Literally.
The girls and I were in the van by 10:30 a.m. heading for Darcy's annual wellness doctor visit. I backed out of the garage and then stopped to make sure the garage door was closing because the day before I had backed all the way into the street before realizing the garage door had not closed.
Seeing that the door was in fact moving, I proceeded to back down the hill of our driveway where I stopped once again to do my annual check:
- Look left - The mail lady (her name is Cherie) was at my neighbor's mailbox across the street. She looked to be sorting through the mail which I figured would give me time to back into the street.
- Look right - Totally clear.
- Look left (because this was taught as the way to cross the street)
Only I didn't look left again because I wanted to track the damn garage door. So, instead of looking left, I faced the front of the house and eased up on the brake to back out the van into the street.
Yep. You guessed it.
Right into Cherie's mail truck. Because she, like me, wasn't paying attention to her surroundings. She closed my neighbor's mailbox and then accelerated so that my bumper met her driver's side.
It was more of a bump. Neither of us was traveling more than a snail's pace but these postal trucks are made of tin. There were so many dents and indentations in her door we couldn't tell which one came from my bumper, but because Cherie had her window rolled most of the way down, when I tapped into her, the window, with most of it inside the tin door, shattered...into a million gazillion pieces the size of a million gazillion peas.
Fortunately, most of the pieces fell inside the door and into the truck with only about nine pieces falling into the street.
She was shaken. I was shaken. A crowd gathered.
Not really. My neighbor Garnet, two doors down, came out and made a few jokes to relax us. My other neighbor, a retired cop, came over and offered helpful suggestions.
Sid: "What you do is tell the supervisor that you were trying to get the mail lady's attention and when you knocked on her window the entire thing shattered."
Cherie was a good sport. She called her supervisor while I called the doctor's office to cancel our appointment. She pulled out a kit kept in the mail trucks for accidents and when she opened it a piece of chalk rolled out. This sent us into much laughter, and we made several jokes before concluding that it would be fun to draw the outline of a body behind the mail truck.
Thank goodness we only joked about it because when the supervisors arrived they were not amused by anything.
Supervisor One: (to Cherie)"Are you okay? What happened?"
Cherie: "I'm fine. We're fine. Cara, you tell the story."
Me: "I needed to get Cherie's attention regarding my mail. I knocked on her window and the damn thing shattered!"
The four of us snickered, but boy were the supervisors unamused. They stood, backs ram-rod straight, staring at us with VERY serious faces. We immediately stopped laughing. Cherie wiped her smile off her face. Both neighbors muttered under their breaths about getting back home and then did just that. I sighed and launched into the truth.
It began to rain.
One supervisor began taking pictures like it was a murder crime scene. I kept waiting for him to pull out gloves and a fingerprint kit. What he was taking pictures of was beyond me. There wasn't any damage to photograph unless he put the lens down inside the door of the mail truck. As for my vehicle, there was zilch. Nada. My big, ass, plastic bumper that has protected me in a few rear-end hits had no damage except for two pea-size pieces of postal window glass sitting on it.
Supervisor One: "Insurance information?"
I gave it to him. Cherie was sent on her way. I suggested everyone come into my garage out of the rain to finish filling out the paperwork. Both supervisors declined as if that were against the rules.
Camera Guy - "So, you admit you are at fault?"
Me: "Oh, I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to admit fault, am I? I mean, I watched a lot of NYPD Blue and Cagney and Lacey in my youth."
Camera Guy (unamused) "Because usually we would have to bring the police into this."
He didn't look at me when he said this but stared out into my neighborhood. As if he'd delivered a very major line in a very major Oscar movie.
I too stared into my neighborhood, playing the part of the good guy being made to look bad by the evil supervisor with no sense of humor. I said nothing.
Inside, however, I was raging.
Me: "Are you kidding me? By all means, please call the police. Please report that I broke a window in your postal vehicle. Bother the police with this nonsense while real crime is being committed in this county. I never said I wasn't going to pay for what I did. I gave you my insurance information. I told you what happened. You want me to get a ticket? For coasting down my driveway? Let's face it, both of us were not paying attention. It was a stupid tap. If her window hadn't been down, we wouldn't even be standing here in the rain having this discussion like its a matter of national security."
Silence.
I refused to give in.
Camera Guy: "Okay, so you'll have to pay for the window."
Me: "I gave you my insurance information. I'm sure I have coverage for a broken window."
They left. I called my insurance company. The agent asked if I had any paperwork. Uh no. I had Cherie's name but not her phone number. He suggested I get that information from her tomorrow when she blew through the neighborhood delivering our mail.
About two minutes after I hung up the phone with the agent, I spied a mail truck out delivering the mail to those three neighbors who hadn't gotten their mail due to my fender bender with Cherie.
I took off running. I was in flimsy flip flops because of an inflamed ingrown toenail and couldn't move as fast as I wanted. I shuffled through puddles, waving my arms and shouting Cherie's name. Just as I reached the back of the truck, it accelerated and moved on to the next mailbox. I shuffled faster, increased my waving, and upped the volume on my shouting.
Again, I crept up to the driver's side window and off went the truck to the next mailbox.
Seriously?
I just knew my neighbors were all looking out the window and laughing their asses off at me.
I screamed like a madwoman and apparently, that did it. The truck stopped. Huffing and puffing,
I went to the passenger window. It was up. I knew then this wasn't the same truck nor was it the same mail lady.
I hung my head, shuffled around to her open side, apologized for scaring her, got the number, waved her on, and started walking back home. I walked completely out of my flip flops and contemplated leaving them right where they were but I didn't. I picked them up and splashed my way home barefoot.
This will be the talk of the hood for the next few weeks.
Looking back over the entire incident, the one thing I vividly remember is that while standing with the mail lady, dealing with the supervisors, standing in the rain, and chasing down the mail truck the one thing that kept going through my head the entire time was how this was going to be a great thing to blog.
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