Last week I blogged about how I almost got in a car accident. Several days later, I actually got in a car accident when a redhead in a red Jetta gently rear-ended me on Route 2. So I blogged about that car accident. Then, last Saturday, guess what happened? Yes, another car accident! There seems to be a psychic facet to my blogging. Perhaps I should apply these newfound superpowers by discussing imminent world peace and miraculous stock market rebounds, but I feel a moral obligation to blog about my second car accident because it involves the police and a contrite SUV owner.
Though I was clearly not at fault for the first car accident, Mr. P seemed convinced that I did something to trigger the rear-end collision. Such is any husband’s confidence in his wife’s driving abilities. “Did you brake suddenly?” he asked.
“No, I wasn’t moving,” I said.
“Did you start to move and then stop?”
“No, I was stopped for about a minute.”
“But the cars in front of you were moving, and you didn’t start moving when you should of?”
“No, darling. Nothing moved except that girl’s Jetta into the back of my Jetta!”
I escaped any such scrutiny for the second accident, because when it happened we were in New Hampshire, hiking on the Greeley Ponds trail as our car waited patiently for us at the trailhead. It was a cloudy Saturday in the White Mountains with spats of drizzle and wind gusts, so we choose the mostly-flat trek to the ponds as an appetizer to our historic Bondcliff hike the next day. Despite the weather, we were pensively merry as we skipped through the woods and reminisced about some of our more notable hikes — our ill-prepared tramp to Mt. Garfield, the spectacular sky that greeted us on Mt. Moosilauke, the agonizing wall-like trail on which we ascended Mt Hancock. We discussed our favorite hikes (Carrigan, Madison, Bond) and our least favorite hikes (Cabot in torrential rain and Owl’s Head— fuck you, mountain.)
A short, older man approached us on the trail, and I flashed him a genial smile and a “Hello!” He returned the greeting, and then asked “Is that your Volkswagen Jetta parked by the trailhead?”
Panic pounded in my brain. I mean, there’s no possible good reason why he’d be asking this. He proceeded to explain that a black Jeep had backed up into my car, struck the front bumper, and simply drove away. “There’s not too much damage,” he said. “Just some scratches and a small dent in the fender.”
The panic blossomed into full-tilt rage fueled by powerlessness and confusion. Such was my state of mind that I barely heard this wonderful, wonderful man as he proceeded to explain that he got the license plate number of the Jeep and left it on my windshield. I should have dropped to my knees and thanked him for his supreme civic manners, but my mind fought to really make sense of the situation, and I barely thanked him before we hurried the 1 mile back to the trailhead.
We tried to call the cops from the parking lot, but T-Mobile didn’t feel like letting us, so we drove into the town of Lincoln and found the Police Department. We were a little nervous barging into the police department to report the accident, but we shouldn’t have been, because the minute the policeman heard that we were reporting a hit-and-run and that we had a license plate number and witness, he was positively radiant. This was excitement! It turns out that vehicular hit and runs (called “Conduct After Accident” in New Hampshire) is a misdemeanor and an arrest-worthy offense. He issued a regional BOL (a “be on the lookout”) for the Jeep and assured us that he’d find the guy — “He’s probably going home right now, thinking about his dinner, but we’ll get him.”
All this excitement! Of course, the next day after the police tracked down the driver of the Jeep that hit my car, he claimed he didn’t even realize he hit my car. And since he was driving a Jeep Patriot — a veritable tank– I actually believe the guy. It doesn’t hurt that he’s a middle-aged dentist with a really swank suburban Boston address, and he’s terribly, terribly contrite about the whole incident. So while I could press to have this guy arrested and charged with Conduct After Accident, as long as he’s paying to have my car fixed, I can’t be that sadistic.
So that was my second accident in 1 weeks time. They say things happen in 3s, so I’ll hold off getting my car repaired for at least another week…
