Bad Car-ma

Yesterday, a lady hit my car as I was approaching the onramp for 410 east. She was very much on the right side of the access road when she cut across a concrete island in order not to miss the onramp for the freeway, thereby crashing into the right front part of my Oldsmobile.

I'm okay. My car is still drivable--just messed up a little.

The lady was elderly; she acted confused. She left before I could get more than her phone number and her license plate number. Luckily, the accident happened in front of a crew of construction workers (I TOLD you Texas is constantly under construction! And now I owe you thanks, Texas, for your kind construction workers) and they called the police for me and then stood around and looked at me funny because, folks, I was wigging out.

I had given the lady who hit my car my home and cell phone numbers, and she called me several times yesterday, confused and scared. At one point she thought I was my insurance agent, and she began yelling at me, "I didn't hit her, ma'am; SHE HIT ME!" which was sad because the lady was obviously mixed up and paranoid, and I'm worried she won't comply with the police who are going to call her into the station to make a statement. If she doesn't do that she'll be charged with a hit and run, and that will be big trouble for her, unfortunately.

Also unfortunately, elderly people do not always retain the ability to drive safely. I know am not the first victim of an accident of this nature. And, believe me, I understand that to drive is to have freedom, and if we take away elderly people's licenses once they begin to demonstrate that they are no longer able to drive safely, then that is one more privilege that we have taken from people who often just don't have many privileges left. But something needs to be done about this problem. The lady who hit my car should have never been driving; behind the wheel, she is a danger to other people, especially in this big city of twisting and confusing freeways.

I can't help but think that this accident is just bad karma from the two accidents I've had before: the first one spawned from inexperience and naivete, the second one--well, I still don't know exactly what happened there, but it was my fault. Both times, it was my fault. So I spent most of yesterday crying on and off, not so much because my car is all busted up (because it could have been so much worse, so much worse) but because I've inflicted accidents on other people before, and it's just not fair, the amount of power each one of us is given, to hurt each other, to take away, to alter, ruthlessly, the courses of the lives all around us.