Whiplash

At around 8 on Friday night, I was headed up to Josh's house at the lake. It was a nasty night. Driving rain made the brights almost counterproductive. When I got to PayJay's on Route 1, I pulled off into the parking lot to enter the lake house address into my GPS so it would guide me the last bit, which I didn't feel confident to navigate in the dark.

I pulled off into the exit from the parking lot onto the road, so that my car was parallel to the road. In retrospect, it wasn't the absolute best place to perform this task, but there was plenty of space behind me, at least two if not three car lengths, where anybody could get around me to get into or out of the parking lot, and I wasn't gonna be there but 30 seconds, and my lights were on.

All this notwithstanding, I'm sitting there with my phone in my hand when I hear a crunching sound off to my right and I feel the rear of my car shifting to the left with a reasonable amount of force. Yes that's right, fair reader, somebody exiting the parking lot had slammed into my parked car, going pretty fast. I exclaimed something, most likely an expletive, but then within a microsecond or so my brain, ever the optimist, entered into denial and thought "that didn't just happen, did it?" But of course it had.

I got out, looked at my car, then looked back into the parking lot where some small car had a portion of its front bumper hanging off. I went up to it and knocked on the window. A guy was sitting there with his cellphone in hand, and I asked him "Are you OK?" (honestly, what he should have been asking me), and he's like "Yeah, I hit someone." "That was me." "Oh, I didn't see you, my windshield was a little bit fogged up." When I told him I thought we needed to call the cops he said. "Do we have to? My license is a little bit messed up. But I do have insurance. I was just calling my guy about my insurance."

Anyway, this is taking longer to narrate than I thought it would. I called up Josh because I didn't think he was in front of me and confirmed we needed an incident report, then called 911. Not too long thereafter, Melvin (the guy, who was entirely apologetic, and promised he had insurance) and I were waiting inside the store, and Josh shows up. Being hungry, Josh of course availed himself of not one but two pieces of the fried chicken I had in the back of the car, and I joined him in a drumstick while we waited for the sheriff's officer to get there. It was still hot.

In due course, the officer arrived, took our licenses and plates, but not our insurance and registrations, surprisingly, and in any case it didn't really matter because Melvin "didn't have no GEICO card on him" -- which somewhat begged the question of how he had been calling his insurance guy earlier. The officer promised a report would be available at the Warren County Sheriff's office on Monday morning, which we shall see about soon. Josh's professional assessment was that Melvin almost certainly did not have insurance, and the cop didn't want to embarrass him further by citing him for it, and I get that.  It was a rainy Friday and the guy had fucked up his car or, worse, his mom's or cousin's, and there was no reason to mess him up worse. He was a nice guy and was sincerely contrite. It's for situation's like this that we carry uninsured motorist coverage.

As to whiplash, my back felt and feels a little bit achy but I think it's getting better. Konanc didn't make it up there to give me a free professional opinion, sadly. Even more sadly, I didn't play basketball although the court was, surprisingly, dry enough. The car drives fine but I wouldn't be shocked if it needs $7k in work.