Let’s just say I have this “friend.”
This “friend” may have caused a car accident this morning on the way back from dropping off “her” kids at school, not that I’m claiming that my friend is a woman. Or a man. (You know? Gender liquidity and all.)
But this is the first time this friend has been party to an accident in less than two months of living in Kerrville. (Which, by the way, I learned from a local realtor is named after a man who pronounced his last name like “car.”) Further, this friend’s spouse–wife, husband…I shall not detail here–was almost hit one day after buying a car, and this friend learned this morning that his spouse was almost hit last night.
(Let me make this clear for Legal Reasons. This “friend” did not “cause” the accident detailed herewith, nor did this friend’s spouse cause either of the aforementioned near-hits. Both parties are completely blameless and should be noted only for their courage, good citizenship, and all-around bad-assness in humility.)
So this friend was returning from Tivy High School, driving NW on Golf Avenue (see diagram below) and preparing to make a left onto Washington Street.
(By the way, why did I include this larger map? For you non-Kerrvillians, there are some local sites to point out. Upper left corner is the Kroc Center, where we have awesome swimming in the summer. Toward the middle center is Tivy Stadium, where the high school football team plays, and it really is like Friday Night Lights. So fun. Lower center left is Kerrville Vape Station, one of several vape locations serving our population of 27,000 residents and none of which I have visited or plan to but which form a source of curiosity to me about who would go and choose to breath in another person’s pomegranate mist. Almost directly in the middle is one of the Dairy Queen’s here…they call the DQ logo the “Texas stop sign.” Upper right is Dollar Tree, where everything really is a dollar or less. And of course the municipal golf course, which I’ve played a few times, including one time during the pouring rain on my wedding morning with all my groomsmen and male out-of-town friends. Ten hungover guys (except me) driving golf carts in the rain. Picture that; the course has some hills.)
So I–I really typed that…crap; I mean this “friend”–was making a left turn, safely and legally and morally uprightly situated in the turning lane. Blinker on. Registration current. Carrying no drugs of any kind. And there was a downright shitstorm line of cars coming SE on Golf Avenue, blocking the left turn. My friend was second to turn. Finally, there was a break. The car ahead of my friend turned left, so it was my friend’s turn next. A pick-up truck took the opportunity to turn left onto Golf, which was actually not his right to do–it was my friend’s right coming off a more major road; Washington has a stop sign there. But pick-ups rule, and the mofo turned. So be it. My friend is serene these days.
Here’s where it gets dicey.
My friend sees that the break is still there but the shitstorm is coming again. My friend–being a pretty damn nice person; in fact, there should be a medal somewhere given by some obscure group for the peculiar kind of niceness…no, the special kind of Kindness and warmth and emotional vulnerability exhibited by my friend toward strangers and small animals–my friend, seeing the approaching shitstorm, decides to wave along the next vehicle making a left from Washington onto Golf, since my friend would still have time to make her/his left onto Washington.
See?
Everyone makes their lefts, my friend gets an award for Peculiar Kindness, and the world is a better place for a few hours. That’s what was supposed to happen.
But what actually happened is that the waved-on driver took the left from Washington onto Golf without apparently looking far enough down Golf to the right to see if traffic was coming, my friend finally took a left after the Kindness was depleted and, hearing a loud and sustained honk, my friend now on Washington looked in the rearview mirror to see two cars converging at their sides and then heard a loud bang.
What to do.
Well, if it were me, I always ask myself: “What would Superman do?” Superman would fly around the world so fast that it would reverse time itself and the cars would go backward until just before the crash occurred. Different decisions would be made. The butterfly effect. Christmas is saved. “God bless us everyone!”
My friend is discrete, though. S/he turns their car around and goes back to the drivers involved, who had now pulled onto Country Club Lane (again, see diagram, where you can also find Taco Casa, which has big-ass sweet teas, and Tractor Supply Company, which I myself am dying to go into just because).
My friend identifies themself as the driver who waved onto Golf Avenue the car that apparently took my friend’s wave to mean “the coast is clear and my Kindness is sufficient.” To make matters worse, my friend had jumped into the car earlier that morning with the nearest clothes available, comprising Adidas jogging pants, a gray fleece pullover with holes in it, and semi-dress leather shoes and no socks.
This sartorial display, along with their $650 car, brought into question my friend’s blamelessness.
And that, my friends, means that while one can fight for “Truth, Justice and the American Way,” it’s also true that one should turn off a major road onto the road that has the stop sign and let the sucker there wait a little longer until the shitstorm passes.
Biscuit Aisle 