You know, you try and try and try to be careful out there on the roads. You keep your hand at ten or two, you only text behind the wheel when necessary or when you’re really in a hurry and you never drive if you’ve already thrown up from drinking. I mean, most of that stuff is common sense. But accidents still happen. They’re always going to happen, no matter how cautious you are, and I know how badly this sucks first hand.
The worst part about running someone over with your car is that they never really believe that you’re sorry.
I get that this must be a pretty terrible inconvenience. Lord knows we’ve all been subject to traffic delays because of rubbernecking or because the president was in town or because you happened to be on the sidewalk that I happened to merge on. It could be worse, it’s not like I drove off or something. What do you want me to do about it now? What happened happened unfortunately, and I’ve given my apologies and moved on. Why is me saying “I’m sorry” not enough? Fine. ‘I’m sorry for hitting you in such a way with my car that a good majority of your midsection got caught under one set of my tires and your legs got caught with my other tires.’ What, is that good enough now?
Okay, how about this: I’ll pick up your dry cleaning bill. I guess it’s the least I could do.
Take my contact information. That’s all my real info. I’m not trying to hide from all this, I’ll go ahead and admit that I’m basically responsible for your femurs being dislodged from the rest of your lower body. These things happen, I guess. But, seriously, I think the taking your dry cleaning tab is a pretty generous offer on my part. That shirt’s still got some better days ahead, a little blood leaking out of your earhole and eye sockets never hurt much. Should come right out. I’d take the pants, but they’re in so many pieces, you’d really need a good tailor and, frankly, would probably just need a new pair all together. I can clean the shirt, but ehh, I don’t really think I can spot you the pants.
Listen, ma’am. At this point, I can only be so reasonable with someone being so unreasonable.
I can barely understand what you’re saying. You’re not making any sense with your words right now. Just because you’ve lost your teeth doesn’t mean that you should resort to gargling angrily at me. I mean, look at me. Sure, I was a little startled; this sort of thing doesn’t exactly happen to me every day either. But hey! I’m over it! Tomorrow is another day! If you’d just calm down a little bit and stop flailing your shoulders up and down off the pavement for just a minute, you might be able to rationalize everything and get over it yourself. One of these days, you’ll have to let go…why not today?
Glad to see you calmed down a little bit. Here’s my card, with more contact info on it. Here’s my card. It’s right here. Take it…seriously, take it. Just take the stupid-…fine. The passive aggressive ignoring bit. Okay. Fine then.
Some people’s kids…sheesh.
ZACK STOVALL 