Fender bender

I was in a minor car accident on Friday. I can say minor, because besides being shook up… and some minor aches and pains… I’m OK. Besides a little pooch in my bumper… my car is OK.
It was slick out on Friday… our first sticking snowfall of the season… and I was leaving work early to get in for an early morning meeting. The radio said there was an accident on 290 just as I was approaching Washington… so I decided to skip the expressway and take Washington in to Cicero… and Cicero north.

Traffic is always weird on Washington. I hate to say it’s a little ghetto… but it’s a little ghetto, though the community organization along Washington does try its best. I pulled up behind someone who was double-parked in front of an apartment building, and waited for the traffic behind me to pass before I pulled out. Only it didn’t pass… the guy behind me slid into two parked cars before slamming into the back of mine with enough force that the bags probably would have deployed if the street wasn’t so slick that my car slid forward about two feet from the impact.

I was rattled. I was also momentarily blind as my glasses had flown off my head… and landed with my hat in the back seat. The contents of my car had been tossed around like popcorn. I’m still missing a few things out of my purse that I’m sure I’ll find in the seats eventually. The guy who hit me had come to rest with his driver’s side door against my bumper, and the passenger side door against one of the cars he’d hit. Pretty pinned in. I got out, looked at my bumper… and took snapshots of his license plate with my phone before I pulled my car up and gave him enough room to get out. He started begging me not to call the cops… suspended license… no insurance… I kind of figured from the sled he was driving that it was the case… and I wasn’t in a neighborhood where starting an argument would be a good idea… so since there was no real damage… I made him call my cellphone so I had his number… and left for work.

I got to work, and checked in with the nurse. She checked my blood pressure… kind of said…”Oh, we’re going to have you lie down…” and about 40 minutes and two ice packs later I went back to work. Or non-work. I kind of spent the day in a bit of a haze… I suppose early morning adrenaline rush will do that to you. I stretched a bit at lunch… and tried my best to workout after work even though I was sore and just wanted to go home.

What I didn’t expect… was the anxiety that driving home caused. Every time I stopped… it was like I expected someone to slam into the back of my car. I kept replaying the morning over and over. Saturday, when my husband and I drove out to Bensenville… I was kind of sick in the car the entire way. (The warehouse where my storage container smelled like fish, which didn’t help…) This morning on my way to work… was just 100% pure anxiety. And I don’t just like driving… I usually find it relaxing. Sometimes relaxing enough that I start pulling into the parking lot here at work and don’t quite remember the drive… it’s like I was in some sort of Zen meditative state. But this morning… I had to stop and put on an audio book in order to calm down. Same anxiety as last Friday… just waiting for someone to hit me.

And it makes me feel… well… weak. Because though I’ve been tapped before… I never really considered the distinct possibility before that with as much as I drive… the likelihood that I’m going to be in a serious accident someday is pretty high. One of my co-workers from my old building was in a four-car pileup a few weeks back. Whiplash and a near-totaled car just in time for the holidays.

Winter is coming... be careful out there.