365 Writing Prompts - Day 28

January 28, 2017 - Describe a car accident you were in.

I can't remember the exact date, just that it was in the summer of 1988. Jeff, my husband, Darwin, my brother-in-law, and Steve, my brother, were putting a new roof on my mother's house. They didn't purchase enough shingles and needed more. My mother gave me a check and asked me to drive to the bank so the menfolk would have cash to by more.

Everything went off without a hitch, the woman at the bank knew me and my mother, so there wasn't an issue with cashing the check. I was driving home and the car in front of me hit their brakes. I wasn't going above the speed limit but I knew I didn't have time to stop, so I switched lanes. The car in front of me did the same thing, and I hit her anyway.

I was wearing my seatbelt, but was still hurled into the windshield. My forehead made a beautiful spiderweb in the glass on impact. The steering wheel impacted with my ribs beneath my breasts and the seatbelt scraped the skin on my neck deep enough to make it bleed.

I got out of the car and a woman got out of the car I'd hit. She hugged me and cried with me. She said that the car in front of her stopped suddenly, and when we changed lanes and I hit her, the car drove away. She got the license plate number.

When the policeman arrived, she begged him not to give me a ticket, and explained what happened. He was a real jerk and said, "Ladies, I'll take the license plate number, but you need to know this isn't Miami. We don't solve crimes in forty minutes."

I turned my head and whispered under my breath, "Son of a bitch!"

He gave me a Careless and Imprudent citation, as well as another for following too closely.

When I went to court, the prosecuting attorney had a diagram. He asked me to look and tell him what happened. He asked if the judge dismissed the C&I, would I plead guilty for folowing too closely, and, if I would agree to going to driving school, he'd ask the judge not to charge court costs or take any points off my license.

I agreed and left much happier than I'd arrived.