Friday before last I was running a little late to work and so I took two "excused" hours off. First there was a stop by the ATM at Publix and then I was headed to McDonald's for their halfway-tasty Deluxe Breakfast.

As I was about to pull onto Peachtree Parkway from Publix, however -- BAM! For a split second I thought I might've been on a collapsing bridge like the people in Minneapolis but no, there was no bridge here. Did I run out in front of someone? Negative. I had just been rear ended.

Great. A year or two ago a 18-wheeler gently backed into me at the exit at Jimmy Carter Boulevard and left a nice nine-inch crease in my hood, now this. I road raged quietly behind the wheel for a couple of seconds before getting out with insurance card in hand to survey the damage. Some blonde in sunglasses and a Nissan Maxima said, "There was no damage. I thought you were pulling out." I looked and sure enough it appeared to not have left even a scratch, though it had sure felt like a solid knock.

Wordlessly I returned to the cockpit. As I cranked up the car and got my Ratt CD back up to volume something struck me about that blonde's demeanor. If I had just rear ended someone, with all the stuff you hear on the news, I would have feared they were going to blow my brains out, or at the very least rip my arms off. If they were kind enough not to do that, I would fall all over myself with apologies, "Oh, my God! I'm so sorry! I can't believe I did that! Do you want my insurance card just in case there's unseen frame damage? Are you sure?" Then I would have beaten myself up over it at least once a day for the rest of my life.

This blonde in sunglasses didn't seem very flapped by her faux pas at all, though. Her attitude was sorta, "Sorry, dude. Whatever, man." Couldn't she act just a little grateful I wasn't waving a rusty Exacto knife at her abdomen? Would turning just a tad pink in the face have been too much to ask?

It goes back to what I said many posts ago: a lot of people today have no idea when, or perhaps even how, to be embarrassed.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home