Another
accident I had many years ago took place in downtown Florence, AL. I was
driving south on Court Street. There was a bit of traffic, so at one point I
had to stop in the middle of the block. BAM! I was rear-ended by a fairly young
guy who was driving a truck owned by the company for which he worked. And no,
it wasn’t Emeril Lagasse driving a Books-A-Million truck. I kind of felt sorry
for the guy because I knew he would soon have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do to his
bosses. Despite how young you think I am, this took place back before cell
phones were popular. Those that did own them had big dumb ones. It took man
millions of year to evolve to where we are today, which is a state of greater
knowledge, but still dumb in many ways. Cell phones, on the other hand, have
evolved to a state of sleek smartness in just a few decades.
With neither
the perp nor the vic (me) having a phone, I told the other driver that I would
go into a nearby store and ask to use a phone. I no longer remember the name of
the store, but they had a counter in the middle, and an employee let me use a
store phone. When someone answered, I looked out the front glass doors of the
store and saw that a police officer had already arrived on the scene. The lady
on the phone made contact with an officer. I could hear the officer speaking to
her via walkie-talkie. And not only that, I could see him moving his lips. No, thou
highly evolved dumb person, not over the phone. It turned out the responding
officer I had seen outside was the same officer the call responder was talking
to. So, I was seeing him speak through the store’s front doors and hearing his
words over the phone perfectly synced with his lips. It threw me for a loop a
short while until I realized what was happening. It was really quite cool. Sort
of like being at a drive-in movie theater watching the show from a distance but
hearing the sound right next to you.
I told the
lady that I could see the officer she was talking to outside, so I would hang
up and go back out. The officer took our reports, and we were on our way. I was
concerned about how good the driver’s company’s insurance would be. From
stories I had heard, I was fully expecting them to try to weasel out of paying
me for the damages to my car. My expectations were wrong.
A few days
later I received a call from a lady at the insurance company. I was told that
they wanted me to get an estimate for repairing the damage to my car and send
it to them. They’d then mail me a check to cover that amount. This was sounding
promising. She inquired about any injuries. I told her that I seemed to be
okay, but I was going to my chiropractor anyway just to make sure. She got a
bit excited and inquired, “So, you hurt your neck?”
“I don’t
think so. I’ve had a bit of neck pain, but it should be fine. I thought I’d
check with my chiropractor just to make sure.”
“Oh, we need
to take care of those expenses, also. Have your chiropractor sent his bills
directly to us. We’ll pay him directly.”
Wow, this
was sounding really good. But just
when I didn’t think it could get any better, the insurance lady told me that
they would be sending me a few hundred extra dollars as an inconvenience fee.
Wow! I thought about asking if they’d buy me a new camera also, but then
thought better of it.
Well, as you
might expect, I simply pocketed all the money I received for repairs and drove
the car around with a dented rear bumper. It wasn’t really all that bad, and it
wasn’t too new a car anyway. I figured it would be just fine until the day I would
need to rid myself of it. And who knew if I might be read-ended again soon. Why
spend that money for repairs when they could all be undone by another reckless
driver looking to do some ‘splainin’ to his bosses.
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