My left foot is bigger than my right foot.
With that out of the way, the last year has been pretty eventful for me in terms of cars. As you all know, I’ve gone through 3 cars in the last 14 months. I owned a 1994 Honda Accord from Aug 06-May 07, 1980 Mercedes Benz from May 07-Aug 07, and a 2005 Honda Accord from Aug 07-Present. Well, prior to the 2005 Honda Accord, I had gotten away with 4 times and never had gotten a ticket (brother pulled over in Germany for running a red light when we got lost looking for the train station, going 105 mph in Colorado, going 45mph in 25mph zone in Berkeley, and changing lanes erratically in NY when I got lost 2 years ago during my internship). I also got pulled over a couple times during my trip to South America, but managed to pay my way out of both.
Well, with this latest car, 2005 Accord, I’ve done a couple things I had never done since I got my license in June of 2004. I’ve gotten a ticket for driving too close to a car in 2007, and most recently, I just got into an accident that of all things, I caused.
I was stuck at an intersection around midnight, where a guy decided to completely block it off even though it was clear that the traffic wasn’t going anywhere. I was stuck at this position for 5 minutes, and decided to try my luck and drive through the seam I noticed to the right. I went on reverse to make this move, when long behold! There was a tiny Nissan 350z right behind me. I didn’t see his headlights at all because the car was so low and he was so close. I got out of the car, asked him if he was ok. Obviously, he was irate. He asked me if I’m drunk, if I’m crazy, that was stupid. And I couldn’t really argue against him. I could have easily used the guy blocking the intersection for a good 5 minutes as an excuse, but it wouldn’t have been good enough. I had ruined a perfectly good evening for him and his woman.
The damage is a bump damage to my rear left bumper the size of a grapefruit, and surprisingly, a relatively light damage to his Nissan 350z. He needs to get a bit of a paint job, but his car was so low and I had hit him with nothing but the bumper part of my car, so it all gave in completely and didn’t inflict nearly as much damage as I would have expected. His lights still worked, and there was no structural damage to his car. No damage to the engine or transmission or anything like that, thank god, just a bumper issue.
But if you know anything about bumpers, they can run you quite a bit, too. He wants to settle this without using the insurance, saying that it’ll be good for both of us, but obviously, if he ends up wanting to replace the entire bumper for some paint job on the lower left side of his bumper and a puncture the size of a pin needle, then I may need to use my insurance.
I was pretty shocked at first, I couldn’t go to sleep till 4AM. It was really interesting just keeping an eye out on my emotions during this process. When I first felt the bump, I kind of said to myself, ok that’s not good, I hope I hit a bag or something. Then when I saw the car, I was still hoping that it sounded a lot worse than it really was. At first I thought it looked pretty bad, but then I noticed that it really was because of some paint over his lights. I noticed how I kept trying to calm the guy, agreeing with everything he was saying, answering them in a way that would make Ghandi proud. I noticed how I didn’t want to concede completely but at the same time I didn’t want to anger the guy. He calmed down quite a bit near the end, and explained to me what he wanted to do, and he was making a lot of precautions because I still have my california plate and license. Well, I couldn’t blame him, I would have done exactly what he did even if I wasn’t from Cali.
Then, on the way home, I was thinking about how everything led to that event. I really dread some of the New York traffic, where there seems to be very little though tin the city planning process. I’ve never been stuck at an intersection for 5 minutes before anywhere else. I’ve never seen so many minivans that park abruptly in the middle of the street. Then you’ve got the bikers, the pedestrians, taxi drivers, and apparent lack of discipline in laying out relatively straight roads, and the confusion with the frustration pisses me off.
Then I started thinking about how much it’ll cost (I estimate somewhere between $1200 and $2500 for both), how it really impacts what I was going to do with the next paycheck, and how I’m going to get it all fixed (since my roommates don’t have cars and it’ll be a big hassle to ask someone else to drive me to a collision repair shop).
But most importantly, I started thinking about how I needed this. My driving started out aggressive enough. My first ride was a Humvee, and I almost flipped it over head over heels while off roading down a hill. And as I started to get away with all of it, cutting in and out of traffic, making excuses for all the little scratches and bumps along the road, and the fact that I had not gotten a traffic ticket I would have taken gladly (I always thought I’d get one for going 85mph in a 65mph or something, not for following a car too closely), and the fact that I seem to take out most of my anger out on the road really fed into this whole psyche of aggressive driving. My brother, I believe, used to drive in a similar manner, but I never learned my lessons as the years passed by.
So during the drive home, I ended up thanking God for all of this. I had lost a lot of my humility, and had gained back a lot of my stubborn arrogance that I had during high school. Only this time, I honestly started to believe that I deserved to be arrogant. I felt I was going down the path that I would have been jealous of if I was part of 90%-95% of the population I was comparing myself to. And I needed a major slap on the face.
When the war ended, I was very passive-aggressive. I secluded myself for the most part, but I was still an arrogant bitch. It’s still a work in progress, but I managed to become much more assertive. And somewhere along the way, I couldn’t hide the fact that I was an arrogant bitch. Recently, I believe I have been speaking with people as though I did not value their opinion, and I probably didn’t. I’ve been much more forceful in expressing my opinions on things, and my obnoxious behavior never dissipated.
So as pissed off as I am about getting into my first accident (and believe me, I am still upset), for someone like me who never learns their lesson until it becomes very personal, it was a good wake up call. I remember thinking after the war that I had grown as a person but wondering if there was another way to have transformed myself into who I am without having that experience. I’m starting to believe that the answer is no. I’m too arrogant to not deserve one of these every once in a while.
By no means am I down on myself. The trip down to South America taught me to never give up. I really, really needed to succeed, because otherwise, I would have sunk into complacent mediocrity. I won’t give up, because even though I don’t know the destination of the trip I’m on right now, I need to keep trying or else I will never get there. I need to re-adjust once again, and thankfully, no one was physically hurt in the process.