Robert Manners

Ouch!

My Year of Firsts has gone a bit too far this time... not content with sending me my first credit card and my first new car, Fate has decided that it was time for my first ever auto accident. I would prefer that this First had come before the first new car, as Miss Marjorie and my other previous vehicles would not have been much diminished by taking a motorcycle in the side. Miss Jane, on the other hand, is marred. Her beautiful newness has been horribly maimed! Sob!



So I was driving home from dropping off Miss Lorraine Dubonnet after our Musical rehearsal, making my way up Church Street to Market. I wanted to turn right onto Market but there was someone driving right next to me in the right lane... when I sped up to get in front of her, she also sped up; when I slowed down to get behind her, she slowed down until the car behind her was then blocking me. I don't think she was doing it on purpose, it was Just One of Those Things. So I just went straight up Church Street, thinking I could turn around up there somewhere and get back onto Market. After crossing Market and finding myself in the right lane, I suddenly decided that the best route would be to turn into the Safeway parking lot and come back out onto Church Street and then left onto Market.



And then CRUNCH! I slammed right into a motorcycle that was in my right-side blind spot. If I had thought in advance to turn into the Safeway parking lot and signaled, he might have stayed behind me; if I had looked over my shoulder before turning, I would have seen him. But as it was, my decision was sudden, I didn't think of using my turn-signals because I didn't see anyone behind me to signal at, and I really had no real expectation of a moving object being on my right when I was already in the right lane. I don't know what the motorcyclist's version of events was; when the police got there, they kept us separate when taking our statements.



I immediately got out of the car to see if the motorcyclist was okay, and was of course joined by several other people. It turns out that the motorcyclist was just leaving an AA meeting... some of the people who stopped to check on him were people I also know from the program. He was not badly hurt, or at least had not sustained an emergency-room injury in the opinion of the firemen and EMTs who eventually turned up, which was a relief... aside from the hideous guilt I would feel over hurting a fellow person to that extent, I wasn't sure my temporary binder insurance covers injuring other people when making sudden right-hand turns without using the turn-signal. His motorcycle didn't appear to have sustained any damage, either.



Miss Jane, on the other hand, took it hard. Her right-hand mirror is dangling on a cord, her front bumper is hanging half-off, her right front hubcap is shattered, and there's a huge nasty scratched dent in her front right fender from the wheel-well half-way across the front door. It absolutely hurts my heart to think of her in this state.



So tomorrow I have to call the insurance company that holds the binder insurance and find out what I have to do to get her fixed. I shudder to think what my deductible will be. I can stick the mirror and the bumper back on with duct tape for the time being, I think, but that won't hold for long, and the dent in the door makes a whistling noise. Perhaps later tonight I can have a good cry about it.



A large part of me simply can't believe this happened. It just doesn't compute. These things simply don't happen to me.