Monday, September 04, 2006

Hey! I'm walkin' heah!

So Friday I got hit by a car. No, a car didn't run into my car. A car ran into ME. I was waiting to cross the street to get to work, my purse and newspaper in one hand and my giant coffee in the other. (I'm trying to cut down on my caffeine intake, but Friday was not the day for that.) A car had pulled up too far into the intersection and was now blocking the crosswalk. That's fine; I mean, we've all done it before and sometimes you just can't help it or you misinterpret how the traffic flow is going. No big deal. An older man was on the other side of the street coming toward me, but now there wasn't enough room in the (blocked) crosswalk for both of us. Again, no big deal, this has happened before; I decided to leave the crosswalk for him and go around behind the car, a standard practice in this situation (at least where I live). What I wasn't prepared for was what came next: the driver started backing up to get out of the crosswalk, apparently without looking in his rear view mirror, and backed right up into me. I yelled, "Hey!" He kept coming. I yelled again, as my coffee started spilling all over the trunk. I finally got to the other side of the car, which was good because this guy STILL hadn't noticed that he was bumping into something, namely me. When I got past the car, I was so in shock that all I could think to say was, "I just spilled my coffee all over your trunk." What a zinger!

I'm fine, and the driver ultimately rolled down his window and apologized. But what a way to start the day, huh? Sadly, both Larry and my friend Stephanie have both been hit by cars in similar circumstances. Not to sound all preachy, but people really need to pay attention. Or at the very least, they should probably look for pedestrians at a CROSSWALK before hitting the gas...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Kristen! So sorry you joined the hit-by-a-car Club! Hope you have had a Happy Birthday anyway!