Yesterday on my way home from work, I was deep in my own thoughts about work and finances and the color of the sky, and any number of other more interesting things than the act of driving, when something very bad happened. I approached a routine part of the commute at a corner where I turn right, every day, just blocks from home. The car in front of me began to move so I checked my traffic to the left and accelerated… right into the car in front of me.
There is this unmistakable “crunch” sound that drivers know, it’s a sound that tears through you and always makes you cringe, even when you are involved. This sound is a sound that can make grown people cry and make even-tempered men and women everywhere seriously loose their shit. This sound is generated when plastic and metal parts of one car engage with the plastic and metal parts of another car. My car made this sound and it did with gusto.
The vehicle in front of me pulled forward, making the turn and stopped about a hundred feet down the road, I pulled over just behind them and waited. Time slowed and I pondered the innumerable possibilities of how this would go down. My mental inventory triggered and I knew exactly where my license, registration and insurance card all were and I braced myself for the worst. I started calculating the out of pocket expense, the premiums that would go up, possible ways to negotiate my demise and so on. Looking ahead out the window the other driver began to get out of her car and I got my first glimpse of who I had just dragged into what I was anticipating to be a potentially very unpleasant experience for me. She was a shorter woman and seemed to be a very plain, unassuming person. She slowly approached my car, apparently looking for signs of damage on my vehicle and I opened my door and started to get out.
Now, when faced with situations with this, I have this annoying trait that kicks in full force: I become very, very polite and guilt-ridden. I blame this to a degree on my Mormon upbringing. The Mormon culture in Utah is very effective at helping children and adults develop very acute guilt complexes. As I walked forward from my door, the first words out of my mouth to this woman were, “I… am soooo…. so sorry!” Now pair that with the pained facial expression that you might witness on someone who just found out they just single-handedly destroyed any chance for peace in the middle-east, and you might understand what I looked like.
The woman was still looking at my car and I very quickly asked her not to look at my car at all and informed her that I was exclusively concerned about her vehicle. I saw very quickly what I had done. On her rear bumper I had mushed in the plastic on the corner in the shape of a small book, it had compressed and the paint was rippled further in on the bumper. She reached down and brushed away some of the paint my car had left on hers and she looked up at me and said, “It needs to be repainted anyways.” My stomach fell, thinking that she was announcing her plans to have her entire car repainted at my expense. I slowly looked up to meet her gaze, saw that she was smiling kindly, and realized that I may have just been given a very gracious gift.
“I’m not even worried ’bout it,” she said, “There’s a dent in the bumper up front and if it had been a new car, I would have said somethin’ differ’n, but its not.” I looked at her and studied her face for a moment. This small, slightly frumpy woman was a saint. I asked her if she was absolutely sure and she said, “…don’t worry ’bout it at all,” and I felt my heart break with gratitude. I told her she had just made my week and that I could just hug her. She again told me not to worry about it and seemed to cautiously angle in closer for a hug and I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her.
There are amazing people all over this world. I work really hard to be a nice person and to share that kindness with others. A lot of the time, I’m sure, I come across as a cast-iron bitch. But I do try and go out of my way to be a good person and to spread positive energy. Its moments like these when I am refreshingly reminded that people can be fundamentally good: that they, like me, are not looking for trouble but are merely just trying to get by and have a good life. One of my mottos is that karma is a bitch, and indeed it can be. Positive actions and deeds are returned just as much though, oftentimes in subtle ways and on the rare occasion, dramatically.