I’m beginning to worry that my boss is going to think that I’m accident-prone.

I mean — looks at bruises —  I AM accident-prone, but that’s different.  That’s what my dad liked to call “navigating by the bump method.”

I mean more, “oops, it’s been a year, Lyn got in another car accident.”

I’m fine!  I’m fine, Mr. Thorne is fine, the people in the other car are fine, everyone is fine. 

(Balrogie, my car, is… not quite so fine, but he’ll be okay!)

In short: the intersection was a mess, nobody could see anything, and someone ran a red light into me. 

T. said erk, I hit the brakes, luckily nobody elese hit anyone, and then we all pulled over. 

I wish I had gotten the name/email of the nice family that stopped to be witnesses and tell the police officer what’d happened, because I knew it wasn’t my fault, the young man* knew it wasn’t my fault but was pretty sure it wasn’t his fault either (He’d gotten himself into the intersection and then didn’t check the light before he darted forward), and we were all pretty sure that it was at least half the fault of the jackass who’d stopped his giant white van mostly in the intersection… but legally, it was the young man*’s fault. 

* I’m not kidding.  Like. I thought he was a kid when he first started talking and then when we got the accident report, he was literally born the year T. and I got together.

Kind of amusing, since we were one day past our 17-year wedding anniversary when this happened. 

“It’s up to you,” he said, “we don’t have to get the police and insurance involved.”

“Brand new** car,” I retorted.  “I want to get insurance involved.”

** Okay, Balrogie’s been mine for a year, but that’s STILL newer than any car I’ve ever owned. 

We called the police, they got there, we all told him what happened, he filled out the report, Balrogie† yelled at me the whole way home. “My hood’s open!  My hood’s open!”

His hood is so shut that it cannot be open right now.  Poor thing. 

† He’s Balrogie because he thinks he’s a monster, rrrrrarrrrr! but he’s still a baby.  He whines, too. 

So: car is in the shop, I have a rental (first time in my life the rental is less shiny-and-new than the car I own), I’m fine, Mr. Thorne is fine, the young man and his friend are fine, and the very nice witness and his family seem fine too. 

Mr. White Van Stuck in the Intersection: You, sir, are an asshole.  Balrogie bites his thumb‡ at you. 

‡ Balrogie does not, in fact, have thumbs.  Eyes in the back of his head, but no thumbs.