Excuse My Absence

It's been a week since I posted, and my posting has been sparse in general lately. I came to the realization this weekend that the accident I had a few weeks ago had shaken me up more than I'd realized.

I haven't said much about it here. On May 3, I was driving my son to my ex's house, when a guy in a Nissan Murano SUV rolled a stop sign and broadsided my little Toyota Corolla. His car struck me square on the door. I had my eyes on the road, but my son was watching the other car-- he shouted out a warning just before it struck us. He said that the guy was actually accelerating when he hit us.

I checked to see that my son was okay, then realized I was cut up from the window, which had shattered when the Murano hit us. To my disbelief, the car was still driveable. I got my son out of the car, moved my car out of the intersection, called the cops and began getting information from the other driver.

The first thing out of his mouth was "Oh my god-- this car is brand new!" Uh, gee, I think my kid and I are okay. We exchanged information. I called Kim to tell her what happened, and to ask her to pick Adam up and get him to my ex's house. After nearly half an hour, the police still had not shown up. I drove my car to my home. My neighbor Bob was kind enough to let me keep the car in his garage overnight-- with the window broken, anybody could have walked off with battery, radio, etc. I cleaned the blood off of my arm and leg and went to work that night.

To make a long story short, the other guy's insurance company assumed most of the liability. I bought myself a new used car-- a Camry (I love Toyotas). I should get the settlement check tomorrow.

In the meantime, my various aches and pains have been subsiding, but I've been left with an unsettling realization-- that if I'd been in my old Plymouth Horizon, the car I was left with at the end of my second marriage, I likely would not have been able to walk away from the accident. I realized over the last couple of weeks that the accident had made me nervous about getting in a car and driving.

This weekend, I worked a lot, but otherwise took it easy. I counted my blessings; the accident could have hurt my son or I badly, or disrupted my plans to start nursing school this fall.

Tonight, I got in my new used car to go pick Kim and Mel up at the airport (they went to visit my in-laws this weekend). I turned on the satellite radio and took my Camry out onto the Kennedy expressway. Getting on the highway gave me a chance to try out the cruise control-- the one thing I'd asked my mechanic for when looking at cars. It makes the 11 or 12 hour drive to see my folks much easier. As I neared the airport, I realized that I was relaxed, and having fun-- I'd forgotten how much fun it is driving a car with a manual transmission. I also realized that there was one other benefit of having an old-fashioned manual transmission: it forces me to pay much more attention to my driving. And my son should be happy about it-- I'll be teaching him to drive in the next year, and he expressed a desire to learn how to drive a manual transmission car. Looks like he'll learn to drive on one.