company believe?
For the football family's sake, the Rolling Stones agreed to be censored. But since when is the cock too explicit for the family? When I was a kid, my family used to gather at the fireplace and pretend we were like the Smurfs, only we would replace key words with "cock" instead of "smurf."
New species found in Papua. Tree kangaroos, and egg-laying mammals and smurfs, o my. And there are many species there yet to be identified.
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